Glasgow

Glasgow is a strange place. It has one of the world's highest rates of violent crime. The crime mostly consists of the "Jimmies" (usually young working class Glaswegian males) sticking shivs (an improvised stabbing knife) into the gizzard of one of their friends on Friday or Saturday night. Sinking lots of whiskies with beer chasers does that to you.

So it's not really serious -- and even the Jimmies don't seem to think it is.

I have a memory of standing outside a pub in Sauchiehall St that reminded me strongly of a traditional Australian pub. I guess we got our pub culture from the Scots. Scots certainly like a "wee dram" -- but only the males of course. The women drink tea to set the men a good example. But that is how it was. I imagine that younger Glasweginan women have now given up that futile effort.

Anyway, I even seem to rembember seeing outside the Sauchiehall St pub a woman sending in her children to extract her husband from the pub and get him to come home for his dinner.

Does that seem strange? Not to me. That was part of my life too. Men are very consistent about where they drink. So their friends and wives generally know where to find them after hours. And my mother did too. It was generally my sister who was sent in to get my father out of the pub (usually the "Crown" in Innisfail) but I guess I would have had that job if my sister had not been a cuter kid than I was.

So I rather like Glasgow. I feel that I understand it. The fact that my second wife was a very fine Glaswegian woman may have some influence on that conclusion, however.

Glaswegians are generally very good-humoured people (as long they are not talking to the English) and Joyce Anne Burns Lipp certainly has a full measure of Glaswegian good cheer. She even gets on well with the English! So that is extremely good-natured by Scottish standards.