A Night in Glasgow, July of 2008

^{Featured image: Actual photo
of My Bloody Valentine that night;
photo credit to Thomas Figg}

From The MÉLANGE
Occasional Journal of Music

A couple days into my trip, I took a train with my good friend Justine even further up north, to Glasgow. Justine at the time lived in Leek, the microscopic village her family had been in for more generations than anyone could casually remember. She was the one who picked me up from the airport, and she took me to her place in Leek so I could sleep after the flight. We woke up the next day and headed to the Glaswegian club Barrowland Ballroom, to see My Bloody Valentine. About six or so friends of mine from my college days in Texas met up with us. The Texan friends and I had made a pact, back when the Pixies reformed in 2004, that if My Bloody Valentine ever got back together, we’d all fly wherever in the world their first show was and see it together. Well, the London tickets sold out in less than a third of a second. So we all got tickets to see them in Glasgow instead.

The show was incredible, of course.

Afterward, I got separated from everyone. Justine had met a guy at the bar who wore a hat similar to mine, so when my Texas friends saw her leaving in a cab with him they assumed it was me. Thinking I was safely on my way back to our room, the Texans left for our hotel, while I was around the corner in a chip shop kissing a Scottish girl who was a friend of a friend. She turned out to be married, which was a real turn-off for me ethically, so I said goodnight to her and walked back to the club.

That’s when I discovered I was alone. And I didn’t yet have a phone that worked in the UK, so I was without a cell phone. And, having left the bulk of my cash in my hotel room and having spent all I brought with me at the bar, I didn’t have any money.

It took me about half a second to determine that I just needed to ask directions, and (worst case scenario) maybe beg for a few pounds sterling to try and get a cab back to the hotel. And I needed that only if the distance wasn’t ultimately walkable. I had, after all, my hand in my pocket, somewhat anxiously jangling the key to my room against my leg. The room’s door was external-facing, so I just needed to find myself on the street outside that door. And I knew the hotel (more of a bed and breakfast, really) was on a tiny, short street. So I didn’t need the street number of the building. I just needed to know where the street was, and, luckily, I knew the name of the street: Belgrave Terrace.

So I looked up and down the street at the faces of the strangers of Scotland, searching for eyes that seemed like they wouldn’t grow too annoyed if they were interrupted at 4AM by a drunk American idiot without a phone, money or transportation who knew only the name of the street where his hotel was — wondering if they might, somehow, be able to help him. 

I found a short, glowering, dark-haired girl. Don’t know why I settled on her. I spoke to her, and she seemed misanthropic and cranky and annoyed by everything, but, strangely, she seemed to think my situation was hilarious. And of all among the throngs of Scottish drunks leaving the bar, the one person on Gallowgate who I happened to stop was, in fact, from California. She worked at the Barrowland, and had that evening off but was organizing friends, and they were going to her house. Maybe that’s what I detected in her, and why I chose to ask her for help: she was corralling drunks, a friend group leader of sorts. She said, “I don’t think any of us can help you, but if you want somewhere to hang out while you figure out what’s going on you’re welcome to come with us.”

I think her name was Rachel, maybe? Hard to say, after all those years. We didn’t exchange contact information, or even surnames. She was a university student, and it was the summer — but her student visa let her stay and work the bar between semesters.

After about thirty or forty minutes we arrived. Somewhere on the walk, our entourage broke up a fight between two chavs. I’m pretty sure her house was on Sauchiehall St, or nearby it. Two stories I think? There were many rooms, and somewhere between one and two dozen people. We drank a lot of Buckfast, which is a caffeinated, high-ABV poison brewed at a nearby monastery. It’s made by monks who, despite their clerical vows and trappings, I’m convinced are in fact in the service of Satan himself.

Eventually, sometime after dawn, maybe around 7am or 8am, someone discovered a street atlas on the counter in the kitchen. And they looked up where Belgrave Terrace was. And it was about a five minute walk away.

I was, at that point, too drunk to read street signs, so I walked around the party asking folks if they could spare a few coins. This got me to about seven quid, and I hailed a black cab on the street in the early morning sunshine. And the cabbie drove me to my hotel. I slept until mid- to late-afternoon. Justine booked the room for a second day to accommodate me, while all the Texans left for a day trip to Edinburgh before they flew back to the United States. As soon as we were back in Leek, I got myself a burner phone — abandoned by Justine’s sixteen-year-old friend, a drug dealer who went by the name Panda. But that was the rest of my trip to the U.K., and that’s an entirely different story.

But earlier, at that house in Glasgow, while randomly talking with the people around me, I met a Scottish kid who was in his twenties, much like myself at the time, and I began asking him about his life and how he passed his time. He was also in town visiting, as he lived in Canada at the time, and was just back for the summer. He had long hair, I think it might have been in dreads. He was thin, a little shorter than me. He mentioned that he played mandolin in a band. Who was the band, I asked? And he said “Godspeed You: Black Emperor!” He had his mandolin on him, and someone else at the house had a guitar. The instruments came out and we played together. Probably not super well, and I may have been unnecessarily insistent on it happening.

And that’s how I ended up drunk after dawn in Scotland, playing music with one of the guys from Godspeed.