The Scottish Exodus

A Lazy Day

4 November 2000
Merchant City, Glasgow

Today has been a lazy day. Regardless of what many in the know believe, I don’t do this very often, or, more rather, I haven’t really done it here in Glasgow.

I slept until 2 pm and spent the better part of the afternoon conquering the Western Hemisphere. You see, all I had left to kill was the bastard Russians in South America and a phalanx of rebel armies hammering me in the Ohio Valley, the Rocky Mountain Plains, and the Caribbean. This glut of rebel armies was a result of my masterful seizure of the American, French, and Chinese capitals within three turns of each other (the Chinese conveniently kicking Britain’s ass before I could get there). Capitals being seized, the constituent armies became mercenaries. Bastards. Ah, life in the Portuguese Army is never easy or risk-free.

Friday was not a lazy day. Instead, it became more involved than either Andrea, McCabe, or I had anticipated, but in a good way.

Friday was supposed to be the easy day, a languid, sit-on-the-porch-drinking-lemonade kind of day. Turn in my somewhat retarded Czechoslovakia essay (it’s not every day that I’m the Czechoslovak Minister to London during the 1930s, you know), maybe walk the bloody twenty miles to Glasgow U’s library for some light reading, and then spend the rest of the day and night on the couch reading Tony Benn’s political diaries. That was the plan, with maybe a movie later to entertain my lovely wife, who has yet to reach that manic stage that accompanies the knowledge that I have one of her Christmas presents locked in the suitcases. The hilarity will begin shortly, I promise.

The plan was flawless; trust me. Of course, all plans, much like many myopic historical theories, discount the role of human agency in altering events. In this case, it was my own procrastination. If I had bothered to finish my Czechoslovakia essay the night before, then I could have just dropped it off at McCance in the morning, but no, I had to start conquering the Western Hemisphere, get my fix, plug into electron love, however you want to put it.

McCabe was supposed to come by at noon on Friday and walk the fifty miles over to Glasgow U. However, having been up late the night before solidifying my position in Lower Canada and the Northern United States (the bastard French would not let me have Pittsburgh), I wasn’t ready. Nor could I have realistically gone anyway; Czechoslovakia called. Instead, we altered plans and headed over to the Andersonian Library, Strathclyde’s pathetic excuse for a library and the reason we walk the one hundred miles to Glasgow U. We spent two hours there while I finished the research for my Czech essay (got to love The Times index) and McCabe wrote postcards and letters. Then it was to McCance and its social realist façade on top of a parking structure feel. After spending an hour or so there trying to figure out the bureaucratic process for turning in an essay (just picture a double-blind marking system with time-date stamps, essay drop boxes, and signed statements of honesty) and having an Eric Johnson moment (sucked into the gravitational orbit of a dominating personality with no hope for escape) with Bill Wurthmann (a Renaissance historian from Vermont and a truly enjoyable and friendly person, picture Father Christmas, curly mustache, wild eyebrows, drunk, and without the gut, the kind of guy you’d like to see at the door when your girlfriend takes you home to meet daddy), we escaped with our sanity a little after 4:00.

It was here that the day warped further, moving beyond our control. It was here that we were meant to abandon all common sense notions of a quiet night in knitting sweaters and doing our work. Hostile Glaswegian forces tugged us away from our sense of restraint. It was here that our day swerved off course, sending us careening down the crevasse of Glaswegian debauchery, eating, drinking, and cavorting our way around Glasgow until past midnight. We didn’t mean for it to happen. Honest.

Andrea had yoga at 6:00, which at this time of the year is dark. Since I don’t allow Andrea to walk around alone at night—Glasgow is full of weirdoes you know—McCabe and I decided we would walk with her up to the All-Women Club on Sauchiehall Street. The plan was to entertain ourselves by finding some food and looking at the pictures McCabe needed to pick up from our Stirling trip (they were very good) while we waited for Andrea to finish The Elephant Recoils or Swan Touches Head to Ass with ten to twelve other flexible women. After that we would part from McCabe and return to the homestead. This brilliant system of action was concocted while we lounged around our flat between 4:30 and 5:30 listening to Christmas music.

It unfolds: halfway to Bending Reed Breaks in Wind, Andrea decides she wants us to wait to eat, so she can eat also. Agreed. Andrea departs. McCabe has his pictures. Where to go? The pub, naturally. Where else to kill an hour?

The Bar (396 Sauchiehall), is a chain, finished with wood paneling, and blaring trashy Euro dance music. We’ve been here before, but it wasn’t busy that night. Tonight is different. Trashy Euro dance music ruins many pubs in this hedonistic city. McCabe and I have one drink (me a Coke thank you very much) and get the hell out.

