Walked down to the Bundy, but couldn't find it. Where did it go?
It was a nice wee park where I'd walk with my mother.
Where did the David Elder Hospital go? Or maybe it was never there.
But isn't that where awful things happened to women?
Whatever went on there, it was discussed about in hushed tones.

Was shocked and dismayed to see the gaudy yellow arches of a Macdonald's.
I remember the Co-op shop that we'd go to and get Perkin biscuits and orange juice.
Surprised at how close the Southern General Hospital actually is to Burghead Drive where I lived until I was 4.
I was born in the Southern General in 1949.
My brother ended up there more than once, I think. He was apt to fall off dykes and bang his heid.
My father died there and my mother worked there, the job helping her through her grief.
Sometimes I don't really like the Southern General Hospital at all.
Too many poignant memories. However, it has an interesting architecture and it certainly has been a great big part of many people's lives.

I think of my great aunt, long deceased, who used to live on Drive Road, and of my mother's old friend who lived on Penniver Drive, I think it was. I used to visit her and her budgie.

I walk up and down Burghead Drive trying to pluck up the courage to take a photo of number 33. I don't want to appear like a daft tourist, nor do I want to stand out. So I non-chalantly cross the road, turn quickly and snap as fast as I can, all the while pretending I'm really just finishing off the roll of film.
I think of the stories my mother has told me about life on Burghead Drive during the War.
How a bomb was heading for their building, how the wind blew and caused the bomb to float away. How my father never fought in the war as he was working on the ships boilers. How Mrs. So and So was really good at washing clothes. "She really was".
How my mother would entertain people by reading their tea leaves.
I remember when a woman in the next close killed herself by placing her head in the oven. The fire engines came and there was a big fuss. I only found out that she had committed suicide years and years later.
Back then the story was that it had been a tragic accident.

Would be a laugh to see inside the old flat. Or was it a "single end"?
Would be even better to see out back where my mother would wash clothes and where she'd throw jeelie pieces to my brother playing there.
But I just walk away and meander on to Govan Road.

Walk into the grocery shop there for an Irn Bru and talk to the owner.
We figure it's possible that our mothers may have known one another.
I walk along the Govan Road and recall stories of my parents going to Elder Park Library. We used to play in the park too.
I'm afraid the park didn't look so nice. It had no flowers, or maybe just a few, and it looked really just a tired, worn-out place.
But the pond is still nice and I suppose you can still sail your boats there.
Happy with with my Irn Bru but annoyed at myself for mistakenly getting the diet one. Dafty me!

Wanted to find a way to get to the docks where the old ferries would transport you across the Clyde. I'm certain there was a double-decker ferry at one time. But I just keep walking hoping that I'll get a photo of a crane at least.
I do indeed get a nice photo complete with mural.
The crane is looming above the tenements. But not in a menacing way.
If I continue walking I'll end up walking all the way back into the town.
I walk and walk by a shopping centre where I finally catch a bus that takes me "up the town".
I'm busy staring out the window at the new Science Centre but nobody else in the bus seems to notice it. Maybe some of the money that was used for it could have been spent on flowers for the park.

Although I'm leaving, my footsteps are still walking "roon aboot" and the collective memory is still vibrant.
"These were happy days. The best days." That's what my mother, now 87, relates as she recalls the 40's and 50's living on Burghead Drive.
I think she's correct.