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.