Mind The Gap
I don't know if your heard the second programme in our series Welcome To Shettleston today, but it's well worth finding on the Listen Again page. It's presented by street-poet Loki who appears to wander the streets talking to the kind of people who put flesh and bones on those ghastly health statistics about the east end of Glasgow. Loki himself admitted he had a lazy approach to his own health. He would eat "burgers that make me glow in the dark" and believed heart disease was not relevant to him because he was thin.
The people he met in Shettleston spoke about various physical and psychological health problems. One young woman had given up work to look after an ailing parent and had then started to suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. Another man described how his Father had died when he was fifteen and he had created "a mental block" in his mind to cope with it. His sister had stayed with their Mother, but he'd gone into care until his Grandmother agreed to look after him.
There was something chilling about these experiences being described in such an authentic, matter-of-fact tone. It's an area of the city I know very well and I could imagine every street corner and pub doorway that was mentioned. The Cottage Bar, for instance, was infamous for its proximity to the scene of gangland killings.
The programme had opened and closed with the automated announcement on the train that takes you east from Glasgow's booming city-centre : "the next stop is Shettleston...please mind the gap..."
Yes, but which gap?
