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| THE ENTRANCE TO HOLMWOOD HOUSE |
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Back in my home town for a few days. The city feels
smaller than I remember it to be. Places I considered distant now appear
close at hand. The memory plays tricks.
Having no car has given us the opportunity to travel by bus. This has
brought us literally closer to the people of Glasgow and we find ourselves
surrounded by friendly chatter: there is a mood of expectation as if a party’s
about to begin. This contrasts with the silent Edinburgh buses where
there is an overwhelming feeling of inhibition and withdrawal. Fur coat and nae knickers, as they say.
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| MY FATHER'S OLD SHOP ON CLARKSTON ROAD |
I'm staying in Clarkston Road, almost directly above a wedding shop that used
to belong to my father, Jack Harris Ladies’
and Gents’ Bespoke Tailor. The premises has been joined with a shop
next door and now displays wedding attire. On a table near the window are
champagne glasses, no doubt to instil an ambiance of celebration; and
I remember the window display my father carefully arranged with a half-finished,
basted jacket on a tailor’s dummy and
shirts and ties and geraniums that caught the western sun towards evening.
He would show me how to display a tie to a customer, holding it upside
down with the knot at the bottom. And sure enough, there was something
more attractive about this way of selling ties.
There seemed to be a formula like the images for watches in magazines that
are showing the time as 10.10.
At the bottom of his wardrobe were leather shoes, some of them his preferred Italian
style, and well-cut tailored shirts and ties with crazy designs. One he gave me to wear for my bar mitzvah featured a repeated pattern
of a drunk pissing against a lamppost. Thick swatches of various cloths were on
the counter for customers to peruse. Above the well-worn, polished
counter were tailor's shears and curved wooden rulers with which he would
swiftly mark out a line with white or blue tailor’s chalk then confidently cut
the material for a suit or a coat. Austin
and Reed is the choice of the connoisseur, he told me.
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| WATT AT THE ENTRANCE |
We visited the Glasgow tenement and joined The National
Trust. Holmwood House was our next port
of call, round the corner from where we were staying in Clarkston. Watt showed us around the lower ground floor
and he certainly knew his stuff, anecdotes tripping over one another as he came
out with fact after interesting fact.
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| PART OF THE FACADE |
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| THE KITCHEN GARDEN |
The house is designed by ‘Greek Thomson’, the famous Glasgow
architect. The house was built for James
Couper who manufactured high quality paper used in banks and suchlike. Some of the original decoration on the walls
can be seen, all hand painted and resembling Greek classical designs.
The small kitchen garden has a range of Victorian herbs,
fruit and vegetables and altogether you could be a world away from the city.
