Who Wants to Go To Kirkie Anyway?
26th July 1998

Proud Springburn Road, a canyon black
Your tenemental walls don't lack
A touch of human misery
A glimpse of how things used to be
I stood upon the bridgehead there
The seventies: big shoes and hair
The older world of dunny stairs
Side by side with tartan flares

Oblivious to coming things
The Corporation planners' whims
I played on Paddy Orrs, behind
The tall and solid sandstone hind
That soon would all be swept away
The Leckethill and fine Bedlay
The Mollinsburn, the Adamswell
And Ayr Street smashed away to hell

The streets that I first came to know
Just in time to see them go
Play in the street with runny tar
The smell of beer from Shevlane's bar
The Memel Toi, a stray dog's bark
The walk up Balgray to the park
These are the things that come to me
Through the frosted glass of memory

I know it wasn't good or nice
The drains were bad, with rats and mice
The Caley shut, and men laid off
And babies sick with whooping cough
The men they turned to drink and crime
To see them through the darkest time
The buildings fell into decay
The place was filthy, cold and grey

But even through the soot and grime
It seemed to be a better time
With Billy Connolly, party sevens
Tenements up to the heavens
Parties, fights and colour tellies
Where wid ye be withoot yer wellies?
Arses hanging out of trousers
Orange walks and rabble rousers

The seventies, before the storm
The older order was the norm
A hobbling man with rickets legs
A man with one leg sits and begs
The Kay Street steamie with the wives
A meeting of their tiring lives 
Not for them a Hotpoint tub
The steamie was a social club

All these things are now no more
Demolished right down to the core
Springburn lived all through the blitz
When all around was blown to bits
But it only took a stupid law
From a Corporation heid-the-ba'
To take away my home and street
All from his Corporation seat

So why the rush to clear away
The streets and homes up Springburn way?
The building stone was good and sound
And ten years later they had found
That renovated tenements
Were better than the cardboard tents
That pass for modern housing stock
But now they can't turn back the clock

To their logistic perfect minds
The Springburn Road had many wynds
And if you were out in the car
You'd turn the steering wheel too far
It seems the bends of Springburn town
Were getting all the drivers down
So it had to go, sooner or later
To make the road a wee bit straighter

J.