HAVE you got your jetpack yet?
Mine arrives on Monday. What with the innumerable disruptions to my day-to-day travel in and around Glasgow, some active and others as inevitable as death and taxes, I can't think of a better way to navigate the city during the Commonwealth Games.
Mercifully, punctuality comes an indolent third behind industry and flexibility in my line of work. I can only imagine what the next few weeks will be like for those who have to be at a specific place at a specific time otherwise they'll incur the wrath of a jobsworth manager with a humour bypass (is there any other kind?). Still, it doesn't do to rock up at Herald HQ 50 minutes late, even if the sluggish progress of Wiggo's cavalcade from KFC at the Forge to the velodrome is the cause.
Hence the jetpack, a snip at £35.99 including VAT from the Scotstoun Emporium, my local hardware shop and a legend in Glasgow retail.
Yes, the Commonwealth Games - a programme of events that, if I'm honest, raises my pulse barely a soupcon - are wreaking havoc on the lives of those of us who dwell in Glasgow. Games lanes, road closures, shut-off cyclepaths: it's the stuff of nightmares, especially if, like me, your sporting proclivities lie far, far away from the arena, the court and the swimming pool. As for the Games superstore in George Square, let's not even go there.
On the plus side, long-neglected districts of the city - which is to say almost all of them - are being visited at all hours of the day and night by swarms of workmen armed with strimmers, street cleaning equipment, line-painting machinery and suchlike. If this is what hosting an immense event such as the 2014 Games means for the citizens of Glasgow then I'm all for it - hell, next time make it the Olympics - but Lord knows where the moolah to pay for all of this window-dressing is coming from. Maybe it's covered by the rent from that superstore.
I've got a Plan B in case the jetpack doesn't materialise. With a net of fine mesh I shall capture the 40-odd pigeons which congregate at the junction of Sauchiehall Street and Cambridge Street and fashion them into the avian equivalent of a husky pack capable of spiriting me hither and thither as the Games play out far below. Imagine that - from the depths of G14 to the city centre in 15 minutes by the power of columbidae.
Whether I'm travelling by jetpack or pigeon, though, I'll need a Biggles-style cap and goggles to complete the look. Maybe they sell them at that big ugly superstore.
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