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It Took Five Words to Get Here

Author: Stephen Bullock

So here’s my story, in five words.

I always found Manchester and Glasgow to be similar. Warm, friendly, rainy. Both post-industrial, riverside cities. I used to joke that the main difference was that in Glasgow the bad guys’ll stab you, but in Manchester they just shoot you. They are similar still. Beautiful, green, cosmopolitan, and always welcoming. But I came to Scotland to study, and never really went back.

Upon arriving in Glasgow every student learnt their first Scots word.

Clatty.

Clatty Pat’s, or “Cleopatra’s” as it was written, was an unlikely choice of night club for young students. Frequented by over-fifties and a pick-up joint for un-fussy lotharios it felt more like a survival exercise than a good night out. But we felt curiously welcome and it was the stuff of legend, shared in whispers by previous survivors, from generation to generation. Like a rite of passage, it changed us. In one night we opened a window to Scottish culture and crawled through it.

There was a second word. Barras. Meaning barrows, the Barrowlands, a market the size of a city. I trudged mile after mile to reach the Barras and, having seen a day’s worth of Glesca on the way, came back with what felt like wisdom, and a desk lamp £1 cheaper than Woolies which I promptly melted with the wrong lightbulb.

My third word was Raintown. I wandered the shops of Byres Road with the remnants of my student grant. In a long-lost record shop I found a reduced price LP in a cardboard box, with what looked like the exact view from my halls window on the cover. I had no record player with me. But I bought it anyway. Just for the picture. Months later I carried that fragile, oversized square the 300 miles in my lap on the bus, to what, even then, felt like my old home. A sense of destiny sang from that black plastic. Sang of the streets and places I had discovered – St. Enoch, Partick, Buchanan Street, a box of fireworks, and two bottles of Tizer. And it was the view from my window, drenched in grey, on the cover of this album, by a band called Deacon Blue that I was bizarrely only just discovering.

In Manchester we say “aye”. In Glasgow we say “aye”. You’d have thought the move would be seamless. But the beginning of my conversion to Scots was to say “aye aye”. I sounded like a bloody pirate. I learnt to drive in Glasgow and caused my instructor a coughing fit when I referred to the “windae wipers”. I still don’t fully get why that doesn’t work. But, a year in, perhaps, I embraced my “ayes” and that became my fourth word. Aye.

And so I stayed. Stayed in Glesca until I reached that point when you feel pity. Pity for those younger, fresher, more naïve than you. Pity because they swim around thinking they know Glasgow. But they don’t. Not like you do. They live in that bubble. The West End or wherever. Protected. Rich in culture, but a self-generating, colourful culture. Not the true Glesca. I went with a friend from the islands, to her pub. A proper pub. An Islander’s bar. And they sang. Songs I knew and songs I didn’t. And songs in Gaelic that I would never know no matter how many times I heard them. I’m learning a little. I might even find my sixth word. A Gaelic one this time.

I skipped the fifth though.

The fifth word is why I can never truly call myself Scottish.

Okay. So there’s this word that in Scotland means very little. You might hear weans bandy it about like the days of the week. But in Manchester… ooft. There is no worse, more despicable, more insulting, more disgusting or distasteful word in the English vernacular. I couldn’t bring myself to say it, write it, or hear it when I first arrived in Glasgow. I’d place my hands beside my ears and “la la la” until I could hear the conversation move on. I was no stranger to swears. But this one, four letter, one-letter-away-from-the-word-twit, word was beyond the pale.

So here I am. Living, working, marrying and parenting in Scotland. And the wean’s trying to take fistfuls of dead leaves from outside the Wallace Monument home so he can feed them tae the dug.

'You can’t take those leaves in the car. Yer Mum’ll kill me. You can give the dog leaves from the garden.'
'But these are Scottish leaves!'

Wait. What? Are the leaves in my garden not Scottish then? Is my house like an embassy – sovereign English territory because I own it? Is my garden, in Scotland, an English country garden?

True wisdom comes from knowing what you don’t know. Well, I won’t ever know what it’s like to be born Scottish. And my boy won’t ever know what it’s like not to be born Scottish.

And then he proudly says 'You know you’re British don’t you?'
'Aha?' I say.
'Well I’m Scottish.'

And there it is. He gives me a cuddle. And I’m left wondering if it’s out of pity, or love, or both. From what I’ve felt, from what I’ve experienced, it turns out living and working in Scotland means much the same thing as being born in Scotland. No one really gives a crap. So long as you’re mucking in. Well, not unless you’re an arrogant twat.

And that’s number five right there.