Glasgow no more / Glesga nae mair

Back in February I posted here of how I very nearly went to Art College in Scotland, but was derailed by the surprise intervention of someone who I knew from home who was already studying there, when doing my rounds of degree course interviews in Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh, in April 1991 (see post here). So I stayed in Belfast, where I had done my Foundation year.

At the same moment, my future wife was also offered a degree place at Glasgow School of Art, but she opted instead to come to Belfast, where we met in Autumn 1992.

A few weeks after I had graduated from there, in late July 1994 she had some of her art work exhibited in Felt Directions at the Collins Gallery on Richmond Street in Glasgow, for the International Feltmakers Association, and I flew over the meet her there for a few memorable days, with her parents who had travelled up from England.

We had various day trips and family holidays in Glasgow over the decades since.

Fast forward almost 30 years and I was back in Glasgow in April 2022 to meet up with our oldest son who was doing some videography work there (see post here) and we had a ball for a few days. He was filming with the-then Glasgow Rangers player Calvin Bassey for some promo videos for his PR agency (on Instagram here).

I had hoped that our second son might study medicine in Glasgow, but he has opted for the University of Plymouth, and starts there next week after his gap year of travelling around Europe, Israel, Australia and Bali.

I took my final hope, our daughter, to the University of Glasgow on 16 June for University Open Day. Whilst I was greatly impressed by the University in terms of its ethos (especially their emphasis on Graduate Attributes rather than grades), and even though we shopped in Buchanan Street (pictured above), hit multiple coffee shops, did the Gallery of Modern Art, and used the dead-easy circular Subway system, she didn't like the vibe of the city at all, and has decided that, if she gets the grades, to stay in Northern Ireland for university. So here endeth our student-era connection with Glasgow.

My maternal great-great-grandfather, James Kerr from Carrowdore, went to Glasgow for work some time around 1900 but he never came home – it's believed that he was drowned in the River Clyde. My mother's cousins, the Hamills from Ballyfrenis, who left Northern Ireland in the late 1960s to live back in that ancestral city have now all passed away, during the Covid lockdowns, with no-one from this side of the water able to be present at the funeral. So my sense of direct familial connection feels tangibly diminished.

We will still visit of course, thanks to the newly-announced air routes with Belfast. It's just a 25 minute hop over, and then the purple Service 500 shuttle bus, which uses wee touches of Scots vocabulary in its branding, from the airport right into the city centre.

With no family ties now, it feels that wee bit more distant. And I will always wonder "what if" I had gone to Scotland in '91.