The Chronicles of St Mungo Square

The Chronicles of St Mungo’s Square are written by Aileen Paterson, a member of one of our Hub groups, The Scribble Creative Writers. Aileen has been working on them since the group started meeting in the Clarice Pears. She has been following the work and changes outside the building. We are very grateful to Aileen for allowing us to share her writings. They provide a social history of the Western Campus development from May 2023 until May 2024 and we will publish them in instalments. They remind me of Glasgow artist, Mitch Miller’s ‘pigeon’s eye’ drawings he terms ‘Dialectograms’ which are ‘illustrations drawn not from on high, but as those at ground level see and live it’. The Chronicles describe the new campus and Clarice Pears becoming part of the West End community.

 

10th April 2024

Today is extremely wet and I have traversed the square and retreated into the ARC building for a latte and a cannoli, the only civilised course of action. Outside the window, two guys are standing smoking and looking somewhat world-weary. The blossom has been and gone from the trees, no doubt carried off by the recent storm, but now many leaves have appeared and the grass has grown. Next to me, a woman talks into her laptop. In the square, a yellow digger blinks yellow and green lights, as if signalling immediate action, or perhaps some kind of Morse code for those who understand it. Rain makes tiny concentric circles in puddles.

The digger appears to have given up any attempt at work and just signals endlessly: help me. Perhaps it is tired of being a digger and would like to pursue some other vocation, or just have a career break, maybe to travel through Europe, discover who it is beneath its hard, yellow exterior.

Outside the window, a guy makes a roll-up, moving it delicately between his fingers, then wanders off. The square is empty apart from a solitary magpie that wanders towards me. It flutters its feathers in the wind. Two men meet and shake hands by the flagpole, gesticulating towards the buildings. They chat for a while, oblivious to the weather, and I wander back into the Clarice Pears building.

15th May 2024

A helicopter flies overhead as the clock strikes twelve. A woman with sea-green hair walks past me and the men in high vis jackets are gathering round a digger that is churning up earth. I can hear a drilling sound coming from behind a corrugated metal fence. A blonde woman jogs through the square. An assistance dog in a high vis jacket enters the ARC building with its owner. It looks rather excited at the prospect, perhaps anticipating a new exhibition or a quantic workshop.

Once the drilling and digging stops, I can hear birds singing. A tiny patch of blue sky is visible through the clouds, just above the orbs of the Kelvin Hall. A man walks past eating a carry out meal from a box and carrying a tote bag that reads Solar Energy UK. The digger and the driller start up again, the digger charging towards a great pile of rubble which it proceeds to mount, shaking as if in anger at the mere existence of the rubble. It proceeds to crossly tear at the rubble before stopping altogether as if in despair at the endless nature of its task. There will always be more rubble to deal with. When will it ever be allowed to rest, to simply listen to the birdsong in the square?

I realise it is a year not since I started writing The Chronicles, having undertaken to document the square for a full year. As I sit here, I feel like little has changed and yet it must have, for everything I have documented has been change. Progress seems to happen so slowly, often invisible to the naked eye, or feeling inconsequential. Yet I feel I  have grown to know the square intimately, to understand its moods and perhaps something of what it is going through.

There’s blue sky above the mathematics and statistics building and the trees are moving slightly in the breeze. An aeroplane is flying overhead and the digger has stopped. Three men in orange high vis vests and hard hats saunter across the area they have cleared, perhaps in pursuit of lunch. They walk through a data pod, exiting the building site.

I close my eyes and let the sun warm my face, the breeze blow my hair. Shadows from a tree are dancing on the paving below me, the tree now in full greenery. There is birdsong and the soft murmur of conversation from a nearby group. Another aeroplane. Dandelion clocks blow in the wind. Laughter. The chatter of crows as they land on a nearby roof. The jangle of a ring tone. The sound of the wind blowing through grasses, blowing through trees. The digger noisily resumes its work, rumbling across the earth for a further attack on the rubble. A dark grey truck bends towards it and the rubble is scooped inside. The clock strikes the hour, calling me back indoors again.

22nd May 2024

The sun is trying to emerge from behind thick grey clouds. Gulls are screeching noisily from a rooftop. A tattooed man wheels a trolley full of boxes from one building to another. Byres Road is a mess of diggers, drillers and traffic cones. The drilling drowns out the gulls screeching. A man in an orange sweatshirt cycles through the square, his bike pulling a wheeled metal box. The bike squeaks noisily.

A man in a black and grey shirt paces the square, talking on his mobile phone. The yellow digger is poised, as if waiting for something. A fat bee flies past. There is a busyness about the square today but also a sense of anticipation, as if we are nearing the culmination of something. A year of growth, of progress, but also a letting go of the past, with a little reluctance. There have been so many memories here. The hospital, those who worked in it, those who died in it. Layers of lives lived peeled away to make way for a new future, a healthier future, with greater equity and inclusion. There is a slight feeling of rain in the air. I too am being moved on, for nothing can stay still for long.

22nd May 2024 (continued)

I have taken refuge in the ARC café as the weather has finally broken, and passers-by huddle into their jackets. A man in a white shirt paces the square, gesticulating to himself and talking into a hidden microphone, headphones plugged into his ears. Occasionally, he stops to vape, blowing white mist into the damp air.

A man brings me a latte. The man in the white shirt bursts out laughing, perhaps at a joke his invisible companion has made. The yellow digger is signalling to me with a flashing green light – Morse code again. It is immobile but swipes its wiper blades, fatigued perhaps at having to sit in the wet and the dirt. I exit the café and wander back into the Clarice Pears building.

29th May 2024

In the square, buttercups and dandelions are growing in the rain gardens. It is quiet apart from the distant thrum of machinery on Byres Road. Buzzards are circling over Kelvingrove Park. These last years have been hard. I worry about my health. I worry about money. I worry about the future.

But right now, I am grateful to Sukhema for starting our writing group. I am grateful to Clarice Pears for existing, and to her sons for donating money for the new building. A fat bee lands on a buttercup. I am grateful to the bee. I am grateful to the men in high vis jackets for providing inspiration as well as new buildings.

I am grateful to Susan who provides us with the room for our writing group in the Clarice Pears building and charges us nothing, and for the tour she gave us of the building that was meant to take thirty minutes but actually took two hours as we had so many questions (we are an inquisitive group).

I am grateful to the three-legged Shih Tzu, to the Uber delivery cyclists, to the man who guards the Vehicle Crossing Point, preventing horrible accidents. I am grateful to the trees, and to the people who planted the trees. I am grateful we still have an inhabitable planet.

I am grateful to those who marched for Palestine, who handed out leaflets, and to the people in the ARC building café who brought me lattes and chocolate cannoli when it rained. I am grateful for yellow diggers, for pigeons who wander hopefully, for noisy crows. I am grateful for coffee, for spaniels, for my good fortune to be here on this beautiful planet.

First published: 5 September 2024

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