LIFE. Individual journeys around the eastend, sharing LIFE stories as we walk, creating an outdoor “museum” for the people of Shettleston. As Covid-19 changes the way we do LIFE, so Today Museum has changed for safe participation. In this archive, the community share stories from the present, often explaining the impact Covid-19 has had on their lives. This project is part of Creative Communities Artist-in Residence Programme (Shettleston ward) funded by Glasgow City Council and managed by Glasgow Life

“After volunteering at the church I got to know most people in the community, and now this is my home. I made it a point to get to know people. The simple words; hello, good morning, afternoon, how are you doing? So I've got lots of friends here and life is really good."

"The thing about football is respect. It's such an important thing. Everyone has different ways of looking at things. At the end of the day without respect it would just be chaos."

“Watch me now! Watch me!”

“I heard the river was close by but we hadn’t actually made it down. So every day during the lockdown we had our hour’s worth of exercise and one day we decided to try and find it. On the first attempt we didn’t find it and the second attempt we didn’t find it either. But on the third attempt we managed to find the river and a path. We realised that it’s actually incredibly close and ended up coming every day for an hour and exploring, throwing stones and playing in the forest.”

“One, two, three… Woah! My turn! Get me that one.”

“Can you ask nicely?”

“Please! I just need to wash it first.”

“Ooh there’s a good one! Go on, throw it. Wow!”

“If anyone needs a pee, this is the place to do a pee!”

“It’s good to get out before all the chaos back into normality. […] I’d go on either a walk or go on a short bike ride just to cool off or collect my own thoughts. […] but even if it’s not that - just even like today - just the relief to get outside instead of being inside and having the anxiety of Covid and all that. It gives me a chance to get back to normal.”

“There been a lot of good that’s come from it and maybe I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed by how welcomed I’ve felt if it wasn’t in the midst of this situation. It’s made it more obvious how special it is to welcomed like this, like ‘wow even in spite of the circumstances I feel so at home!’ And I think people recognise the challenge of it more like ‘oh my gosh you’re moving in the middle of Covid!’ Potentially people are more sensitive to what’s happening in other people’s lives. I think we have a greater awareness from the problems of last year of the challenges other people face.”

Emma - “We parked there then walked down here. So we were on our own when we walked down here and everyone was just milling about the rose garden over there. They were kind of lined up a wee bit along the path keeping distancing and threw confetti and gave us a clap as we walked down.

Callum - “Yeah as we came through, it was lovely. We handed out lots of cupcakes to people that we’d made for everyone and it was just lovely to chat to people, they’d obviously all watched the service and everything - online. So we felt like it was a lot more than 20 people really there because there was people who watched it and came to the parks. It was lovely.”

“Did you have strangers stop to watch everything?”

Emma & Callum - “Yeah!” [Laughter]

Emma - “I think the first person who congratulated us was a stranger just at the top of the park. And people, like our neighbours came.”

“Aww lovely!”

Callum - “An avenue of people here!”

“Covid bride had to wear her bridal face mask so I have brought my bridal face mask! [Laughs] I think there was something at some point that said the bride, groom and officator didn’t have to [wear a mask] when they were speaking so I didn’t need to wear it inside except after the ceremony when we were going for the meal. I think you had to wear it when you were walking, like in restaurants when you have to wear it walking around and you take it off when you’re sitting down. So it got used a wee bit but we were in the parks most of the time so it was quite nice because it didn’t even feel like a Covid wedding.”

“Home, I love home!”

“Is there nap? Is there nap? Because I love sleeping.”

“Shall we get yours now Tilly?”

[Laughs and play noises]

“They’re hiding! They’re having a wee nap themselves. Do you want to hold them?”

Tilly - “Yeah, I’ll put them on my shoulders. Um, they’re babies.”

“Aww they’re babies, so they’re going to grow bigger?”

Tilly - “Yeah.”

“Yeah like rabbits.”

Tilly - “I had to do chores for them and get a huge cage.”

“I would have brought Mary Crumble.”

Tilly - “Yeah Mary Crumble is our hamster.”

“Oh do you have more pets?”

[Chatter all together]

“Yeah and we have fish!”

“I love Tollcross. People stand and they hand in wallets that’d been lost, they hand in money, hand in jewellery. They handed in my mother’s ring that I made for her. If someone is short of money, they’ll say “I’ll pay the extra.” They say “aw you go first, you’ve only got a couple of things.” It’s constant. If the queue’s up the back of the shop they just stand there patiently waiting. It’s lovely, it’s lovely. The people are so nice.

