I don’t take many photos nowadays. I used to think this was something to do with working full-time, but now I’m not so sure. Taking photos is a way of grasping hold of the evanescent. It memorializes the minutiae of the everyday - that which feels so insignificant but eventually accumulates into a life.
It was only after Momus requested that his readers post a photo of themselves on his blog that I realised that I haven’t got any pictorial record of myself from the last three months. It’s gone. Just like that. Me who used to be so vain!
On Saturday morning I was gripped by a visceral need to savour the moment. So I took photos and went for a walk.
First I went to what a Glasgow councillor recently called the “crime ridden midden” of Paddy’s Market. It is certainly a midden, but I’ve never seen any crime there except a couple of fake DVDs. Apparently you can buy drugs there, but I haven’t seen any. They want to turn that area (about 100 yards from my flat) into a mini-Camden, which would I think be a disaster.
Wandering through Glasgow Green, I crossed a footbridge into the heart of the Gorbals, a place whose reputation for crime is really rather undeserved nowadays. The only problem with the Gorbals is a demographic one. Huge, imposing tower blocks make it hardly the most inspiring place. Gradually, the tower blocks are being replaced by modern semis, but it is going to be a long job.
I was going this way because I wanted to see Cosmo Carpets, which has a full-size bronze replica of Michelangelo’s David in their car park. I spotted it in the distance and, by chance, found myself in the Southern Necropolis.
The Necropolis proper is somewhere I nearly always take visitors to Glasgow (see here for Will’s description), but the Southern Necropolis is, if anything, even more astonishing. Around 90% of the graves have toppled over - unlike the other one, there is little grandeur here. It’s just a sad reminder of the futility of graves as any long term monument to your life.
Anyhow, it turns out that there’s only one way in and one way out of the Necropolis and thus no way to see David in full.
I went home via the supermarket to do the weekly shop. So it was embarrassing when, laden with shopping bags, I saw an anti-War march. It felt wrong somehow to push past them.
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