One thing you may have noticed about me (the people who live with me certainly have) is that I do not like change – small changes, big changes, any changes – which is why my chum Michael and I have been meeting for our regular beers in the same place (Bar Gandolfi in Glasgow) on the same night (Saturday) at the same time (7.30pm) for 20 years. Not last Saturday though. The bar was closed for a private function, which meant making more last-minute adjustments to a changing world. First, Keir Starmer resigning. Now this.

As it turned out, all went well in the end: we had a few Budvar in Mono and a few Paulaner in Super Bario, a bar in the Merchant City packed with old video games and pin-ball machines, including one based around Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, a reminder, I think, that not everything in the past was great and sometimes change is good. The only real problem with the night-out was at the start of it when I tried to use one of Glasgow’s Voi e-bikes to cycle into town. It did not go well and it is not, I am afraid, the first sign that there are problems with the city’s bike scheme.

There’s no doubt the basic idea of the scheme is great and I’ve been a regular user of the bikes since they were launched last November. On my first trip, I went for a two-hour improvised trip across the city: up to Glasgow Green, into Calton, past the Sighthill stone circle, along the canal and up into the new community of Dundas Hill and it was a reminder of the challenges Glasgow faces but a reminder too of why I love the place so much: rackety, troubled, wonderful.

But a scheme like the Voi bikes is only as good as its implementation and its maintenance and reliability and regular users are starting to have some worries on all those........

© Herald Scotland