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<\/a><\/p>\nThings look pretty much as they have for the last few decades: the gap site between Kilbirnie Street and St Andrew\u2019s Cross still lies vacant but not, I suspect, for much longer. This is confirmed by the absence of billboards and the sudden appearance of security firm signs attached to a chain-link fence around the site perimeter. In the near distance stand the condemned Stirlingfauld high-rises in Laurieston, currently packed with explosives and due for demolition next month.<\/p>\n
Prowling the rim of this land I note an enterprising sign \u2013 \u2018private car park\u2019 where a section of ground has been fenced off but there\u2019s not a car in sight. Beside it, also fenced off, two guys, one in a boilersuit, squat on the rubble with a open black suitcase and several bottles, as if conducting a school experiment. When I ask they tell me they\u2019re testing the water for contaminants. In turn I enquire about the fate of this slice of long-abandoned land. They\u2019re hesitant. One of them mentions the proposed M74 corridor, but he\u2019s not sure. I head west, pausing to snap the clock at the corner of Turiff Street and the intriguing More Chemicals sign.<\/p>\n At St Andrew\u2019s Cross on Victoria Road – Glasgow’s answer to the Flatiron Building – a new housing development on the site of the old Plaza Ballroom is nearing completion, named after the legendary dancehall and even retaining part of the original red sandstone fa\u00e7ade. Opposite the Star Bar (three course lunch \u00a32.50) I find another of those metal boxes bearing the legend Glasgow Corporation Electricity Department.<\/p>\n A little further down Pollokshaws Road I reach Utopia, yet another development on the site of the old DHSS office where I recall, shortly after graduating from Art School, being advised by a female member of PER (Professional and Executive Recruitment) to consider cleaning as a career move. I may well have missed my calling – a flyer through my door tells me a cleaner costs \u00a310 an hour.<\/p>\n Utopia is a set of luxury apartments but today the promotional hype rings even more hollow in a housing market less depressed than suicidal. Utopia also announces itself as an enclave of Southgate. Southgate? Never heard of it. And it occurs to me \u2013 how many of these new developments have sprung up from nowhere in recent years and who\u2019s in charge of naming them? The name Southgate, vaguely suggestive of an ancient portal, is neutral to the point of negligible, a nowhere and everywhere place. It\u2019s a subject worthy of further investigation, given the number of signposts dotted around the city pointing the way to newly reminted places.<\/p>\n Heading west, I arrive at Queen\u2019s Park, designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and opened to the public in 1857. Named not after Victoria but Mary, Queen of Scots, it’s a splendid example of urban green space \u2013 well maintained and not conspicuously given over to commercial ventures \u2013 yet. There\u2019s Goals, a set of five-a-side football pits, with a parking charge of \u00a32 for those not using the facility. Elsewhere there are numerous free recreational areas: the football pitch co-opted by local Scottish-Asian lads playing cricket, as well as tennis courts, pitch and putt and several children\u2019s play areas. There\u2019s also a celebrated Victorian Glasshouse and two ponds. The park is also home to an abandoned bandstand and two long-established private bowling clubs.<\/p>\n It\u2019s early summer now, with the trees in new leaf and the rhododendrons in full, impossibly exotic bloom. I chance on the Scottish Poetry Rose Garden, a formal design, part hard-landscaped, part lush with highly perfumed climbers. On stone roundels set into cobbles are the names and dates of great Scottish writers:<\/p>\n Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) I have to plead ignorance of several of these names and can only presume I\u2019m not alone, though in a Victorian public park it seems appropriate, albeit in a culturally improving top-down kind of way, to present a simple set of names and dates with no explanation. There\u2019s no visible corporate sponsorship slapped on to remind the viewer of the largesse bestowed by the patron just as there\u2019s no attempt to corral us into passive, unquestioning appreciation.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m confounded by the James Hogg commemorative litter bin. What, I wonder, was the motive behind this creation? And what would the author of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner<\/em> make of it? An ironic statement on the nature of writing or a misjudged afterthought on the part of the city council parks department? I check the contents. No discarded manuscripts to be found here, only a banana peel and a few damp fag ends.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nGeorge Mackay Brown (1921-1996)
\nRobert Ferguson (1750-1774)
\nJames Hogg (1770-1835)
\nGavin Douglas (c1474-1522)
\nWilliam Dunbar (c1460-c1520)
\nAlasdair Macmhaighstir Alasdair (c1675-c1770)
\nDonnchad Ban Mac-An-T-Saoir (1724-1812)
\nAlexander Montgomerie (c1555-1598)
\nRobert Burns (1759-1796)
\nViolet Jacob (1863-1946)
\nHugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n