6:25. Too much time. Where next? Why, another pub, of course. O’Neill’s, also a chain, but Irish, so McCabe approves; also on Sauchiehall; blue on the outside, brown on the inside; and decorated with green shamrocks. Two guys, in the toilets down fifty flights of stairs into the depths of the earth, are making a deal for a hot portable CD player. The barmaid draws a shamrock on the foam of McCabe’s Guinness. Time whittles away discussing grandparents and modes of thinking.

7:00. The pretzel unwraps and Andrea returns. Food now. One hundred and twenty-fifth bum today asks for change. Andrea wrinkles her nose at suggestion of Chinese. Settle on pizza.

Pizza Express is also a chain on Sauchiehall, but classy, with ambient lighting and mood colouring. The food is excellent, pizza done well. McCabe has another three drinks: a beer with his starter, some house wine with his meal, and some port wine with the delicious desert. Andrea also has some wine while I have a Diet Coke. The main cook has a problem with a male server and starts thundering around like a water buffalo; the chiseled Bel Ami boy simply ignores him. Conversation centers on relationships, old and new. We leave an enormous tip, something like six pounds on forty, which is a lot in a culture where you aren’t really even required to tip.

Sometime past 8:00, nearly 9:00. Glasgow is teeming with Friday night traffic, as in trashy women and guys in dark clothes looking for booze and floozies. Where next? Why, another pub, of course.

The Old Printworks is, interestingly enough, also another chain, part of the Hogshead consortium, and off of George Square. One can only assume that perhaps it was an old print works. Hard wood floors, steel girders, and a foosball table are the major attractions here. We sit underneath the curved staircase; I get a mild sense of vertigo looking straight up and seeing what appears to be an upside down room with stairs and a glass window. McCabe beats my brains in at foosball, but also teaches Andrea to play, which is a miracle in its own right. Some drunk, dancing bloke won’t stop bumping and grinding with our foosball table; that’s probably the only action he had all night.

10:30, nearly 11:00. Where to next? A flash of divine inspiration hits. Let’s go find Schmiechen’s favorite pub! It’s in Merchant City somewhere. Off we go looking for Babbity Bowster. The eastern end of Merchant City has been terra incognito for us; we’ve simply not found the time to wander that far around our neighborhood. The two hundred and thirtieth panhandler gets a pound from McCabe. The collection of closed day shops and rocking pubs is quaint. I find another comic book store on the other side of Argyle. Oops, we don’t really have a clue where we are going. We wander around other buildings, seeing a couple kissing in a doorway, finding a sushi bar where the food is served by conveyor belt, and nearly stepping in vomit twice. Finally, rounding a corner, we find it.

Babbity Bowster is part homespun pub and hotel/hostel. The décor is architectural yet floral. Can’t really describe it any other way. It appears on the outside to be the quintessential medieval inn, something the Canterbury Tales were spun in. The clientele is a range from my Grandpa’s age to Andrea’s age, but there aren’t any of the annoying, trashy go-getters here. We drink more. McCabe misses his fiancée Angela. Conversation centers on homes: Madison, Wisconsin (a day does not go by that he does not mention Madison); Marshall, Michigan; Troy, Michigan; and good ole Mt. Pleasant. The staff calls last call and slowly forces people to leave. We vow to return. This is now our favorite pub.

Past midnight. What to do now? McCabe parts with us; he needs to go call Angela. Andrea and I search for more food. The streets are packed with people. The bars may close at midnight, but the action does not stop in Sodom. The clubs stay open until 3:00 or 4:00 am. Lines of trashy women in very little clothes on a 40ºF night clog the sidewalks. Santini’s on John Street (not really a street, more like a large sidewalk with a naked statue of Mercury) stays open until 5:00 am to serve these drunken, mongrel hordes. Some drunken women, wearing clothes too tight for their flabby bodies and eating chips, mutter in their brogues to me that she (the girl holding the chips) knows where to find it. Not really sure what that means, but it must have been sexual. Baked potato with butter and cheese for me; Andrea has fish and chips, greasy goodness, mmmmmmm. On the way home, I watch some drunken or drug-addled young man who is so fucked-up he can’t even stand; he just twists and turns on his hands and feet while some friends watch and laugh. He looks like he’s dying or doing some strange tribal dance, invoking the chaos order or something. Home around 1:00 am. Bedtime for me, after a few hours of reading the Benn diaries, is around 5:00 in the morning.

Now you understand why today is a lazy day.

---drew, Sunday will be a work day, I promise…

Copyright ©Andrew D. Devenney, 2009, all rights reserved.