Glasgow

by Alan Taylor

  Next morning I woke to the clatter of the police helicopter. It hovered over the tenements like a gigantic bee, moved this way and that, the beat of its rotor blades chopping against the sandstone walls. It hovered again, and eventually moved away – it had either found its prey or had moved on to another quarry.

  Christine cooked me an enormous breakfast. There was a knock on the front door. ‘That’ll be Alistair coming to apologise for last night.’

  Alistair stood in the hall, his emotions playing volcanically on his face. ‘My giro! Where’s my fucking giro!’

  ‘Alistair,’ she tried to reason with him. ‘The post hasn’t come.’

  ‘You were out drinking in the pub last night.’ Alistair accused her of talking to a man. ‘Do you remember your marriage vows?’

  ‘Yes,’ Christine started to smile, but she daren’t relax. “‘Till death do us part.” So there. You’re father’s dead.’

  ‘But you’re not dead.’

  2001–

  BLOW UP

  SMEATON AS SUPERMAN, 5 JULY 2007

  Lawrence Donegan

  In the first terrorist attack on Scottish soil since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, two men crashed their Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane canisters into the glass doors of the terminal of Glasgow International Airport. Among the first to react was John Smeaton, an off-duty baggage handler, who set about one of the terrorists with selfless zeal, for which he was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. Later, he reflected: ‘If any more extremists are still wanting to rise up and start trouble, know this: We’ll rise right back up against you. New York, Madrid, London, Paisley . . . we’re all in this together . . .’

  When asked if he had a message for the bombers, John Smeaton, the baggage handler who helped thwart Saturday’s 4x4 attack on Glasgow airport, said, ‘This is Glasgow. We’ll just set aboot ye.’

  The city of Glasgow’s marketing department, which has spent 20 years trying to obliterate Glasgow’s ‘No Mean City’ reputation, might have winced at the sentiment. But the rest of the world was enchanted, and Scotland – and the internet – had found a new hero.

  Smeaton confronted one of the men from the 4x4, who was fighting with a police officer. ‘I got a kick in,’ he said. ‘Other passengers were getting kicks in. The flames were going in two directions . . . You know when you’re younger, you put a can of Lynx [aftershave] on the fire, and it’s like a flame thrower.’ And: ‘Me and other folk were just trying to get the boot in and some other guy banjoed him.’ (To banjo is Scottish slang for to hit someone as hard as you can.)

  Another day, another paean to the man: yesterday’s contribution came from Michael Kerr, whose own efforts at tackling one of the would-be terrorists were rewarded with a couple of smashed teeth, a broken leg and a supporting role in a worldwide phenomenon henceforth known as Smeatomania. ‘I flew at the guy a few times but he wouldn’t go down. Then he punched me so hard he knocked my teeth out and sent me flying so hard I broke my leg,’ Kerr said with a commendable lack of machismo. ‘I landed next to the burning Jeep and thought it was going to explode. That was when John Smeaton dragged me to safety. He’s a hero.’

  With crews working hard yesterday to restore the fire-damaged terminal, it seems the moment might have passed for building a plinth and commissioning a statue of Smeaton. Nevertheless, some form of official recognition is surely on its way. Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, says so, and so does the Scottish Sun, which yesterday launched an in-your-face campaign to ‘Give John a Gong’. (Rumours that the airport is to be renamed Smeaton International Airport appeared to be unfounded at time of going to press.)

  Still, our hero has plenty of other things to occupy his mind while awaiting the call from the Palace, not least the demands that come with being the latest in a long line of everyman heroes delivered by Scotland to a grateful world, from William Wallace to Sean Connery.

  In Australia, his remarks were broadcast accompanied by subtitles – the sort of accolade usually reserved for the likes of Gregory’s Girl and Trainspotting. And on Fox News in the US, Smeaton has received the fawning treatment normally reserved for Dick Cheney.

