Riding The Clockwork Orange
My mother visited Glasgow in the 1930s and first told me about the Glasgow Subway. I know little of her trip or was it trips to Glasgow, except that she went by coach. She also told once, how a lady on the coach, put her hair in curlers to go to sleep. I don’t think I ever saw my mother with her hair that way!
Why she went, I have no idea, but the trip to Glasgow was probably the only vaguely exotic place I ever her talk of going.
My host at dinner last night, had told me that a station on the Subway was about fifteen minutes walk from my hotel. So to explore the city centre, before I took the train south, I walked to the station at Hillhead. An illustration of how times change was the Waitrose opposite the station. Only a few years ago, their furthest north store was at Newark.
I took the train to Buchanan Street station, which was close to the main stations and shops.
Although, the stations all seemed to have a lith with a map and information outside, I don’t think I ever saw a system map inside a station or on the trains.
But then as it is effectively one line going continuously round in circles clockwise and another doing the same in an anticlockwise direction, it is about as far in concept from ninety-nine percent of the world’s metro and subway systems, as you can get. So perhaps a map would just confuse people unfamiliar with the system. I suppose that in my journey from Hillhead to Buchanan Street, I could have taken any train in either direction. This is a bit like London’s old Circle line, before they broke the circle and made it a spiral.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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