Event: Lost Glaswegians

London on Friday, 30th September 2005

Who Came?

People who left Glasgow to live in London
     

What happened?

The workshop took place in London. We looked at how important Glasgow was to people who didn’t live there anymore, what their lives would be like if they had to go back and what kind of a city they might find.

The Lowdown – Voice of the group?

Nobody likes leaving Glasgow. Football, friends and family are a real wrench to leave, but once you’re gone, you change. Live in London and you’ll have to start pronouncing your words, meet different cultures and find the job you could never find at home. The tentacles of your old home still reach out and touch you. You might still go out with the Glasgow Girls, join a Celtic forum or brush up against that familiar accent outside Kings Cross. But how you hate it now. When you go back to see your Mum, people notice it. They think you’ve turned posh, which you think is petty. Sometimes you think you’d go back if only there were jobs. Then you think if you did, you wouldn’t want to live in that place where you grew up with an outdoor toilet and one cold tap. You’d live out on the edge with your wife close to the country. But the humour is special; it just doesn’t change, and even if you’ve lost most of your childhood friends and your parents have long-since left that will always be with you. You miss the banter. And carry-out in the Botanic gardens and staring into the eyes of your mate’s best friend across the terraces at the Old Firm.

Outputs

The responses, anecdotes and reactions recorded in the session are depicted on this map:



Could you write 500-1,500 words on a Glaswegian living in London in 2020? A Glaswegian returning from London in 2020? Or something like that? Send a story, with your contact details, to Glasgow 2020, Oyster Arts, 100 Beith Street, Glasgow. G11 6DQ. Or e-mail Gerry Hassan. We will publish all stories on the website, and especially good ones on hoardings around Glasgow and in forthcoming book.