A little over a year ago I was on holiday in Italy.

I turned on the TV news more out of habit than interest. A helicopter had fallen out of the sky on to a pub, killing and injuring an untold number of people. I couldn't hear what the reporter was saying but the words running along the bottom of the screen told me that this had happened in Glasgow, in a bar called the Clutha Vaults in Stockwell Street not far from where we have a flat in the Merchant City.

It seemed scarcely believable. It was one of those freak accidents which defy understanding, the kind insurance companies might categorize as an act of god.

The only consolation, if such a word can be used in the circumstances, was that what occurred late on that chilly Saturday night in November was unlikely to do so again. Lightning, we're reliably informed, does not strike twice.

But here we are, 12 months on, and lightning has struck cruelly again. Two days ago, as folk flocked into George Square to do last-minute Christmas shopping and enjoy the festivities, an out-of-control council bin lorry rampaged up Queen Street like a rogue elephant, leaving six people dead and a number of others badly hurt. Yet again Glasgow was the location for a scene more familiar in disaster movies than it ever will be in everyday life.

In its aftermath we were told the kind of stories that are the stuff of such incidents. There were the eyewitnesses who had been going about their mundane business when they were suddenly confronted with horror.

How to describe what they'd seen and felt? Shock is a legitimate, initial reaction. Can this really be what it seems to be? Instinct kicks in and the desire to help those afflicted becomes overwhelming. It is no exaggeration to say that the selfless individuals who rushed to the aid of those hapless people strewn across the street like litter were heroic. One of their number was our own journalist Catriona Stewart who was enjoying lunch one minute and the next threw herself into the melee to offer help she could

Such kindness, such altruism, is of course what marks human beings from other beasts. When a bomb goes off those who have planted it know that the next easy targets are likely to be the Samaritans who rush to help anyone caught in the blast.

One well recalls the pictures outside the Clutha as folk arrived from all over the city to claw at the rubble in the hope of pulling survivors from it. "People make Glasgow" was the slogan chosen to typify the city during the Commonwealth Games, and it's true.

Glaswegians, I've come to appreciate, are the essence of Glasgow. They give it its distinctive, unreproducible tone, which visitors instantly recognize and embrace. It's a way of talking and seeing, an attitude of mind that is simultaneously sardonic and compassionate, humourful and uncompromising.

That is not to suggest that the citizens of the Dear Green Place are any more endowed with the milk of human kindness than their counterparts elsewhere. But what cannot be denied is that Glasgow is one of those cities which has had more than its fair share of undesired limelight.

In May, you will recall, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece, the School of Art, turned the sky the hue of hot coals. It was another of those moments when you need to suspend disbelief and must try to comprehend what is going on.

Locals raced to rather than from the blaze, acutely aware that what was under threat was not just any building but one that touches the hearts and minds of everyone who calls Glasgow home. The thought of losing it was unacceptable, unconscionable. Everything that could be done to save it must be. There was no alternative, no hesitation. In Glasgow, art matters for it is the way we tell future generations who we are.

As a non-native, my love of Glasgow was slow to come to boiling point. Growing up in the east, I barely knew it existed. On a clear day, from the hills around Edinburgh, you could see black smoke rising in the west. That, we schoolboys were told, was Glasgow, which called itself "the second city of Empire". The words were uttered with a lip curled in contempt.

What I read of Glasgow did not make it any more appealing. It was full of hard men and dark tenements, drinking dens and razor gangs. The Gorbals were still a byword for deprivation and one had the impression that all of Glasgow was like that.

The Glasgow I first visited felt as foreign to me as Chicago or Naples. Whereas in Edinburgh you always felt you were being watched, in Glasgow you could melt into the crowds. Nor was I alone. "Glasgow is a magnificent city," Alasdair Gray has one of the characters in Lanark remark.

"Why do we hardly ever notice that?" To which Duncan Thaw, Gray's alter ego, replies: "Because nobody imagines living there ... Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he's already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn't been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively."

Now, when I walk around Glasgow, it is as a reader of books that make it as vivid and romantic as any more fabled city. George Square is its heart, a place for everyone to gather. This is where, 99 years ago, women threatened with eviction for non-payment of rents took their protest. It was here, too, that were held many demonstrations against the loathsome poll tax.

Occasionally, I sit in it on a bench and eat a sandwich. Rarely am I left alone. In Glasgow, there is always someone eager to buttonhole you, to wonder why you're looking so glum or what you've done to look so pleased with yourself.

I could have been there on Monday afternoon as the light was beginning to fade. Hour by hour, day by day, the square changes its character. In the summer, it was where you could buy tickets and souvenirs for the Commonwealth Games. As I crossed it, I was often stopped by tourists wondering what the big building on its east side was.

When I told them it was basically the town hall they'd get out their iPads and start taking pictures. The mood was infectious. Everyone was having fun and was keen to share it. Glasgow, one felt, had at last shrugged off its confrontational image and embraced a sunnier future. It was open and generous and a joy to be part of.

A couple of months later came the referendum and it voted in favour of an independent Scotland, showing yet again that it has a mind of its own. It is a city that has fought for the right to self-determination.

Like New York, it has learned the hard way to be resilient. Nothing can keep it down for long. Survival is in its DNA.