Quintin Jardine's blog

Heading off this afternoon for a couple of days in the foothills of the Spanish  Pyrenees, in a very nice little spa hotel called La Central, which could not be further from the Central Hotel of my youth, the one in Glasgow that was too posh for me to enter save once, at the only Former Pupils’ dinner I ever attended, a black tie job with a bottle of whisky on every table, dangerous fare for an eighteen-year-old. Happily I didn’t see much of ours, and  anyway, the train home was only a short totter away.

Anyone else remember Glasgow Central Station in the 60’s? Those who do will remember The Shell, the casing of a howitzer projectile on a plinth which was used as a charity collection box. However in all the hundreds of occasions that I passed through the station, as I did every school day from the age of 10, I never saw anyone put even a halfpenny in the slot. No, its real purpose was as a place of assignation, where you met your girlfriend for a night at the movies. It was right in the middle of the concourse in those days, a good position tactically for boys and girls in the event of a first date, following an initial meeting in a dance hall that might have been better lit, for it allowed either party to hide behind the newspaper stall for reappraisal, as it were, and if such was the judgement, to slink quietly back on to the train, or out through the side entrance. (I never heard of both he and she hiding behind the same stall, but it must have happened.) I rush to say that I never did such a thing to a young lady. I took centre stage every time. But it was probably done to me once or twice.

There is no newspaper stall in the Central that we will visit in a few hours. Nor is there a Shell, nor  trains, nor even passing traffic. But there is a very nice dining room, a match for the Malmaison, or La Fourchette any day of the week.