There is a true William Wallace in the midst of Glasgow (that's GlasGO) and his name is John Smeaton. He ruled the airwaves of the British media bringing the big lovely rolled up vowels of the Glaswedgian working class to the confusion of anyone outside of Govan. His heroism has been told and retold - how it was 'ah good job ah wis there' - to knock one of the men from the Jeep to the ground to let the 'polis' arrest him. It has inspired a website where people have bought him 1,000 pints to say thank you! There you can witness the youtube videos of this great man of Glesga patter!
My favourite quote (same as Katie's) on the website is the following:
"Those hapless al-Qaeda boys were to find out that Glasgow has no respect for international terrorism. Nobody gets between 10,000 Weegies and a £99 week in Ibiza booked on Thursday night through Barrhead Travel.
And most of all, no-one messes with The Polis. Not in this town."
It all feels very similar to NOLA. The satirical costumes of mardi gras, the New Orleans satirical paper "The New Orleans Levee" subtitled 'we don't hold anything back'. The bloggers' biting wit.Maybe this is why I feel at home here. Whilst the rest of America quakes in fear of this war on terror, N'awlins laughs at the ridiculousness and tries to find humour in the sorry state of affairs that is post-K NOLA, so that humour can carry us to another day.
2 comments:
As I still cannot adjust to the fact that I have to pay £150 to watch the telly, I missed him on BBC and ITN.
I have had run-ins with Glaswegians before. One time, I was on the train returning from Oban and I met two ancient Glaswegian men. After they decided that baiting an American with their speech was no fun anymore, we had a great time. It proved to be one of the little things that I will always think of fondly.
I think that humour really keeps us sane. The best line I saw on a newstand outside a shop was "I kicked terrorist in the balls".
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