From a window on the third floor of an old abandoned brick building, I would smoke till my lungs felt near to collapsing. I went on my own, and I told no one of it: not my friends nor my family, nor any passing creature. I would sit there from when the sun first started to die until the cloak of night had fallen and enveloped the city, and the lights ( those maddening lights) would set the black fabric ablaze in the sky. They danced like ash eagerly above a fire, and promised such heat and hope; and my city needed hope, as gas filled girls and powdery boys had lost their way, covered in glitter and thinking they would sparkle forever. I shined less brightly myself, but I knew that would one day be my blessing.

One night, in the middle of Winters grasp, I set off home through my cheap shiny city, and I couldn’t shake the ache in my chest; It could have been the twenty snout I had just rattled into my lungs, but the pain was in my head too: My head and my heart were talking with the solemnity of a wake. I walked till I seen the the old granary that lay helplessly, then half bulldozed into the ground. Such beautiful, strong and defiant brick was to make way for glistening plastic houses that seemed more designed for mannequins and letting agents than human beings of Glasgow.  And the clyde seemed to twist in the turmoil of agony as it too watched the tearing of it’s town.  

So I set off, with my chest growing heavier, and feeling my will collapse until I reached the bank of the river, stripped off and jumped in…We’ve drifted off together ever since.  

Twenty years later, and I live in the penthouse atop the plastic mountain that hangs grotesquely over the sickly clyde. It’s the price I have to pay to be close to my love- I wouldn’t blame you for thinking my love to be the river, for it is in many ways, but I am referring to my fiancé Milly, who’s parents own properties all over the city and were very insistent that we live in a good area and a good house, which of course stripped my mannish integrity to zilch.  Milly is warm, understanding and organically beautiful. She puts up with my endless wandering and lack of love for anything new, brushing it aside with a smile, and is always there to carry me.

The day I asked her to Marry me, I took her to the spot we had first met: The banks of the river where I was lurking like a little creep  scrawling angst-filled and childish poetry, and she was walking home from a night of glitter and ecstasy.  We chatted for ours that night, and she dared me to jump into the river. I did and she followed. And the day I asked her to marry me she cried yes and then took the ring from my hands and threw it into the river.

And we've drifted ever since.