Dod101 wrote:You know Paisley much better than I do. I was there with my late wife a few times but I now have no reason to go there and I cannot imagine why I would again. I doubt that it was the setting for Shuggie Bain but anyone who knows the general area would I expect recognise the scenes in it.
Dod
I spent a lot of time there as kid. All my grandparents met there after moving from Ireland.
We moved away (or "escaped") when I was just old enough to remember having lived there, but it's where all my family were, where the parish was.
Over the next couple of decades those that could left, to anywhere they could: Millport, over to Fife, "back" to Ireland, England, even Edinburgh!!
- i think I've probably still got cousins working in the council offices (living in Erskine though)
Paisley itself (and to be fair I've not been back to the UK for 4+ years now) just seems like an anachronism of a picturesque Victorian centre overrun by neds
- neglected to a degree that's really strange given what they could do given what there is to work with
- especially since there's been huge gentrification in places like Darnley, Nitshill etc (they've got a Sainsburys!)
which having remembered it's the book forum makes me think I'll recommend Christopher Brookmyre for a more modern and irreverent take on the west of Scotland experience (a lot of his stuff is set in Edinburgh but when he does bring someone to Paisley it's very believably evocative)
Like myself he's a Barrhead lad (my pal's mum tutored him for chemistry) and somehow manages to embrace that in a way that makes me think there might have been more options than deciding to bugger off to Australia. Anyway one of his books featured the (approximate) quote "his face lit up like a Nitshill window in early November" - and while that might be quite parochial (it's to do with the Xmas trees
), it stuck so he must have been doing something right.
- sd