  It is a similar story in cyberspace, where a large corner of the internet is now devoted to the great man. One website gives visitors the chance to put a pint for Smeaton behind the bar of the Glasgow airport Holiday Inn. So far, 1,035 fans have taken up the offer. Elsewhere, the Photoshop enthusiasts have been hard at work. There is Smeato as Superman; Smeato as a Jedi knight; Smeato as Bruce Willis in Die Hard; Smeato as the man who made Osama bin Laden say, ‘You told me John Smeaton was off on Saturdays!’ Another shows Smeaton midair performing a flying kick with the words, ‘This is Glesga, mate.’

  Just one thing, though. The great man is not actually from Glasgow. He is from Erskine, a nice little suburb about 10 miles north of the city. Still, at this stage of the game, who in their right mind would want to argue with John Smeaton?

  EARLY CLOSING TIME, 4 DECEMBER 2013

  Sunday Herald

  Late on a Friday night, a police helicopter crashed into the Clutha Vaults, a popular pub on the north bank of the Clyde, killing ten people and injuring many more. A subsequent inquiry confirmed that the tragedy was due to pilot error. Less than two years later the Clutha reopened.

  The uncle of former Rangers player Steven Naismith became a reluctant hero when he went to the rescue of shocked revellers trapped in the crumbling building. Retired senior fire officer Douglas Naismith helped pull casualties to safety within minutes of the police helicopter crashing on to the pub roof but afterwards was too modest to speak about his actions.

  He had been walking past the Clydeside pub with another retired fireman and immediately went to the aid of frantic drinkers who had been trapped when the roof collapsed. A friend said: ‘Douglas just happened to be passing by with another experienced fire fighter. Instinct took over and he went straight into the building to help in the rescue operation and bring people out to safety. It was a brave thing to do, but it just came naturally to him. He definitely helped bring people out and ended up injuring himself by either fracturing his collar bone or dislocating his shoulder. But he took it in his stride.

  ‘Douglas was a senior fire officer until he took early retirement. He had attended a lot of major incidents in his time. It just so happened he was walking by the pub with another retired colleague when it all happened.’

  Former fire fighter Edward Waltham also ran into the pub to help with the rescue effort. He said: ‘I helped grab a couple of people. One gentleman in particular was completely covered in dust, who had very shallow breathing and appeared to be quite badly injured. My initial reaction for him – from my experience – was to try not to move him because he had been in a crush situation. However, as we were lying there, other people were literally being pulled out of the pub and more or less thrown on top of us.’

  Reveller Grace MacLean was inside The Clutha at the time of the crash and relived the horror when she said: ‘There was a ska band on in the pub just at the back and it was fairly busy. We were all just having a nice time and then there was like a “whoosh” noise. There was no bang, there was no explosion, and then there was some smoke – what seemed like smoke. The band were laughing and we were all joking that the band had made the roof come down.

  ‘They carried on playing and then it started to come down more and someone started screaming and then the whole pub just filled with dust. You couldn’t see anything, you couldn’t breathe. It was a real testament to the people of Glasgow. Everyone in that pub was shouting “Here’s the door” – they were helping each other out.’

  Another pub drinker caught up in the mayhem was Brendan Riordan who told how The Clutha had been ‘packed’ and said: ‘It was quite hard to move in there with the amount of people enjoying the gig.’ He remembered hearing ‘a very loud bang’ before a cloud of dust filled the pub and recalled: “I was on the right side of the pub where the band were performing and if you look
at the pictures which have come out now, you will notice that the right side of the pub did not collapse. It was more the central bit and the left side.

  ‘After I exited the pub I saw people coming out covered in blood and covered in dust. There were people quite desperate and just before I left the inside of the pub I noticed that the ceiling had fallen towards the bar. People were not aware that a helicopter had crash-landed on the pub.’

  Esperanza, a nine-piece Glasgow band known for its high-tempo ska numbers, were playing when the helicopter crashed on to the roof of the pub. Band members managed to flee the scene unscathed and last night a management spokesman said: ‘The band have made a collective decision not to do any interviews at this time. Hope you understand.’

