By Dani Garavelli
EVERY time I walk from Glasgow Central to Glasgow Queen Street during the festive season, I experience the same weird emotional blip.
For a fleeting moment – as I near George Square, but before I can see it – my heart does an impromptu giddy-up at the spectacle some childish part of me still expects to unfold. The Ghost of Christmas(es) Past brings memories unbidden: cold hands in woollen mittens, breath jewelling in the night air.
A giant tree, Santa’s sleigh, a swoosh of lights strung corner to corner. Wise Men, shepherds, a baby in a manger. Then I turn the corner and the magic is dispelled by a maze of metal and the stale smell of bratwurst that heralds the city’s WinterFest.
It’s a dismal, off-putting affair. From outside, the top of the helter-skelter, swing chairs and carousel horses are just visible over the top of the M&N Events hoardings.
Inside, a scattering of stalls offer faux German market wares: snowman snow globes, churros, and fudge that looks as if it has been lying in state since the death of Queen Victoria.
With stewards in hi-vis jackets manning the entrance, it is as far from the spirit of Christmas – and the spirit of self-consciously egalitarian Glasgow – as it is possible to imagine.
You are reminded of this contradiction if you approach the square from Hanover Street. There, the city’s People Make Glasgow slogan peers out, faded, but still legible, between the spokes of the Ferris Wheel. Like the eyes of Dr TJ Eckleburg, the big block capitals offer a reproach to the capitalist wasteland below.
They force you to ask fundamental questions such as: *which* people make Glasgow? And whose interests does the city serve? Is it the rough sleeper huddled in a duvet just outside the WinterFest exit? Is it the family on Universal Credit racking up debt to put a few gifts under the tree? Or is it only those who can afford to pay £7.50 a head for a whirl on........