Saturday night: I’m out and about in the centre of Glasgow and I’m feeling all my usual love and anxiety for the place, my old friend and mentor. The wounds and scars and burns are impossible to avoid, especially if you’re anywhere near Union Street, and it doesn’t help that my starting point is the Four Corners, where the grot and the gangs are most obvious. The police are out I see, and they’re busy, but it’s going to take more than a few arrests to get us out of this one.

But as well as the love and anxiety, I’m feeling a bit of hope. The reason I’m in town is for a gig at The Panopticon, the old music hall on Argyle Street that you don’t know is there unless you do. It’s one of my favourite buildings in the city and although it’ll take millions to restore it, I like the sign pinned to the flaky, fading wall in the gents: “this isn’t bad decorating, this is history”. The gig, by the tribute band Frankly, The Smiths, is enjoyable, although the songs don’t do much to keep the melancholia at bay: I know it’s over, still I cling, I don’t know where else I can go.

In some ways though, The Panopticon is one of the buildings in Glasgow I worry about the least: it has a passionate group of friends and supporters who protect it and raise money for the place and it has a reason to be: it’s a place to entertain, like it’s always been. It’s also better preserved than some other buildings of the time for a slightly disgusting reason: in its heyday as a music hall, there weren’t proper toilets so people just went where they stood, which meant the building couldn’t burn down because it was so soaked in ammonia. And here it is, 170 years old, still standing.

On the way back from the gig, I take the chance, because it’s irresistible, to head up Union Street and check out another building........

© Herald Scotland