retiredmartin

July 2025. Glasgow.

Back at Glasgow Central from edgy but exciting East Kilbride I had a couple of hours till my £66 return to Sheffield,

sadly not long enough to attempt a visit to Carluke’s craft bars but time aplenty to walk across the Clyde for a curry.

That area southside down to Hampden Park is a treasure trove of simple curry caffs, the sort you associate with Manchester’s Northern Quarter, but the Village is a more Anglicised (can I say that in Scotland ?) restaurant, with plenty of local couples having the lunchtime deal (and a bit of pizza trade).

But Curry-Heute, who’s been here 105 times, instructs me to have Lamb Desi Quorma (NOT korma),

and Hector is right. I applaud myself for actually making the right choice for once. Lamb, on the bone.

With a couple of rotis and a soft drink it’s closer to £20 than the tenner on the set meal, but I didn’t need to eat again that day, which is just as well as Warrington was shut.

I believe Americans come over here just for curry, which in truth should always be consumed after your last beer of the day (though Blackpool Jane and Mrs RM have odd ideas on that subject).

They certainly travel for pubs like the Laurieston.

I suppose I could have walked past, and revisited the Pot Still or the State Bar or even Tennent’s for Bass, but could YOU walk past ?

No you couldn’t, and you wanted to see if last year’s change of ownership had led to any unfortunate changes.

You almost feel obliged to do an inventory to confirm it’s still the same old Laurieston.

Fear not, even that Stranglers painting is untouched.

A symphony in red and brown, as someone might have wrote, rather too predictably.

There’s a reassuring smell of, well, beer, whatever that smells like. What there isn’t is a lot of beer actually being drunk, bar a few pints of Guinness and a bottle of Bud. My last visit was pre-Covid, and it feels much quieter than I remember.

For a third time, the Fyne Ales cask (not Jarl, sadly) is on the OK side of good.

Which just shows, you can have a great pub without great cask.

On the next corner, the Sou’wester continues its long, graceful decline.

Won’t Brunning & Price step in and make a go of it ?

And that was Glasgow, bar the obligatory 20 minutes in the Modern Art gallery and Glasgow’s most photographed traffic cone.

A wonderful city to wander, Matt is a big fan, just worryingly quiet.

What glorious views on the way back,

and what a comedown at Warrington Central.