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.

 

22nd November 2023

Excitingly, I am inside the ARC building, sitting at the window of the café, which turns out to be called the Western, presumably after the hospital which used to be here, a small reminder of the past. As winter and prolonged rain beckons, this may be a more comfortable viewpoint from which to watch the activities of the square. Most of the others here are either talking in groups, reading typed papers or peering into laptop screens. I am the only one that is resolutely refusing digital technology to record my thoughts, with my tiny yellow notepad with sunflowers on the front. I fear I will never pass for an Advanced Researcher, but that’s ok. From this vantage point, I can now see the entrance to the building works more closely, and the entrance and exit of vehicles and people. There are two entrances side by side which read ‘datapod’ over the door. There is some kind of device inside of them with a red light. A woman approached carrying a coffee and waves a card next to the red light and proceeds on in. Other people wander past wheeling bicycles. The building I was watching being destroyed last week is just a pile of rubble. A yellow digger is poised beside it with the word Dem-Master written on its side. It looks rather pleased with itself, having indeed mastered the art of demolition. A black lorry exits the building site, yellow lights flashing. A black husky trots across the square, sniffing at the concrete cubes as it goes, apparently alone although presumably its owner is just out of sight.

I go into the Clarice Pears building to meet the group and return to the café later. On my way back in a young woman stops me and hands me a sheet of paper, explaining its purpose, although I can’t hear her over the noise of the diggers beeping away.

‘Are you anything to do with the university?’ she asks me. I explain I am part of a writing group that meets in the Clarice Pears building and that I am documenting everything that happens in the square, so this is of interest to me.

‘Oh, ok’, she replies, somewhat uncertainly. I am not sure if I am her target audience (perhaps she mistook me for an advanced researcher, so I must look like one after all, hurrah!’)

I read the sheet of paper she gave me whilst I drink my mocha in the café. It is a demand that the university shows solidarity with Palestine by providing free tuition for displaced Palestinian students, scholarships on humanitarian grounds specifically for Palestinians and strengthens its partnership with the Islamic University of Gaza, whose building has now been destroyed. It also demands the university ends complicity in genocide by ceasing its investments in arms companies contributing to war crimes, as well as banning such companies from recruiting on campus.

I gaze out of the window at the rubble before me and I think of that other university, that other city, also reduced to rubble, though not in any humane way. A helicopter flies over the square. What must their lives be like now? And when will it ever end?

In such a situation, to help is a privilege and not a burden, it is important not just for others but for ourselves, so that we do not become hardened and cut off from our own humanity, we do not abandon ourselves to helplessness and despair.

Helping is a way to enrich our lives, to be the people we want to be, to connect to our higher selves, to connect to others, to recognise our capabilities, to grow, to come alive, to expand our hearts, to allow ourselves to feel. It is healing for other and for ourselves. It is our true nature.

29th November 2023

I am back in the Advanced Research Centre at the café with a latte and a Christmas tree shaped gingerbread cookie, which is rather delicious. A huge crane has appeared next to the square, with the words Bernard Hunter on the side. Bernard the crane is quite impressive, demanding attention with his bright yellow paint and large dimensions. A small platform is dangling from the end of the crane, but other than that it doesn’t seem to be doing very much.

A ridiculously happy black and white spaniel is chasing a stick about the square. I wonder why it is that spaniels always look so extremely happy. Do they know something we don’t? Or does the world just smell very wonderful, unknown to us with our stunted senses? Could any of us truly appreciate the simple pleasure of a stick? If we could, what delights might open to us, what worlds of wonder might await?

It is a blue sky and wispy cloud sort of day again and the writing group is meeting for the last time before Christmas. I think I will miss the square and might even sneak a visit in sometime to see how it is getting on. So far, it has not succumbed to the plethora of lights and decorations that are adorning other squares. The trees are now bare of any leaves. Everything is functional rather than ornamental. A man in a high vis jacket and white hard hat is pacing in front of the entrance to the building site, hands behind his back, as if in deep contemplation. Two others are using hand gestures to assist the progress of an empty white lorry into the building site. The man breaks his contemplative walk and joins in as the lorry proceeds through the gates. A woman tries to walk through the open gate but is directed by the man to walk through one of the datapods. A man in a black and dark pink robe walks past the entrance, rubbing his hands together. A woman pushes an old man in a wheelchair across the square. He looks happy to be out in the late autumn sunshine, as does she.

 

To be continued…

First published: 18 April 2024

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