  Newspaper editor Gordon Smart watched in horror as the helicopter plummeted on top of the pub. The editor of the Scottish Sun was 250 yards away from the crash scene in a car park when he spotted the helicopter. He said: ‘It was just a surreal moment. It looked like it was dropping from a great height at a great speed.’ Smart added: ‘There was no fire ball and I did not hear an explosion. It fell like a stone. The engine seemed to be spluttering.’

  GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART, MAY 2014

  Alan Taylor

  Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) is to Glasgow what Antoni Gaudí is to Barcelona, and the best evidence of his genius is Glasgow School of Art. It was the result of a competition held in 1896. In the early stages of planning and construction, there was no indication, or excitement, that the building would be anything special. Local papers, for example, were less than overwhelmed. ‘The plans,’ remarked one, ‘are of the most complete description and embrace all recent ideas and improvements.’ Another added: ‘The building appears to be in every way suitable for the requirements of art education.’ Encouraged by the School’s energetic and ambitious head, Francis ‘Fra’ Newbery, who appreciated Mackintosh’s talent, the result was a work of art and a place of work. Nevertheless, it took time for the ‘Mac’ to become an accepted and much-loved part of Glasgow’s landscape. In particular, it has an emotional bond with those who have studied in its extraordinarily beautiful surroundings. Unlike other such buildings, the School of Art has always been a building to use as well as admire. In 2014, however, it was seriously damaged by a fire which, had it not been for the swift action of firefighters, would have led to its destruction. As it was, much of it did succumb, including its wonderful library.

  A few days after the fire that threatened to reduce Glasgow School of Art to ash, I went to see for myself how bad the damage was. My trip took me up unlovely Sauchiehall Street into that part of the former Second City of Empire called Garnethill, at the summit of which, after an almost vertical ascent, is Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece. It was a morning remarkable for its dankness, the hills to the west enveloped in mist, the pavements greasy with drizzle. Access to the school’s entrance was cordoned off and men in hard hats, steel toe-capped boots and fluorescent jackets hung around eating bacon rolls and slurping tea, while a photographer captured the scene. The air smelled nippily of barbecue. From the outside, the building looked to be in decent shape. Some stonework was blackened by smoke and many windows had been melted by the furnace. But to an untutored eye there appeared to be nothing that was beyond restoration.

  As I looked, I was joined by a middle-aged couple. They were from Manchester, it transpired. Assuming them to be tourists, I said I was sorry they wouldn’t be able to see inside the ‘Mac’, as it’s fondly known. ‘Oh, we know it well,’ said the woman, ‘our son’s a sculpture student. He’s in his final year. We came for his degree show. All his work’s been destroyed.’ Her lower lip quivered. Shortly after the fire broke out, she added, her son had called home, weeping copiously, in part because of the loss of his work, but also because of his fear for the future of the place where he had spent much of the last four years. Now he was in limbo, not knowing when or whether his degree might be awarded; and, if it was, what kind of a degree it would be.

  There was not much I could say by way of consolation. In the hours after news of the fire broke, I heard from many people who had either studied at the Mac or taught there, or who simply loved the building, recognising in it that which is inspirational and irreplaceable. Rare for such an institution, it was open to the public and one often wandered in, marvelling anew at Mackintosh’s inventiveness and thoughtfulness. What made it particularly special was its functionality, its user-friendliness, its ergonomics. It was designed not as a museum piece or a showcase but as a workshop which was to be subject daily to wear and tear. My daughter was a student there and whenever I visited she would take me on a tour, acting as if she were the chatelaine of Balmoral Castle. Others of its tenants said it was like being given permission to use a Ming vase in which to display daffodils or to have a Meissen porcelain plate on which to eat baked beans.

