AFTER my visit to the Glasgow Art Fair, I confess to being increasingly worried about the plight of the city's artists. Thosechapsandchapessesinthe garret environment.

A freezing, rat-infested attic up a dank close on the Garscube Road is their natural habitat. There, despite being crippled by consumption, alcoholism, and various wasting diseases, they will fill countless canvases with their genius.

Then they will head down to the pub and sell said paintings to art patrons like myself for the price of a glass of absinthe or maybe a pint of heavy beer. The artists will then retreat to the frozen garret and die at a tragically young age, thereby significantly increasing the value of the paintings which us art patrons had bought for the price of a glass of absinthe or maybe a pint of heavy beer.

That was in the good old days. Now, these artist folk can be seen buying their own beer - designer stuff at £3 a bottle - in the Art Fair bar. With the pictures on the walls priced in the thousands, they can afford it.

And there is none of that garret stuff these days. Glasgow is presently constructing expensive and elegant housing for its artist class. A six-storey Edwardianbuildingat103Trongateisbeing converted at a cost of £6.8million to accommodate various visual arts organisations.

Just down the street, £6.5m is being spent on making the Briggait, Glasgow's old fish market, into a plush home for 250 artists. There is also an ambitious plan to turn a disused steamie into an arts centre.The Bathhouse Project, as it is called, will be home to artist Peter Howson. The steamie itself will be turned into studios and exhibition spaces. A penthouse apartment, the garret de nos jours, is to be built for Howson, literally the artist-in-residence.

The Bathhouse website states: "Peter Howson has agreed to pay full market value for this apartment." Which is very decent of him.

There is a breathless quality to the Bathhouse spiel: "The world-renowned artist, Peter Howson will live and work in the building. At times he will allow his studio to be viewed by the public, as he works, giving unprecedented access to a genuine world class talent. He will take part in Webinars' with Cambridge University and other prestigious academies worldwide. Most importantly he will be involved in the teaching and training of three student artists, in house."

The principal studio space will have a glass wall so that visitors and passers-by may watch the great man at work. The Bathhouse project is all about charity. It will be owned and run by the Third Step Charitable Trust set up by Howson to use the visual arts to tackle the problems of drug and alcohol addiction in our society. Third Step are looking for love and understanding but also help you support "by skill, time or money".

So, it's warm and comfortable accommodation for artists. No absinthe. And no bargains for us patrons of the arts.

IF I had a few quid to spare and some space to hang a bit more art in Buffer Towers, John Taylor would be my man. He has a show of poetic watercolours on now at the Compass Gallery in Glasgow. Taylor is a man who can wax lyrical even without a glass of absinthe and is an artist sans pareil. But I fear his grasp of economics is less secure.

There, on his price list, is an opus entitled One Crab Apple at the knockdown price of £1000. Then there are his oeuvres Four Crab Apples and Six Crab Apples also priced at £1000.

If Mr Taylor spent less time in his garret and more time in Tesco, he would know you don't sell six crab apples for the same price as one.

YOU must admit that God has a warped sense of humour. He invents women (good move). Then he invents the menopause with the hot flushes, the sleepless nights, and the irrational behaviour (bad move). Then he invents HRT treatment (good move). Then it appears that HRT treatment has the side-effect of an increased risk of cancer (very bad move).

A study of 948,576 postmenopausal women showed a 20% higher rate of developing and dying from ovarian cancer in HRT users, compared with those who had never used the treatment. Frankly, God, women deserve better.

But, just when you despair of God and his strange ways, there is the news about strawberry daiquiris. The alcohol in the cocktail apparently enhances the health-giving qualities inherent in strawberries. It's all to do with friendly chemicals mopping up bad free radical molecules which cause diseases such as cancer.

It's God's way of telling women of a certain age to take fewer HRT pills and drink a lot more strawberry daiquiris. The odd strawberry Mivvi wouldn't go amiss either.

READER Richard Glen from Helensburgh sends this parable of the motorist and the bus driver. The motorist, Mr Glen himself, had to drop off his car at a garage in Paisley and was then faced with the not inconsiderable task of getting back to Helensburgh by public transport.

This would involve a bus to Paisley Gilmour Street station, a train into Glasgow central, and another train back along the northern shore of the river Clyde. This is a journey many people will have to make since some genius of a NHS administrator decided to transfer some hospital services from Vale of Leven to the Royal Alexandra across the water in Paisley.

This journey is no bother if you are a crow or a carbon-producing motorist. It is much more problematic if you have to rely on public transport.

Our man Mr Glen is familiar with trains but does not do buses. As luck would have it, a bus arrived just as he approached a stop. He ran in pursuit. It was a very large bendy bus consisting of twocompartments.MrGlenrelates:"I approached the side door at the rear and pressed the illuminated Push button' sign to open the doors (just like on the trains). When the doors opened, I was confronted by two gates which made me think that this was an exit door only, so I rushed to the front door instead and hopped on."

He was confronted by an irate driver who screamed at him: "What did you do that for?" whichMrGlenthoughtwasanunusual morning greeting.

The driver gave Mr Glen a severe dressing down, informing him that he had pressed an emergency button and the bus was now "stone deid".

The driver stomped off the bus leaving Mr Glen facing a large contingent of stony-faced passengers to whom he delivered a humble apology. They did not seem overly impressed with his comparisons of push buttons on trains and buses. The humiliation was total. The driver returned and had obviously re-set something because the bus was now in full working order again. Mr Glen asked for a ticket to Gilmour Street rail station. He spent the journey staring fixedly at the overhead digital screen which detailed each stop.

Unfortunately, of Gilmour Street rail station there was nary a mention. As the bus headed away from the town centre and into the further reaches of Paisley, Mr Glen approached the driver to inquire where he might alight for his connection. The driver informed him frostily that the bus did not stop at the station and he now faced a walk back into the town centre.

Feeling slightly aggrieved, Mr Glen offered the driver the opinion: "The signage on your bus is shite, by the way." This was a cue for apoplexy as the driver informed Mr Glen he was under arrest for "personal abuse of a bus driver". The bus engine was switched off. The driver announced that the police had been summoned and the evidence was all there on videotape.

Mr Glen did not wait for the police to arrive. He is still awaiting the knock on the door from the polis for his crime of expressing his opinion about the excremental nature of the signage on the bus. Meanwhile, he was vowed never to darken the interior of a bus ever again.