When you're alone
and life is making you lonely
You can always go downtown
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown
Things will be great when you're downtown
No finer place for sure, downtown
Everything's waiting for you.
‘Downtown’ [1964
song sung by Petula Clark and written by Tony Hatch]
For most of my life, I have lived in cities (but, for around
28 years I have not. And sorry, Perth, but while I enjoyed living in that ‘titular’
city, I am really meaning proper, big, noisy, cities!). I do not currently live
in a city, and I suspect I probably won’t ever do so again in my life.
But, I do live less than a 15 minute train ride from one big
city, and less than 30 minutes by train from another.
I love cities. My whole being comes alive when I go to a
city. I also love sea, hills, countryside, mountains etc. As a keen fisherman
(and, in years past, a dedicated hillwalker and Munro Bagger) I fully
appreciate the delights of the outdoors, and the open spaces, and the beauty of
the natural world. That’s how I spend days off and holidays.
But, it is in the city where I feel at home, where I know I belong,
and where I fully come alive.
I do realise that not everyone feels this way. Indeed. I
know that many people struggle to even understand my outlook on this (including
people with whom I live!).
But there it is.
That is how I feel. This is my experience.
But, there is a bit more to it; for my feelings have evolved
over the years.
Not that I ever imagined that I was not a city person. I
think I always knew that. But, having been born, raised, and educated in
Glasgow (where I also served in my first charge as a Minister) I imagined that
my love was for Glasgow specifically, and not so much for cities generally. And
I was rather partisan when it came to any suggestion of a rivalry between Glasgow
and Edinburgh. There was no competition. Glasgow’s miles better! (Or so I then
considered).
Moving out of the big city, first to Fife, and then to
Perth, I still hankered after city life, and Glasgow life in particular. And
yet, to be honest, my increasingly frequent travel to Edinburgh on church business
was beginning to have an effect. Perhaps Edinburgh was not so bad after all.
When we eventually moved to Edinburgh, and I was privileged
to serve there in a city centre congregation,
I quickly fell completely in love with that city. I loved Edinburgh and I love
it still.
I confess that, in my heart, Edinburgh took that place which
had thus far been kept for Glasgow.
And so it was, when the time came to leave our national
capital, I suffered what I can only describe as bereavement – a deep bereavement.
Any excuse or opportunity to return to Edinburgh, I jumped at; and given that
we still owned a flat in the city, I could visit whenever I was free, and stay
over. Wonderful! My spirits perceptibly lifted wherever I was back in that
city.
And then we sold that flat. And again, I suffered a bereavement.
At that point, I thought my sense of loss was related to
Edinburgh. But not so.
For in this last wee while, I have been spending more and
more time back in Glasgow (not least because it is closer). I have been
rediscovering my love of that city and re-engaging with its life, and peculiarities,
and attractions.
And, do you know what?
I love Glasgow too.
I love both Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Now, they are very different cities and both have their positive
aspects and both have their negatives. But each is attractive to me, and when I
visit either, I still feel my spirits lift and my energy rising.
I belong in cities.
And, while I do not actually live in one (and am unlikely
ever to do so again) the fact that I am close to both of these marvellous cities
means that I can be in either as often as I wish, and consider myself a citizen
of both.
And I do!
