On walking in Glasgow, 9/11/2015

I was at one with my book last night, happily ignoring the storm symptoms that had started to bother my bedroom window. Needing some right relief after the emotional shredding of Chapter 23 (in quite the same way as I tend to take comfort in the domestic smugness of adverts for Pampers or British Gas after watching a gruelling horror film), I absent-mindedly Googled the weather. ‘Glasgow. 13 degrees. Spells of rain and a strong wind… Moon, waning crescent.’ Next to the seven-day forecast was a picture of a little girl with pigtails and a woollen hat on, eyes bright from the wind and rain. Four pages or so into Chapter 24, I was still trying to dispel the image of her bright rosy cheeks. So far, I’d taken advantage of my day off work by wrapping up in an old grey jumper and steadfastly refusing to leave the house. The little girl on the weather website’s invigorated grin made the sounds of the storm (now battering my poor creaky windows) sound different. I peeped outside, the dark trees silhouetted against the windows of the flats opposite. I piled on some more clothes and went outside, crossing over onto Great Western Road, through the inky beauty of Lansdowne Crescent, doubled back into Maryhill and kept walking.

I haven’t travelled much, and only recently I’ve become aware of a more heightened interest in exploring, and in seeing where my life and whatever work I end up doing may take me. Whether I end up passing my years in Scotland or somewhere else, I will never forget the sight of Glasgow on nights like last night. As is obvious by now, I am a daydreamer; a person who is often most happy indoors, in my own space, and often creating my own worlds, in my own head. As a general rule, this is what you’d tend to find me doing on stormy nights, as I am lucky enough to have the safety of a roof over my head. At some point last night, I found myself on a poorly lit, tenement-lined street which ran parallel to one of the entrances to the Kelvin Walkway, which bustled and churned ominiously beyond a thick green fence. The street was so dark that the orange glow from the windows of the flats above looked like fiery glitter; especially those which flickered right at the end of the crescent, many paces away. I had a cosy, Christmassy, John-Lewis-advert type feeling; on the outside looking in. I was rosy-cheeked, a bit cold, but revitalised, like the girl with the pigtails. Then, when I reached the bridge where this photo was taken, over the River Kelvin, I checked myself. I had the privilege of enjoying the storm, because I did have a home to go back to.

This is an important point which of course should be considered all year round, and not just when the nights draw in, when you realise how cold it is outside on a stormy night. It’s a point that everyone considers in their own way; a point that is triggered in each person’s mind for reasons unique to them, and a point which can be acted upon in many different ways, from increased thoughtfulness to planned action. It’s a point which I’m sure people don’t need reminding of on Facebook. So maybe, then, the reason I wanted to write about my walk last night was simply to show how helpful and stimulating a walk can actually be. ‘Go for a walk, clear you head,’ the phrase goes. My walk last night did achieve this; it helped me to compartmentalise some fuzzy worries which had been buzzing about and jostling with each other for space. It also helped release a bit of the creativity which I had been feeling a bit distant from over the past few weeks. At one point, I found myself on Observatory Road; a place I will always associate with Hallowe’en in Glasgow; the leaves churning around and The Glasgow Church of Christ looming, oppressive and gothic, the crescent of houses only just keeping it contained. I sat there for a while, and remembered a strange experience I had had there, the first and only time I attended a Brownies class. I started to think up a story, about a little girl in a red MacIntosh called Jessica, who can’t go guising with her friends, because she has to accompany her mother while she gets her hair coloured. She tells her friend Gemma that, later, her mother will go to a bar called Rita’s.

‘That’s where old women go to pick up young boys,’ said Gemma.

Jessica, who had been reading Grimm fairytales, thinks immediately of the picture in ‘Hansel & Gretel’ that had so terrified her; the way the artist had gnarled the witch’s fingers, and made one of her eyes point upwards, one downwards. I decided that Jessica’s mother seemed to love her daughter most when she was drawing, and wanted to be left alone. In those moments, she would pull her onto her knee despite her protests, and snake her arms around her navel. Walking round and round in circles on Observatory Road, I wondered how I would finish my story; how Jessica and her mother would reconcile their loneliness.

As well as clear my head, my walk filled it with stories, and memories, problems and solutions. It helped me to achieve distance from thoughts which were hurting me, and to think about what may be facing other people. It helped me create characters with lively, drawn, pensive, flushed and pale faces. It helped me to look at things differently to the way I had been when I first started Chapter 23.