We hadn’t expected to go home hoarse but shouting was sometimes
necessary. Our hall was the venue for the dancing displays and we were
treated to contemporary moves and traditional Irish dancing. Great fun.
If you can get along to this event next year, especially with weans, we would
highly recommend it.
Willie Whitelaw, Men’s Shed Development Worker &
Sean Scally, Volunteer Researcher.
Free!
Really?
Yes!!
If you are someone of a particular age you will have that magic card that
gets you “free” transport in Scotland.
I hear many of you talking about your day trip down the coast because the
sun is shining.
Hoping that we still have a few sunny days to come, even though I’m sure
you have all noticed the “nights are fare draw’n in” and you have the lights
on in the early evening, ugh!
Have you considered a day trip to Govan?
Govan is many things to many people: an ancient settlement; a home to
both the Vikings and the earliest Christian settlers and their legacy of
exquisite Dark Age carved stones; a seat of Kings during the turbulent
Kingdom of Strathclyde; a primitive fording point of the River Clyde; a rural
landscape of fertile farming lands, cottage weaving industry and salmon
fisheries in the pre-industrial era; the undisputed leader of the 19th century
world’s shipbuilding industry, with a workforce of unmatched prowess in the
invention and manufacture of great ships to grace the seas; a place of
immense wealth and exceptional architecture; the base of ‘Mrs Barbour’s
Army’ of women rent strikers, who together defended their homes from the
sheriff officers whilst their men fought in the Great War; a close knit
tenement community; the scene of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilder’s “work in”
that defied a Westminster government and asserted the working man’s
inalienable “right to work”; the epicentre of a catastrophic rupture caused by
the end of heavy industry on the Clyde; a place and community in a crushing
spiral of decline; a poverty statistic; the butt of Rab C jokes; an undesirable
stereotype; a resilient and spirited community; a historic place with unique
and desirable assets; a place and people with potential to regenerate.
Take the number 34 or 90 bus to central Govan from the Southside.
The Govan Stones are one of Glasgow’s most important historical and
cultural assets.
StOM Page 10