The one we left behind

"Up Sauchie, doon Bucky..." and Argyll Street as a given. When I was a wee girl, the posh street in Glasgow had to be Sauchiehall Street. Argyll Street had Lewis' with its amazing 'moving staircase' (you went there just to see it!) Buchanan Street had McDonald, Wylie Lochhead.

But when you needed a haircut or your mum wanted to get ideas above her station in the dress department, you went to Sauchiehall Street, where ruled Copeland and Lye, Daly's, Pettigrew and Stephens and Watt Brothers, the last of which lingers on, the oddest shop in creation! The others, which I remember as late as the early 70s, are now only echoes in some of the facades.

Sauchiehall Street is a sad place with too many vacant shops, pound stores and filthy windows, too much litter, too many cyclists in the pedestrian areas and too many street beggars. To walk up the ever smarter Buchanan Street, turning west at the Concert Hall and walking 100 metres, is to enter another world. Waterstone's hangs grimly on and there is the statutory M&S, although much lower in the company batting order than Argyle Street's behemoth! But the rest is, if not silence, then Santander, Ann Summers and The Works.

Today, the forgotten street was at its best on a fleeting summer morning, but in comparison with the new Galleries development or The Merchant City or the planned refurb of the east end of Argyle Street, it is forlorn. Something should be done. I don't know what.