Down Diagon Alley with a Napoleonic pistol

26Jun08

Wander with the Mighty CL and Joe through the dripping streets of West End, Glasgow. They take me to a junk shop where Joe buys a typewriter, a heavy sturdy thing with all the satisfying clunky sounds required of such a machine. It comes in a black plastic case. I picture him sitting at his desk, hunched over cold index fingers, wildly inspired by the writer ghost of its former owner. Laptop relegated to the dusty space beneath the bed.

We follow glistening cobbled alleys behind the tenements. Two motorbikes in a small back garden, fenced in. Below street level - an elaborate wooden board at a diagonal, a kitty plank, a balancing act from concrete to cat flap. I imagine waking up at ground level with trainers (converse, heels, black polished leather shoes, best shoes, Sunday shoes) pounding past at city pace. Relatively small town girl, I am not used to the speed, the down-turned eyes, the determination of the A to B trajectory.

Find a second hand book shop complete with rickety wooden step ladders, old forgotten books stretching from floor to ceiling, and bearded men sitting in easy chairs around an unlit fireplace, handling dusty first editions with reverence. I pick the ginger from CL’s skinny ginger stem muffin and unearth Sylvia Plath’s letters.

Which was the perfect afternoon.

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