THE GREAT DIVIDE: ESPRESSO TALES/EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW

 In his 44 Scotland Street series, Alexander McCall Smith introduces us to some of the more elegant parts of Edinburgh along with its residents with their varying degrees of eccentricity.  In one of the books, Espresso Tales, we are briefly transported to Glasgow, where the youngest and most engaging character in the series, the mother-smothered Bertie, travels by train with his father in search of a mislaid car. 

There is often a bitter rivalry displayed between the first and second cities of any given country: Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, Madrid and Barcelona in Spain are two that spring to mind.  In Espresso Tales we are left in no doubt as to which of Scotland’s two largest cities looks down its nose at the other, not least courtesy of Bertie’s insufferable mother, Irene, whose withering remarks about Glasgow lead Bertie to believe that he is heading into the Wild West.  She mutters darkly about deep fried Mars Bars, and tells Bertie to wash his hands while there because “Glasgow is not a very salubrious place”.  She also cites the city’s mortality rates, from drinking, smoking and heart disease.  These foreboding comments are not helped by the fact that, on the approach to Glasgow, “the clear skies of the east of Scotland yielded place to a lowered ceiling of grey and purple rain clouds”.

In the event, Bertie has a splendid time in Glasgow, where on arrival he finds that the railway station is not that different from the one in Edinburgh, and neither are the people waiting at the barrier.  However, he finds the language spoken by the locals baffling, “quite like Italian in some respects”.  Bertie is introduced to this strange dialect in all its glory on meeting the local hard man Lard O’Connor, who lives in the street where the mislaid car is supposed to be, and who introduces Bertie to the Burrell Collection, a famous Glasgow art gallery. 

Main Concourse at Glasgow Central Station. Photo by DrHermannWaltz, via Wikimedia Commons.

Glasgow Central Station is a fittingly grand venue for arrivals at Scotland’s second city.  Originally opened in 1879, with the expansion of rail travel meaning the station was becoming too small, a rebuild took place from 1901 to 1905, with subsequent refurbishments leading to the light, airy concourse encountered today. 

The Burrell Collection, named after the late Sir William Burrell, is the result of Sir William’s love of collecting art and antiques, enabled by the fortune he made as a shipping merchant.  He gave his collection to the city in 1944, and the museum opened in 1983, greatly enhancing Glasgow’s image as a cultural city.  The collection contains around 9,000 items, including Chinese art, medieval treasures and works by famous French artists.  The museum resides in Pollok Country Park to the south of the city, accessible by bus or train.  Once at the park, there is a shuttle bus available for visitors to get around the park’s extensive grounds.

Burrell collection Glasgow. Photo by Helen Simonsson, via Wikimedia Commons.

Map of Glasgow. 

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IN GLASGOW: WORLD WAR Z

It is not unknown for mayhem to erupt on the streets of Glasgow, as anyone who has been there on a Saturday night will testify. But the chaotic scenes that were witnessed in the area around George Square in August 2011, rather than the product of a booze-sodden populace enjoying a night out, came about during the filming of the zombie horror epic World War Z, based on the book by Max Brooks and starring Brad Pitt. In the film the world succumbs to an outbreak of plague which turns people into zombies. Brad Pitt plays a former UN investigator, Gerry Lane, whose role is to save the world from this terrifying scourge. Some of the film's most dramatic scenes were filmed in Glasgow, which was transformed into Philadelphia with the help of American road signs and flags, yellow taxis and kerbside newspaper dispensers. One can't help wondering why the film-makers didn't just go ahead and film the scenes in Philadelphia in the first place. Still, the city makes a good stand-in with its solid big city architecture and its wide streets.

Early on in the film Lane finds himself stuck in traffic with his family in Cochrane Street as the zombie hordes approach (of course it goes without saying that the family manages to escape unscathed). As the people start to panic, setting off a stampede in front of the City Chambers in George Square, an errant rubbish truck ploughs into the traffic and overturns. Soldiers and policemen (in suitably American uniforms) flood into the scene in an attempt to head off the danger. George Square is the civic heart of Scotland's second city, laid out in 1781 and named after King George III. The headquarters of Glasgow City Council occupies the elaborate Glasgow City Chambers building on one side of the square, and there are a number of monuments, including one to Robbie Burns and the only known equestrian statue of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Probably the most dramatic episode in the square's real-life history came in 1919 with the Black Friday rally by campaigners for better working conditions, which ended in scenes of violence which were met with tanks and troops.

City Chambers, Glasgow, Scotland. Photo by Andy Farrington, via Wikimedia Commons

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The makers of the film made the most of their time in Britain by including a number of other locations around the country. Still in Scotland, Lane is seen driving a camper van past a plastics factory on Wholeflats Road, Grangemouth, near Falkirk. Meanwhile, down south, the Heygate Estate in Southwark features in a scene in which the Lane family hide and await rescue by helicopter. The picture-perfect Lulworth Cove in Dorset puts in an appearance when Lane crosses the bay in a speedboat to meet his family - the cove plays the part of a 'safe zone' in Nova Scotia. A business park in Sandwich, Kent, called Discovery Park is the location of a WHO laboratory (and our brand new Doctor Who Peter Capaldi plays a WHO doctor in the film!). The Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Argus, which was in the news recently for its role in the fight against ebola, was renamed the USS Madison and Brad Pitt turned up in its home port Falmouth for some of the filming. Some of the sets for the film were built on the disused Bovingdon Airfield in Hertfordshire.

Lulworth Cove - geograph.org.uk - 587780. Photo by Julian Dowse, via Wikimedia Commons.

The film attracted mixed reviews, some of them less than complementary. But hey, it's Halloween, and Halloween wouldn't be the same without settling down to some enjoyable tosh on the big screen would it?

Map of the George Square area.