We caught up with Norry Wilson from Lost Glasgow at The Ubiquitous Chip to find out more about Glasgow’s Christmas traditions and the significance of the Barras Market.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 What other kind of places would you associate then with Glasgow at Christmas?
00:07 The one thing that folk forget, and I think they've revived it just in the last couple of years, is the Barras Market.
00:15 Because the Barras used to stay open until midnight on Christmas Eve.
00:20 And again, obviously I wasn't knocking about at that period, but there's tales of poor trochled dads who have obviously been in the pub until 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock.
00:33 I mean, alas, flee round the Barras at 11 o'clock at night on Christmas Eve, picking up the last presents for the weans and the stallholders all dressed up.
00:44 And the stalls all decorated with Christmas lights. And I knew that it had died off in recent years, but in the last couple of years the Barraland stallholders have revived it.
00:55 There's live music and all the rest of it, street food. So it's really going back to what the Barras was in the 50s or the 60s.
01:04 It's not so much, particularly the Barraland Ballroom, before the last dance, the compere would announce your last chance for romance.
01:13 But coming up to midnight at the Barras on Christmas Eve, it was the last chance to grab a few presies.
01:19 Usually cheap, you know, stocking fillers and things. But it was just that atmosphere of everyone, it's always Christmas.
01:27 It's always Christmas and everyone maybe a wee bit, a few drinks to the better, all having a good laugh together.
01:34 How culturally significant is the Barras to Glasgow from your perspective?
01:41 It's culturally significant to a huge section of Glasgow. We're sitting here in the Deuce West End.
01:50 I suspect a lot of folk in the West End would go "Oh, the Barras, oh, no going there."
01:56 It's a bit like a flea pit cinema, you go in with a jacket and you come out with a jumper.
02:01 But a huge section of the East End of Glasgow, the Barras for 50, 100 years, absolute lifeline.
02:14 Not just for cheap goods, but for cheap food, for second-hand clothes, for second-hand toys.
02:21 We talk about reuse, recycle and all the rest of it today. The Barras has been doing that since day one.
02:28 If you're needing something badly, quite often the folk that were shopping in the Barras were the poorest of the poor.
02:36 It was second-hand clothes for the children, it was second-hand clothes for your husband, it was second-hand shoes for yourself.
02:42 It was Glasgow's original great recycling centre.
02:47 I certainly probably started going to the Barras and Paddy's when I was about 12, 13.
02:55 Then it was mainly to buy what I would regard as cheap clothes that I could muck about with.
03:04 Punk had happened and you couldn't buy punk clothes in shops.
03:08 It cost you an arm and a leg and folk forget. Vivienne Westwood, the Queen of Punk.
03:14 Vivienne Westwood stuff at the time would cost most folk about three or four weeks wages.
03:18 Whereas you could go to Paddy's and buy an old 1950s gent's suit and stick safety pins and badges all over it.
03:27 All of a sudden you looked like you were one of the gang.
03:30 The same at the Barras, you could go down and find brilliant 1950s drape jackets.
03:36 The same sort of stuff that Westwood was selling in her sex boutique in London.
03:42 But you could buy an original teddy boy drape jacket at the Barras for 50p a pound.
03:48 All of a sudden you were cock of the walk.
03:51 Admittedly it might smell a bit and might be a wee bit moth-eaten and you might have to de-flea it to put it mildly.
03:59 But all of a sudden you had something that nobody else in Glasgow had.
04:03 Folk would go, "Who was that guy that had the drape jacket on? That was gnawry."
04:08 You know folk by the clothes that they wore, not necessarily by their names.
04:12 "Who was that guy that had that really cool suit on the other week?"
04:15 Or "Who was that girl in the brilliant 50s dress?"
04:18 And you say, "Where did you get that?" "Oh, the Barras."
04:21 Because you couldn't get that. It was before. Now it's called retro.
04:26 It's second hand.
04:29 I was a wee semi-posh middle class boy, but going to the Barras or going to Paddy's and getting some good togs that you knew nobody else had.
04:41 Wearing them on a Saturday night, you felt like king of the hill.
04:46 I can imagine. That whole thing came full circle again, hasn't it?
04:52 Oh, totally. I think the best bargain I ever got,
04:57 I'd be about 14 and I was helping gather stuff for a Scout jumble sale.
05:03 How exciting.
05:05 We'd been round the posh houses in Paisley,
05:09 chopping doors. I think we'd leafleted the whole area the week before saying, "Have you got any jumble?"
05:15 A lovely wee old lady said, "My husband and I used to run a Jents Outfitters in Paisley,
05:20 and the garage is still full of stuff, still in its boxes."
05:25 I bought 50 Brooks Brothers, New York Brooks Brothers.
05:32 It wasn't Madison Avenue, I think it's Fifth Avenue.
05:37 It's seriously cool Jents Outfitters.
05:41 Just beautiful Egyptian cotton, 1950s.
05:45 Plain white shirts. They were such fine cotton, they were almost like silk.
05:51 I bought 50 of them in boxes for the princely sum of £5,
05:57 and then screen printed them all and took them to the barrows and sold them at £15 each.
06:03 Oh, there you go.
06:05 I was minted.
06:08 Weeks later you'd be out in the piss in Glasgow in the Rock Garden,
06:14 or what was the other pub we used to go to in Suckey Hall Street?
06:18 Oh, that's dreadful. Nico's was the other hot ticket at that point in Suckey Hall Street.
06:23 And you'd see someone out wearing one of my hand-printed shirts.
06:27 That's alright, that's one of mine.
06:30 What is it that you printed on them?
06:32 Just really abstract, bold, basically big chunks of polystyrene,
06:37 and just block printed them.
06:41 And my mum was going mental, even though she was an art teacher,
06:44 because I was doing it all literally on her kitchen table.
06:48 And she'd go, "God, could you clear the table? It's almost dinner time!"
06:51 And in a minute I've got all these damn bloody shirts hanging up in the poolie above my head
06:56 while my mum and dad are trying to have their evening meal.
06:58 I'm going, "What's that strange smell? It's bloody printer's ink from these shirts."
07:03 Oh no, have you ever seen any fairly recently?
07:06 God no, I've still got one in my wardrobe.
07:11 It's the very tail of it.
07:15 It's got my initials NW79, so it was obviously '79 that I did it,
07:20 so what was I, 13 at the time?
07:24 It's the only success I've ever had in the rag trade.
07:29 There you go.