antrin

Puts a whole new perspective on... ...the car park in the sky.

THANK YOU once more, good buddie! ALL those images are fabulous! For me, at least - provoking memories.... but I'm happy to share with an avid audience... If you have little interest, you can "skim". The space on the right with the lower wall and gate entrance was the entry to a dead-tyre depot. It was separated from all the buildings in Barclay Street and Barr Street by a single skin 30' high brick wall around it apart from one bit of old wall leading to a gable end… The tyres were stacked about 30-40 high on their sides. and there was a mountain of inner tubes conveniently placed under the standing gable end of whatever factory had been in the place previously. This was the original 1950s Adventure Centre. Jumping from the top of the gable end onto the inner tubes was a rite of passage, as was walking along the top of the brick wall. The inner tubes still had their metal valve attached, so occasionally you might have your own wee puncture. In hide and seek, sitting at the foot of one of those long tubes of tyres meant you were pretty well unseeable, but not if you were claustrophobic. The seeker would shoogle each tube to hear squeals of fear... When they collapsed, which was also great fun,. It took a while for the 'victim' to escape from the jumble. .I never knew anyone to fall from the brick wall. It was narrow. You had to have conviction, but with hindsight a brick-width was pretty wide for a kid's feet. I'd likely be more concerned these days. (btw Earth's current greatest climber Alex Honnold free solo'd El Capitan in Yosemite and the movie made of that immense feat by a human is stunning. These slums got me into climbing. He'd have loved doing the tyre jump and wall walk in the 50s.... Go see the movie Free Solo, He has been doing Q+As here in London recently. Catch it if you can.) The tall grey tenement was posh in those days and still stands looking pretty good today, next to the garage which replaced the smaller slums beside where the Cavern was built. (I mentioned in a previous post that Toshie and his family -Elizabeth - lived in the upper floor of one of those buildings.) Desperately Seeking Susans lived down Barclay Street on the rhs. Next fotie The person on the right is approaching what I think USED TO BE the entrance to Canal Street Kirk - over the Canal and then the railway. The cones/acorns adorning the columns might be like the cups on the Paisley Crest - something to do with the arms of the family of Christian Shaw who was the witch hunter? The tall tenement reverse side of Camphill is seen in this pic on the RHS. Lou Costello visited there with his wife to one of her family members. It was quite a stir. Big crowd. I had no idea what was going on at the time. The cobbles lead up, Past Canal Street Kirk to Castlehead, across the rail line. Next fotie. My street. Borr Street. We were still living here at the time. The Adventure Playground had expanded. As soon as folk moved from their homes we were in there, exploring. All the buildings on the lhs of the above pic George Street as well as this Canal Street side were entered yet us. Every dwelling in that whole George Street/Canal Street redevelopment was checked out. People leave interesting things behind... one source of interest was the amount of clothing abandoned. That was taken and exchanged for pennies in the Rag Store in Canal Street. (To the right of the pend in pic below showing the foot of Camphill). Empty ginger and beer bottles also got ye 3d each. Looking back I see it as an uncanny time and life, but it was utterly normal for us. And as building were being demolished we'd be clambering all over them. No fear. Losing that paper shop was a big blow - all my literature was sourced there. Beezer on Monday Dandy on Tuesday Beano on Thursday Friday was the Topper. Plus Reveille, Weekly News, News of the World Sunday Post and Mail People's Friend and the ubiquitous PDE. All those papers were recycled. We did, after all, share an outside lavvy with the other families in the close. The Clark family lived above the shop. Eric and brothers.... and a sister, IIRC At the far end of the street in George Street, flanking its northern side, were the rid (red ) buildings, tall posh tenements - now student homes. On the western corner of Barr Street, just beyond an egg-warehouse!) was a Kirk. I've no idea what denomination and I was never in that one, before it was demolished.. On the eastern corner was Campbell's Bar. Source of some antagonism in my fhousehold... for some reason.. There was a lad, think it was Tommy MacNamara in Barclay Street and him and I built dozens of 'gang-huts - easily doable with the constant supply of doors ripped (by the demolition teams) from the old houses and we'd swiftly knock up posts with new wood from the new houses being built and an unlimited supply of new-build 6" nails. We'd make them waterproof (it rained occasionally in Paisley in those days) with again a seemingly limitless supply of linoleum taken from abandoned houses. Me and Tommy also made tree huts high on the several trees between Barr and Barclay Street. Other eedjit weans didnae climb so well. Nor did the interfering adults that kept demolishing our huts in their backdoors... The tree huts stayed till the trees were ripped down.. I learned how to play cards in those days, too. Next fotie Aye, Toshie was in the lhs close of low buildings, upstairs where the windae is open, I think. Big fat Boabie, the bookie, lurked in that close-mooth. Highlight of my memories of the Cavern was that my Maw and all the other Camphill school cleaners used to pop in there for a small libation after finishing on a Friday evening. And my faither went across to have a word with my Maw, but could only wave to her before he went into the toilets to bloodily spew his stomach all over the porcelain.. to be discovered lying there by someone several minutes later. His stomach ulcer had perforated. Happy Days... He did recover after surgery, but it wisnae nice... More recently the (now Horseshoe) Cavern which chucks out at 1.00am-ish had a mini riot on the Friday night... well Saturday morning.... Screaming and shouting and men and women kicking and punching men and women who'd been knocked to the ground and on the dual carriageway (that you can see under construction in the fotie.), Cars slewing to a halt and having to negotiate the madness and the multiple sweery words till within a mere 15 minutes the polis cars sirened into position as the participants had parted up AND down Canal Street. The Cavern (now The Horseshoe) during construction Next fotie: The demolition of all these rubble built houses is almost complete in this picture and building the new homes (with inside toilets!) had already started. Work had commenced at both east and west ends of the area. They worked inwards towards my beloved Borr Street. Ours were the last buildings to go. And we lifted our meagre possessions and carried them into the new lives. The number and variety of these shops give you some idea of just how many people must have been living in these slums, in order for the shops to make a living... Opposite these shops you can just make out what was Buchanan Stree. It vanished. pedestrianised Buchanan Place is there now.(WEe Lady Lane also vanished, as did Sir Michael Street) Junction with Camphill I only came on here to check how the darling Buds were doing about 8.30... and I still don't know. Must dash... If you have been... Thanks for sharing...

