A Passing Day.

It’s ten to six in the morning. I wake up and find myself looking out the window at a bruised blue sky which slowly turns slate grey. I continue to lie there, waiting to find the will and energy to rise out of bed. Immediately I sing the same old refrain I‘ve been singing to myself for the past couple of weeks. That I need to get to work. Get the work done. Get home and do some writing. I didn’t get any writing done yesterday. Then again I didn’t get home till midnight. And this morning I feel exhausted. My body aching, creaking. Brittle. However, I manage to pull myself up off the bed. As I do so I hear my mobile alarm go off, as always a couple of minutes too late.

I wash and shave. Get dressed. Turn on the radio. Have a cup of coffee. Days are passing I think to myself. I don’t have time to do any writing this morning either. My bicycle lies in the hallway. It’s front wheel removed due to a puncture I have never got around to fixing. Which means I need to walk to work. Which means I need to leave for work now.

So I walk to work. Though the park, alongside the River Kelvin. Thinking I can use the time to think up some sort of story I could begin. First of all though, I walk past the asphalt football pitches, usually passing adults and sometimes kids still drunk or still sobering up from the night before. Hostile glances arrive in my direction as I walk along at a jaunty pace, with a backpack slung over my shoulder. Other wildlife appears and disappears. Nervous, scurrying foxes and big eyed, slow witted squirrels.

As I walk on I see a heron, the heron, standing elegantly on a rock in the middle of the river. It’s curious white head with black vertical stripes on top of a large oval but elegant, grey body. I slow down as I pass it. The heron looks back at me. I want it to get used to me in some way. To say “It’s only Iain on his way to work again” but no, I’m still too dodgy and the heron flies away down river. The River Kelvin as the heron would tell you, has fish in it now. This same river I remember from my childhood for it’s smell of sewage. Now the sewage is gone and the fish (and fishermen) are back.

Changing direction and exiting out the other side of the park, I cut through side streets and across to and over Sauchiehall Street. There must be at least the same dozen people I see every day when I’m on my way to work. I've no doubt that they now see me as much a part of their daily routine as I see them as part of mine. Everyone a little cog in the morning clock of everyone else.

I reach the banks of the River Clyde. Once a derelict wasteland, it now looks like a technological theme park. Glass and silver buildings of impressive shape and sparkle. A computer generated vision come true with the added reality of grey sky and chilling wind. The river itself, old and weary, impassive as ever to any change in it’s surroundings.

I walk over the new creaking footbridge and into my own modern place of work. Inside, down the ramp, along a quiet corridor and along another and another, I reach the entrance to the kitchen. I push open it’s swing doors. Instant noise. Sizzling. Chopping. Clattering. Pans being thrown onto a stove. Shouts from the chefs. White jackets hurrying here and there. My peaceful walk through the park is already a distant memory.

Overall, there’s an air of tiredness in the kitchen. A succession of fourteen hour days taking their toll. Hellos are said with a sigh. Eyes are staring, functioning but nothing more. Movements are made with effort. Yet through the tiredness, everyone still works as fast as they can. Two chefs come up to me, their hellos requests for work. Give me a minute to get changed I say.

Once changed the head chef comes up to me. My two days off have been cut to one he says. My one day off is still ok although I may “have to come in for three or four hours”. I nod and mumble “that’s fine, no problem” worrying I have even less time to get the writing done. Today though I can leave at five. Good news.

Chefs like the early morning foxes scurry here and there. The shortest distances done in the shortest time. All to save a few seconds, which accumulated later on, could be vital minutes.

I’m the same. I find I’ve no time to drink the coffee on the worktop. Taking a gulp now and then, a timely extravagance I can’t afford. A situation which seems ridiculous once I’m outside of work. But that’s the way it is.

I finish at five. Happy. I should have time to do some writing that night. I walk to the bus-stop. Seeing faces. Listening to voices. So many different accents and languages. Glasgow. Language City. Aye. I look up at the orange sandstone tenements bathing in the late autumn sun. A late summer’s day in a year when summer didn’t happen.

I wait ages for the bus. When the whole day is spent treasuring seconds, a twenty minute wait for a bus seems like purgatory. A physical pain which makes me once again vow to fix the puncture on my bike as soon as I get home.

The red City Sightseeing Tour bus goes past. The curious glances from the passengers at their passing surroundings met in return by the curious glances from the natives on the street. Glaswegians still uncomfortable with all this culture stuff. Thankfully, my own bus finally appears round the corner.

I arrive home. Lie down on the bed for a minute. Two hours later I wake up and see it’s past eight o‘clock. By the time I have dinner and a bath and do other trivialities it‘s nearer nine thirty. I need to go to bed soon. Another day over. Just before bed though I sit down at the computer. And I finally start to write.