“It makes your job easier as well.”

“Yep. I was getting a bit, “I hate everyone, everyone sucks, humans are just horrible,” and I went onto Tollcross Matters. I’d given up on, I wasn’t as cheery, wasn’t as chatty, I was just, shove it through. And then there was this outpouring of love and kindness. Do you remember I put a message saying “Hey there, I’m looking for a cleaning job, you’ll know me from Lidl’s, so you know, you know where I work, on Tollcross Road. So you know I’m hard working.” And everyone was, “Aww you’re that lovely girl from Lidl’s, aww we always come to see you, aww etc etc.” You know the little heart, the Grinch’s heart that is all small and hard and teeny and goes zh zh zh ahhh. Ah I don’t hate everyone again. People laugh because often people come in they feel they’re imposing on you but they’re not, they’re the customer and you have a job and to be nice and make them laugh. One lady, her spine is crumbling, you’d never know to see her. You don’t know what pain they’re going through, you don’t know their suffering, or if they have a horrible partner or a sick child that’s just been diagnosed. You’ve got to be nice to people and care. Just be nice, be a decent human being. I shouldn’t be an oddity.

“But you are though!”

“I’m odd haha. […] So I’ve brought my name badge from Lidl. I thought that that would be nice because that’s where I met most people from Tollcross. Obviously I walk the dogs in the park and I’ve met people. People reach out, yeah Lidl’s is great, they talk to each other, they catch up with each other. When I cycle to work, people see me and wave. It’s a special place Tollcross.”

“Moving here, just knowing David, but it was better than the life I was having back home because I just felt bored. I needed something. I found myself in the East End of Glasgow which has been fantastic for me because as I said, I started going to The New Charter, to the church, made lots of friends there and then it was John Craig who introduced me to Park Run. I tried it once. I did the 5K, it took 54 minutes, I was third last and I thought, hmm, this is not for me. So I tried the volunteer route and I’m actually waiting to get back to Park Run so that I can complete 50, I’ve done 49 so far.”

“Aww that one!”

“Yeah I just needed that one, but I’ve got my t-shirt for doing 25. But within six month between The New Charter, between walking the dog and Park Run, I had over 100 new friends. And the street that I walk along to get to David’s house in the summertime, a lot of the neighbours sit outside and everybody is so friendly. And as you walk past, it started off as just a “Hello,” you know, walking past, and then it was “Do you live here?” because I was there everyday. So quite a few of them got my story which helped me introduce them to The Charter as well, which was a good thing. This is basically what happens, so two and a half year down the line I don’t know how many friends I’ve got here but one thing that stands out is for me the East End is fantastic. It’s a fantastic place to live. Some of my friends back home were a bit worried about me moving to the East End but it’s the friendliest place I’ve lived. Everybody chats and nobody really wants to know your business but if you want to tell them something then they’re really interested - not nosey - but in my opinion interested.

Rebecca - “What kind of things did the Hungry Caterpillar eat?”

Aria - “A pear!”

Mummy - “A pear! What else?”

Aria - “A plum.”

Mummy - “A plum. What else? A pickle! Does that look like a pickle?”

Aria - “Uh huh.”

Rebecca - “Blueberries?”

Aria and Mummy - “Yes!”

Rebecca - “What could be the blueberries?”

Aria - “A grass!”

Mummy - “A grass? Here you go!”

Rebecca - “Oh and this one! What could it be?”

Aria - “A cake!”

“I’ve brought my double buggy because I feel like it’s always with me. [Laughs] And when I think about my life, I think about the hours I spend walking around Tollcross with my double buggy on the school run, on the nursery run. Then I think about buggy walks as well and how it’s one of the really nice things that’s come out of the pandemic. There’s been none of the other social spaces for mums and babies, but to have a wee regular group of us checking in every week that’s been really good. The other thing about the double buggy is it makes me quite noticeable and I think because I just walk the same paths like every day, it’s like people know me now or they see me with my brood. Even this morning a man was like, “Aww you’ve got your own nursey then!” Which was new because people normally just say “Aww you’ve got your hands full!” I don’t mind people talking to me about, I quite like people chatting. I don’t like it when they say like, “Aww you’ll get your heart broken” or whatever but people say all sorts of things to me and I think it’s part of me like walking about with my double buggy. [Laughs] The other story I was thinking of as well is that there’s a man that lives round the corner from us and I don’t even know his name but he has obviously seen us walking past so many times and he stopped me in his car one day and he was like, “I’ve got some scooters and some bikes that my grandkids aren’t using anymore. I’ll just leave them in the front garden and you can have a look at them if you want them.” He’s obviously just seen me walk past so many times and just thought, “Oh maybe she’ll want these.” Which I thought was really lovely! Me just walking about with my double buggy, making friends.”