Story of my life, these days. Thinking I was running reasonably well currently, I went on a wee circuit I used to do in the days when I was running at my best/tapering for a marathon. To test myself. I was pleased with how I was feeling as I ran the course. Checked my time at the end... Best I ever did was 17.5 minutes - today it was 27minutes! Fair enough, there are a couple of hills on it and today was very muddy/slippery on twisting trails in the forest, but... I definitely ran it VERY fast as a yoof….

Great image, Orwell. Thank you for the memories... Never seen that before. I'd forgotten the existence of that Old South Western Bar. Mibbe called that cos all the buses going to Ayr, Beith, Lochwinnoch, largs, etc passed that way along Canal Street? (Them for Elderslie, Johnstone Greenock etc went along the High Street..) It's no far enough out of the toon centre to be called South or Western... Must have been round about 56/57? A side of Wee Storie Street's still standing, though both sides of Wardrop Street are flattened. The row of low buildings going beyond St Mary's school and Bilsland's bar on the left were all Coal merchants. The yard behind them was filled with Rail marshalling yards and the coal was delivered intae there, then parcelled intae 1 cwt bags and ontae lorries for delivery. Memory Lane still husnae been demolished...

Link above that disnae work, other, HSS

You can choose three. so 3 Scottish Cups, a League Cup and the Anglo Scottish. Personally, I'm discounting the odd Renfrewshire...

Thanks for that. Sensible article there from Bill L.

“Why Celtic?”. obviously because when things are seen to be all equalled out, then it’s of primary importance that Celtic and Rangers are on the same footing. none of the other clubs matter.

Penalties even themselves out over a season. so I expect Celtic got two or three yesterday....?

Sadly, neither does mine, Albion’s ain’t. (And I’ve left the above autocorrect of your name, cos I like it.)

Support the team here there every f...ing where Nah... that's not supporting St Mirren - that's supporting the institutional bigotry. The game is set up to make sure that this financially cheating club doesn't go bust again and the refs are part of making sure they don't win against diddy teams so it appears as if there is real competition between them and the other arse cheek. And their not-so idiot fans know there is bias that gives them that chance... I've been up in Paisley for the week but headed back south on Friday, rather than consider giving them money AND helping maintain the pretence that it would be a fair game in which "bad decisions balance themselves out over a season".

3 penalties, Buddie.

I fear that the winning selection will pretty much ignore the illustrious past - even that lovely singular Anglo-Scottish Cup win. It's just the problem of having so many weans voting, instead of mature people like me. All that the weans've seen, have been struggles to resurface so I cannae blame them for picking what they know... So... reasonably as there'll be a mix of voters (albeit skewed towards youngsters), I suspect the League Cup win will be most popular.

it seemed more like Prozac...

Lower league wins are a celebration of periods when Saints had been utter shite. Glad to celebrate the end of each, but don’t think them worthy of murals reminding everyBuddie that the top league is not Saints’ natural place in the order of things. Saints should be above that.

I also saw TV star Herbie at the top of the street. Think he was showing fans aroon toon.... [emoji3]

Aye, saw the PDE report. Just informed a sad delivery driver in New Street of that. He was on the phone, baffled...

Ross County shoulda sussed that Stelios’ girlfriend was from Didsbury....

Ye cannae be first with the news from Rio, ya flash git! a good night, the night, wi G, S and me... missin you awready.... well mibbe no.

Love your description of 'Spoons. Bit worrying that you have such an obvious in-depth knowledge of its offers and practices, however...

And the above would be the optimistic outcome, at best....

And more. for Wolves and Haiti. too good?

His goals/assists for Cov.

5’ 11.2” is he tall enough?

Ah! on the corner of the buildings leading into a car park? NW end? I'd come down Kilnside road then through to Cochran Street via Dixon Street. Looked right and saw nowt... then walked down to Seedhill Road. Sorry for being sceptical.