To the Concert Hall steps, on news of their demise.
Dear Concert Hall steps,
I'm so sorry to hear of your imminent loss. You must be awfully sad to know that, after all these years of invaluable service, the architects behind the expansion of your Royal Concert Hall think so little of you.
You might have thought after the brouhaha surrounding the suggested redesign of George Square and the proposed brutal blowing up of the Red Road flats that designers would think about what landmarks mean to the people who use them before they prime the wrecking ball.
They might have thought to incorporate you in to the new design, rather than battering you out of existence.
It's almost as if private enterprise has undue influence on local and national government. Let's just hope all the retailers you are leaving to make way for are those who pay their taxes.
Oh, Concert Hall steps. You came into existence in Glasgow at just about the same time I did. I remember walking up you for the first time, when we were newly exploring our new city, and the many, many times since. The anticipation of performances - the RSNO or the Eels, say.
I'll never forget our lunch times together. Or those glory days of early morning shifts when work ended at 2pm and we had a good hour of sunshine, coffee and a book before my glutes went numb.
There are so many people you have hosted for me that I will never see again.
In the planning application you are described as without aesthetic benefit and of little townscape value. Injury heaped on insult, I am so sorry these brutes cannot see the beauty of your everyday, workaday solidity.
I feel terrible about that time I was cross at you for getting bird poo on my bum. It wasn't your fault, I should have looked before sitting.
You were - are! you're not gone yet - so dependable.
However, a sitting person is not a spending person and for this development to remain viable it needs those who are spending, spending, spending. After all, with £400 million of public money invested you'd hate for the plans to fail.
Remember all those who have sung on you? Protested on you? Just last year you had Susan Boyle launch the Poppy Appeal. Still, I'm sure Susan could just as well sing from inside the new glass atrium. We won't hear her, out on the street, but at least we can wave on the way past.
The stark truth is that we will move on. When Dinos on Sauchiehall Street closed I knew I'd never eat a satisfactory pizza slice on the night shift again, nor take a penne arrabiata to the cinema. I lament its loss every time I walk round to Sainsbury's only to find the branch shuts earlier than I remembered and have to schlep up to Tesco Express instead. I miss Dinos heartily but I've made adjustments.
Crocket's the ironmongers is closing too, another Glasgow city centre icon. I used to serve Mr Crocket a double-tall, semi-skimmed latte almost every day in Starbucks. He put a parking voucher on my car once, having spotted a traffic warden wandering up the street, and saved me a ticket. I saw my first real shepherd's crook in Crocket's. Now where will I buy Dylon and bullets? It's all change, too fast.
Perhaps in the summer we who will miss you should hold a picnic-in before you go. Your replacement is a sweeping, narrow affair inside a glass atrium. I'm not sure the shopping centre owners would like to see students and office workers and political protesters cluttering up the place but I am sure we'll all give it a decent shot, once the extension opens. I certainly plan to experiment with a packed lunch or two, and maybe a fish supper.
The noose is tightening for you now, Steps, the trapdoor fastened 'neath the gallows.
I will have to meet, eat and read on the concrete at the foot of Donald Dewar's statue now, Steps, but when I do, it is you I will be thinking of. Promise.
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