K C Murdarasi

You may remember, if you cast your mind back several weeks, that this Lent I decided to take up the tin whistle. At the start of the period I could play a scale but not much more than that. I resolved to practise every day. Did I keep it up?

Yes, I did! And with the help of a nice online Jesuit priest I can now play three proper Irish tunes and even put in a couple of simple ornamentations, the cut and the hit. I got so into the whole business that I bought a second whistle to replace the one that I had let my baby niece play with (i.e. bash off things). I’m keeping both of them, though, because the original nickel one is much better for fast things, like jigs, while the new brass one is better for the slow tunes.

As proof of my efforts, I have attempted to upload a video of myself playing “The Star of the County Down”, but WordPress doesn’t seem to like videos. Nothing daunted, Ihave uploaded to YouTube and embedded a link below. It’s not terribly thrilling, but you are perfectly welcome to have a look.

By pure chance I have come across the most wonderful poem. I was invited to a concert by Matthew Todd, a talented tenor, and the main piece was a musical arrangement of Francis Thompson’s poem The Hound of Heaven. You can use the link to read the whole text of the poem and I would encourage you to because it’s astonishingly good.

The Hound of Heaven was written at the end of the nineteenth century, and it has the grandeur of Victorian art and poetry combined with the emotional immediacy and general weirdness of early twentieth century poetry. It is reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at times, but also of Charles Kingsley and even of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (especially the bit where Thompson talks about his lost youth).

I would quote my favourite bits, but it was written in an era before soundbites, so they tend to have to be quoted with their surrounding lines, or even whole verse, in order to make sense. This is being written in the era of smartphones, and my thumbs would seize up. I will just quote a couple of wee bits though, albeit out of context:

“I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,”

and the opening line, which sends shivers down my spine:

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;”

Brilliant! And if that has tempted you, do yourself a favour by clicking the link above, and read the whole thing.

So, Lent has rolled around again. I was thinking about what to give up, but nothing made much sense so I’ve decided to do what I did last year and take up a committment instead. Last year it was reading John Stott’s The Cross of Christ. This year, I’m going to practice the tin whistle every day.

I bought one a few months ago because it was only a couple of quid and tin whistle music does sound great, but I’ve not done much with it. In fact it gets most use from my baby neice bashing it on the ground or chewing the wrong end. I intend to rectify that, for the next six weeks at least.

This one will be harder to keep up, since if I only remember at 11pm that I haven’t done it that day, it will probably annoy the neighbours more than reading a chapter of a book. Still, I’m managing so far even if it’s only a couple of scales, so we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll be appearing at the next Celtic Connections…

I have taken to avoiding Blythswood Square as I make my way around Glasgow. I used to deliberately travel through the Square if I was in that part of town, because I liked the walk through the tiny park / garden that lies in the middle of it. That was before they locked it up. Now it just depresses me to have to walk around it and see the padlocks and notices.

The official reason given by the notices is the Occupy protestors who set up a measly camp of three tents in one part of the park in November. It was a pretty uninspiring protest, and they must have been freezing. I thought in the end they’d been blown away by the storms (literally or metaphorically) but it turns out that they were actually blown away by a court injunction. To prevent anything like that happening again, the notice said, it has been necessary to close the park. Thus, the actions of a “selfish few” have spoiled it for everyone.

That doesn’t wash. Leaving aside the motives of the campers (a “selfish” anti-greed campaign? Hmm), the situation now is that there is a five foot (or so) fence on a small wall, finished with four padlocked gates. That would hardly keep out determined protestors for two minutes – I could scale it myself if I was so inclined – but it will keep out office workers and passers-by, who were the people who used the square.

The main reason I find their notice disingenuous, though, is that the fence started going up long before the protestors arrived. As soon as they rebuilt the fence it was obvious where things were headed, and the big gates confirmed it. When the protestors moved in it gave them an excuse, but it does appear that they were planning to close the park anyway.

I keep saying “they” and “them”. The park is owned by the surrounding businesses, as I understand it, so it is private property and the owners are within their legal rights to close it. However it is also the only patch of green in the surrounding area, and is enormously popular with office workers who walk through or around it in winter, and lie on it having picnic lunches in summer. (“Summer” here meaning the few sunny days that we get in Glasgow.) For years and years it has been a much-loved local amenity and has had its litter collected and flower beds planted by the council. Now, probably at the behest of the Bythswood Hotel (because that is the big new business in the Square), it’s just another small pleasure that’s being denied to ordinary people, possibly because we make it look messy.

I have fond memories of sunny times spent in the park Blythswood Square garden, eating ice cream, sunbathing and chatting. The notice on the locked gates says that the garden will still be opened on sunny days in summer. I hope that’s true, but it’s not much of a consolation. It’s not just me who liked the place, either; according to the survey of Living, Working and Spirituality in Glasgow, 24% of people gave an outdoor space as their favourite place in Glasgow City Centre, and many of them specifically mentioned Blythswood Square.

Blythswood Square park used to be a little bit of green pleasure in the middle of a working day. Now it’s just the Selfish Giant‘s garden.