15 Speed Time Machine
May. 23rd, 2013 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f3I owe you lot an entry on last week's island hopping, my job situation and (maybe) my love life, but for the moment you're getting a "what I did at lunchtime" entry instead.
Because what I did was cycle over to my mum's, have a toasted sandwich, and come back. About an 11 mile round trip. Boring, you say?
I cycled along the Forth and Clyde canal for a wee bit, just along from where I lived until I was 7, in Maryhill. Then I cycled through Sighthill, where my Gran lived when I was growing up. Her block of flats is demolished now, and so are some of the others. Still there, for the moment, is the astronomically accurate stone circle, which my friend Duncan Lunan helped put up in the 70's (I think).
From Sighthill, I cut across to Springburn Road. Springburn was the nearest big shopping centre to the place I grew up (we're getting there). It had a Woolworth's, a swimming pool, and a library I visited every week. The library and pool were my first introduction to Victorian civic architecture, leaving me with the smell of chlorine and furniture polish. They were older than any building in Balornock, by at least 50 years.
Springburn also had the dole office where I signed on. Yes, aged 17 and just out of school, and waiting to start at University, I signed on for unemployment benefit over the summer. I hadn't worked a day in my life, and I was paid (I think) £17.50 a week without a quibble. And with no shame, either. The very idea of being ashamed at taking the money would never have entered my head. My Dad worked, my Mum worked, my Granddads worked. They paid taxes and National Insurance, so that I could get a subsistence allowance when I didn't.
I've never forgotten that. I think I've paid something like...oh, call it £250k in taxes and NI since then. It's probably more. And because of that £17.50 a week (amongst lots of other reasons, like my Gran's care home, and my Dad's triple by-pass) I've never grudged it for a moment.
Then I cycled through Springburn Park, where, you guessed it, I spent a lot of time growing up. When I used to play there, you had a choice of boating on the boating pond, fishing in any of the three ponds, putting on an 18 hole course, playing tennis, playing lawn bowls, or walking through the Winter Gardens and the Rose Garden and the formal Walled Garden. There was a cricket oval, rarely used but there, and, of course, football and hockey pitches. All of this was paid for out of general taxation. The Glasgow Parks division of the Corporation had a big depot there, and employed gardeners and people to run the boats and the tennis and the putting and the football pitches. And every night and every weekend there were hundreds of people using the park. I'd expected it to be changed, and it is. There are some football pitches, and some very nice swing parks. And that's it. From what I could see, no one is based there anymore.
From the park, it's an easy freewheel down past the church where I was an altar boy, past my primary school, along Wallacewell Road past the house we were decanted to in 1970 something (it was the year Grease was out, I think) and up to my Mum's. I first cycled along Brodie Road 42 years ago. I tell you what, it doesn't seem that long ago.
Because what I did was cycle over to my mum's, have a toasted sandwich, and come back. About an 11 mile round trip. Boring, you say?
I cycled along the Forth and Clyde canal for a wee bit, just along from where I lived until I was 7, in Maryhill. Then I cycled through Sighthill, where my Gran lived when I was growing up. Her block of flats is demolished now, and so are some of the others. Still there, for the moment, is the astronomically accurate stone circle, which my friend Duncan Lunan helped put up in the 70's (I think).
From Sighthill, I cut across to Springburn Road. Springburn was the nearest big shopping centre to the place I grew up (we're getting there). It had a Woolworth's, a swimming pool, and a library I visited every week. The library and pool were my first introduction to Victorian civic architecture, leaving me with the smell of chlorine and furniture polish. They were older than any building in Balornock, by at least 50 years.
Springburn also had the dole office where I signed on. Yes, aged 17 and just out of school, and waiting to start at University, I signed on for unemployment benefit over the summer. I hadn't worked a day in my life, and I was paid (I think) £17.50 a week without a quibble. And with no shame, either. The very idea of being ashamed at taking the money would never have entered my head. My Dad worked, my Mum worked, my Granddads worked. They paid taxes and National Insurance, so that I could get a subsistence allowance when I didn't.
I've never forgotten that. I think I've paid something like...oh, call it £250k in taxes and NI since then. It's probably more. And because of that £17.50 a week (amongst lots of other reasons, like my Gran's care home, and my Dad's triple by-pass) I've never grudged it for a moment.
Then I cycled through Springburn Park, where, you guessed it, I spent a lot of time growing up. When I used to play there, you had a choice of boating on the boating pond, fishing in any of the three ponds, putting on an 18 hole course, playing tennis, playing lawn bowls, or walking through the Winter Gardens and the Rose Garden and the formal Walled Garden. There was a cricket oval, rarely used but there, and, of course, football and hockey pitches. All of this was paid for out of general taxation. The Glasgow Parks division of the Corporation had a big depot there, and employed gardeners and people to run the boats and the tennis and the putting and the football pitches. And every night and every weekend there were hundreds of people using the park. I'd expected it to be changed, and it is. There are some football pitches, and some very nice swing parks. And that's it. From what I could see, no one is based there anymore.
From the park, it's an easy freewheel down past the church where I was an altar boy, past my primary school, along Wallacewell Road past the house we were decanted to in 1970 something (it was the year Grease was out, I think) and up to my Mum's. I first cycled along Brodie Road 42 years ago. I tell you what, it doesn't seem that long ago.
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Date: 2013-05-23 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-23 03:47 pm (UTC)