  There was always something outside or inside the building to please the eye. No matter where you turned, it seemed that Mackintosh, who designed it in the first decade of the twentieth century, had anticipated your gaze and offered you the wherewithal to satisfy it. From the mullioned windows one could look across the urban sprawl of Glasgow to the countryside beyond. The internal perspective was no less beguiling. Everything in the Mac was designed by Mackintosh himself: light fittings, bookshelves, easels, rattan-cover chairs, magazine stands, desks and clocks. Even his rather Presbyterian basement lecture theatre drew admiration. Panelled with stained timber, it has long been the bane of students, most notably the narrowness of the benches on which they sat, leading some architectural historians to surmise that a century ago students’ backsides must have been rather leaner. An accomplished artist himself, Mackintosh knew instinctively what was required. For him natural light was as essential as oxygen is to a scuba diver and it pours in at every opportunity. But equally important were private spaces, nooks and crannies and window seats where one could read and think and daydream free from interruption.

  By common consent, the school’s library was Mackintosh’s pièce de resistance. I say ‘was’ because it is no more. Situated on the first floor, it must have been directly in the line of the flames, and while the firefighters arrived within four minutes of being summoned they were unable to save it. I remember it well. My friend Dugald Cameron, the Mac’s erstwhile director, was ever eager to show it off. Dugald had been a student before he became a member of staff. As with Mackintosh, drawing is at the heart of his art. On our strolls he’d stop and examine a student’s work, pointing out where it was on course or where it was going awry. Dugald draws trains and planes in forensic detail. His equivalent of Michelangelo’s David is Concorde’s engine or the Flying Scot’s, and he brought to his exposition of Mackintosh the sensitivity of a Glaswegian whose memory of the heyday of the Clyde and its throbbing shipyards is still fresh. With Dugald, one is reminded that art schools are not just about turning out Turner Prize-winners, but also the designers of useful – and beautiful – objects and machines.

  It was in the ‘wondrous’ library, Dugald recalled, that forty-five years ago he first met his wife Nancy, who had joined the school’s staff as a librarian. Spatially, it was small, but it never struck me as such. Rather, as the editors of the Glasgow volume of The Buildings of Scotland series point out, the double-storeyed room had ‘a decidedly Japanese character’. In less accomplished hands this might have felt fey or affected or pastiche; in Mackintosh’s, the perfection of the proportions, the attention to detail and the play of light and dark make it the kind of place in which the drudgery is taken out of study. ‘This is justly considered one of the finest rooms in Glasgow’, The Buildings of Scotland editors concluded.

  That it is no more is cause for national lamentation. All, however, is not lost. While the earliest generations of students never learned the name of the person who designed the building to which they were attached, that has not been the case for several decades. Consequently, the Mac and its furniture and fittings have been
photographed endlessly and Mackintosh’s drawings are all said to be extant. Once the insurers have examined the contracts, administrators will know how much money they have to begin the reconstruction. Meanwhile, the Scottish and British governments have indicated that they are ready to help when required.

  What no one can say, though, is how long it may take to recreate what Mackintosh achieved in a few astonishing years and what fire destroyed in a matter of minutes. When I was told what had happened, I recalled the weekend I spent with the sculptor Kenny Hunter – a graduate of the Mac – at Maryhill Fire Station in the north of the city. He’d been commissioned to produce a sculpture of firefighters and had embedded himself with a number of them, the better to understand their job. It seemed like a good idea for a newspaper article and so I allowed myself to undergo some basic training and don a uniform. Glasgow, I soon discovered, is a highly inflammable city, especially on a Saturday night. Kenny’s sculpture, which is called Citizen Firefighter, now stands outside Glasgow Central Station, in salute to those redoubtable men and women who take the heat on our behalf.

  LET THE GAMES BEGIN, 24 JULY 2014

  Hugh MacDonald

  When the 2014 Commonwealth Games was awarded to Glasgow one thing was certain, that spectators and participants would receive the kind of embrace unique to a city which prides itself on wit and irreverence . . .

  The city of Benny Lynch, the haven of the eternal wee man, has always punched above its weight. Glasgow last night took a small budget and came up with a big idea.

  It is what Scots do. The land that brought the world penicillin, television, the square sausage, the Enlightenment, slagging as a way of declaring love, the novel, ships that sailed the world, quips that nailed the moment, modern engineering, the carry-oot and the philosophy of economics, toyed with the idea of a conventional opening ceremony in the way that Jim Baxter once played with an English midfield. It then gave it a body swerve.