No mean city

Indestructible, the death dodging kids laugh as the bus driver rages.

Shards of sunlight slice through buildings, blinding the strolling shoppers as they wander with vague purpose.

A broken voice begging for change from behind dull eyes.

An old man pauses to talk to the African drummer, rich timbre in shared laughter. A real connection amongst a thousand shifting eyes.

The pigeon that walks but never flies, unhurried and unafraid. He knows this city from hazy dawn to blackest night, from pristine corporate headquarters to grime (crime?) soaked tenements.

Through it all I walk. Surrounded by life in all it’s beautiful forms; the ravaged and unloved; the dirt and the shine, the filth and the smiles. Across broken tarmac and old cobbles, past the shiny office blocks and humdrum taverns, constantly amazed by the contrast, dialled to 11. Stark reality meets coddled view. The unshockable, sullied and downtrodden brush past the cosetted, freshly pressed.

All of them existing in their own state of indifference. Suffering their own form of life their eyes speak the same language. But it is not all grey, this city remains indestructible, like the children it bears. It survives, it laughs, it lives.

If you look for them, they are there. The briefest moments that are so easy to miss, skipping past like the sleek blur of a housemartin.

There a smile flashes and is returned. There a daisy grows between the cracks. There an oily puddle dances rainbows in sunlight.

Ask them and they’ll tell you. They will reveal all the beautiful sides of this city, with a proud face, for Glasgow is all of this, beautiful darkness and shuddering light. A soft glow from a brutal heart.

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