….Des pottered around the flat, tidying up and getting into some casual clothes. He left at 1.45 making sure he had a handful of change for the usual moochers at the end of the bridge who always treated him like a long lost friend at this time of day. He walked along the Clydeside to Bridgegate cutting through the top end of an area known as ‘Paddy’s Market’.

If you were a romantic traveller you might call the place a flea market. In fact it was very much at the lower end of the flea market business, if such a concept exists outside the third world. A place where midden bins looked as if they had been looted and emptied on to the pavement and scattered in a semi circle around the dishevelled market hawkers. It attracted the usual collection of low lifers, drug dealers, thieves, shop lifters and assorted unsuccessful criminal riff raff of the underworld. It was also held right underneath the back windows of one of Scotland’s major courthouses, Glasgow High Court. Continue reading →