Charlene - “We brought this wee picture, do you want to explain it?”

Alex - “So we brought this picture. I drew that, I know it’s not that good but it was for my class called Marriage and Family in my course, in my degree. And we were talking about our families, we had to draw what our familes was like. My family was a lot different fae the other people’s in the class but I just thought that this is the most prized photo we’ve got in our house. Just like the healing and the restoration, the love and the forgiveness, just everything we’ve been though. Do you know what I mean? Then God has managed to take something that’s so broken to make something that’s so a masterpiece, something that can help other people, do you know what I mean? And also Charlene’s best pal Charlie is in there.

Charlene - “I’m not a dog person haha!” [Laughter]

Rebecca - “But he’s in there!”

Charlene - “He’s in there!”

Rebecca - “It’s lovely, I love how you drew it as well!”

Charlene - “I love it, he came home with it and I said, “I’m framing that!” I loved it.”

“I just shared everything, you know, like we didn’t have a lot of money and so I always had to share a room with my sisters. And my sisters would take my clothes or do whatever, and be rude. Everything was just sharing, like we even ate family style all the time so we didn’t even say like, “Oh this is my portion of food no one can touch it.” It was just, eat as fast as you can basically. [Laughter] I like things that are mine and that are no one else’s and nothing else’s and like through every part of my life like that’s always been something that’s mine. Even now, I think what is mine. My body’s not mine because my children, well now just Olive, it’s hers on demand apparently. But this is just mine. […] I don’t know what it is, there’s something about a journal that I just love but it’s so private and not because it’s like a diary but because it’s a secret best friend that you can’t, I don’t know, I really like having best friends that aren’t real, like my journals know me in a way that no one will ever know me and I just love them. And they’re small, you can take them with you.”

[Baby noises]

Rebecca - “So Janet, what is your object that you’ve brought?”

Janet - “Just use a nappy, as a sign of new life! Not just new life for a new baby but when I came here I got married so I’ve got a whole new family, new church, refreshed faith, new career, everything is new basically. Yeah it is actually, I’m getting a bit tired!”

Rebecca - “What else could you make new!”

Janet - “I don’t know actually!” [Laughs]

“I do have some holy water which is in there all the time actually, and I just think that is quite representative because a lot of kids I knew growing up in the East End in the 80s and 90s in Shettleston - and all over the East End - but it’s a very working class Catholic thing - “Holy water will keep you safe. Keep it on you, keep it by you.” It was just the done thing, even now to this day, my uncles and things will always have it in their car. So my mum, God love her, she is quite a holy wee lady, and she’ll always say, “Take your holy water with you!” But I do think it’s a very, East End-y thing. All the houses that we went to with the wee mammies and the wee grannies, they always had their wee Our Ladies with their holy water in them. My mum’s even got a holy water like you would get going into a chapel to bless yourself in her house. But to me that’s normal, because I never knew any different to that.”

Liz - “It was nice looking back, so that’s the pictures of when they got a big wrecking ball and thingweed it down. It was brilliant. I loved that church, I really miss it but it’s not as comfortable as the new church and it wasn’t as beautiful as the new church. The new church is beautiful, you know, it really is.”

Rebecca - “And you can use it for so many things.”

Liz - “Oh aye, definitely. It’s good for the community isn’t it, and there’s a lot more people go as well, a lot of young people, and that’s good for the church because a lot of these people aren’t here now. You miss them, I miss the old people. Oh I don’t know what I’d have done without that church. I wouldn’t be here the day I don’t think. There’d be nothing to live for, that’s my life, the church. That’s how I’m speaking about the church ‘cause I didn’t do much round about except come to church and that is me, that was my life. I used to take my son walking and I was always drawn to the church so I was, I didn’t come to the church until I was about 32 or something, 33, 33 I think. And it was through, I felt drawn to that church and I started going.”

“I need to help other people because at first when I was thinking of working as a pharmacist lots of people were just so pessimistic and said, “No you will not get the score, you will not get the score.” I tried to study it during lockdown, that’s why I felt like, there is nothing that’s impossible because I’ve seen lots of experiences who couldn’t get the exam but if you try hard you will get it. That’s why I tell my story for people, because when I came there was nothing, nothing at all, even the language, it was very hard. The culture was very hard to me to cope with the people without knowing their language so I needed to learn the language to volunteer to get some experience and get some ideas to deal with people. So I wanted to say just, there is nothing impossible, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. So maybe it is inspiring for others, maybe.”

