Things to do in Glasgow on a Tuesday

Last night, after being at a friend's house, we were driving home and noticed a massive plume of dark grey smoke drifting over the Glasgow skyline from somewhere down near the Clyde. Despite the fact that we had reached the front door to our flat, something made us decide to go and seek out the source of the fire as it looked like it was quite close by and, well, what else is there to do on a Tuesday night? Better to go rubberneck at a glorious inferno than watch Big Brother.

So we set off again, up into Jordanhill, looking at the ever increasing plume of angry-looking smoke towering across the twilight sky of Glasgow, trying to anticipate what, exactly, was burning that could make such an impressive and ominous black cloud. We drove for a good 10 minutes like this, expecting at every block to finally catch sight of orange flames and a building on fire... but it kept disappearing into the horizon until we were out as far as Yoker and then Clydebank. At this stage, it started to become apparent that it our jolly expedition had got a little out of hand and that we were totally sick for driving all this way just to see a fire and should turn back... but the smoke looked so close and it seemed to be calling us closer and closer! So we pressed on.

At this point, we'd been driving for about 15 mins and started to notice that we weren't the only car which appeared to be heading towards the fire, in fact there was a growing stream of them in front and behind us, flanked on either side by pedestrians, all of whom were wandering like wide-eyed zombies towards the source of excitement. Slowly, as we turned left into one of the docks, an enormous, leaping fire emerged, belching forth thick, black smoke and making terrifying cracking and creaking noises which sent up bright jolts of sparks into the night air. But what was most astonishing, was the sight of a huge crowd of people (mostly kids) in the distance, silhouetted against the fire, whooping and screeching with wild delight as the fire towered higher and higher across the river. It was like that scene from Dragnet where everyone is riding motorbikes and wearing fur trousers on their way to a devil-orgy.

So we stood there for 2 minutes and then got back in the car and went home to watch the end of Big Brother.