“It was all derelict ground and they came up with the idea that it’d be a good place to have raised beds and a community garden. So it took nearly two years from start to finish to get the place open. It’s in two different bits, all this bit here you see was all the original phase one owned by the Shettleston Housing Association, the bit you see over there is owned by Glasgow City Council. So they discovered that there was a need for more raised beds so they approached Glasgow City Council and they said, “Yeah you can have the land as long as you grow food on it.” So it’s developed quite a bit from the original concept of a wildlife garden into a community garden. All the raised beds that you see are all rented by the local community, by organisations, schools, nurseries and we have some training beds as well. It’s a tenner a year, which to a lot of people is not a lot of money but to people in this area it’s a week’s electricity or a week’s food, so it is quite a big issue. But for the tenner you get your own set of hand tools, a set of gloves, plus you get all the support, all the guidance about seed and plants, use of the kitchen, use of the barbeque, the pizza oven, everything that’s on site you get to use. It’s not just allotments, it’s a community, and it’s a community group as well.”

Paul - “The runnning was important and it was great to see people make improvements in their health and fitness and mental health but it was also a lot more than just the running that was the attraction to the group. There’s something to be said for shared activities and common goals, and even though when we had a quite a mixed group of runners - we had jog walkers and people who were really just going out for a walk - running is a great leveller. The sense of accomplishment. So if there’s a guy who wants to run a mile or someone who wants to get their Park Run time down to sub 20 or something like that, the sense of accomplishment you have and even the sense of progression, no matter what speed you’re running it’s the same emotions. It’s a great leveller in that way, no matter what your goal is. It’s a good thing in that way and it doesn’t really require the needs for kit and it’s pretty basic, you just need a good pair of running shoes.”

Rebecca - “It’s very universal. And that emotion translates as well. The same emotions of like success.”

Yacoub - “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”

Paul - “Yup, it’s a very individual sport - running and athletics - but within that, in some ways it’s very solitary but it’s always better with a group.”

Yacoub - “I just start my running my first time here, yeah?”

Paul - “I think so yeah.”

Rebecca - “Did you run much before you came to Scotland or Glasgow? Did you run back home?”

Yacoub - “No, not really, I just started here.”

Rebecca - “That’s amazing, so did you know you were such a good runner before?”

Yacoub - “Em, I just like played football before but then I just joined, you know, with Paul, and then we just started running. And yeah, now I just love running, you know.”

Rebecca - “As a youth worker, what do you enjoy doing most with the kids?”

Keigan - “I don’t really know to be honest, there’s so much. I just love the job, like I can’t really narrow it down to one thing. ‘Cause I love building the connections with the weans, I love getting to know all the staff and everything and building my experience as a youth worker and just as a person as well. I couldn’t really narrow it down to like one or two things because there’s nothing really bad about my job. And you’re always meeting new people as well so it never gets boring, like you never run out of things to talk about.”

“I brought my Charter keys and Alex’s church keys ‘cause I just thought if you go back a few years ago when we were in pure brokenness and despair and a horrible lifestyle who would’ve thought that would be keyholders to churches. Like it just blows my mind, I still cant believe it sometimes. [Laughs]”

“As the children over the last few years have got older and things, they’ve just embraced it in different ways as well and as they’ve become more able. We came here a couple weeks ago and they’re finding trees to climb up. Findlay’s getting particularly high on trees now because he’s getting able to pull himself up which is cool. And of course I’m up the trees myself as well with them because I can’t help myself. I think it’s an important place as well because of my connection with my kids and just the fun that we have together and there’s also that kind of awe and wonder I think there’s something about it being in nature, being amongst trees and hearing the birds and that sort of thing as well.”

“Freedom. Frank - what does that mean? If you look it up, Google it, it’s German origin meaning Frenchman, in Latin, ‘free man!’ I was always free and I didn’t know it, do you know what I mean? Oh I love it, I love it! [Laughter] So good man, I just love my life, and you do know what, every painful shameful hurtful step - would I retrace them? Only if the destination remained the same! Looking back you go, “Oh did I really go through that?” You did Frank. And it’s all for a purpose. Because this earth, to me, is a learning process and as humans, we will inevitably make mistakes.”