Twinkle, twinkle little....shopping centre.

So I gave in to the temptation of Audible's Bill Bryson sale and bought "At Home: A short history of private life" (for the very reasonable sum of £5.99 - honestly, I'm not on commission from Audible.co.uk, although I probably should be). I started listening to it on the bus on the way into work this morning and at the sound of his voice (it's narrated by the author, I should add) immediately I was swamped by memories.

More precisely, I should say, a feeling of remembrance. I am a firm believer in precision - language, I feel, is a precise tool for conveying meaning and without careful choice of words we are simply being lazy, content to settle for a rough approximation of our thought processes. Clarity is important for without it we can never truly approach a perfect understanding of one another. Just because a perfect understanding of each other isn't possible doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to attain it. But I digress.

Bryson's voice transported me back in time to when I worked at a 6th form college and was in the fortunate position of being able to walk to work. Not that I always availed myself of this opportunity, you understand, but it was nice to have the choice. Anyway, I would make use of the time on these walks (it was 50 minutes or so) to listen to audiobooks and to this day both the voices of Bill Bryson and Michael Palin serve as a time machine for memory and will forever be evoked by the smells of early summer mornings.

There was one passage in the first chapter that I heard this morning wherein he described how visitors to the Crystal Palace exhibition in London in 1851 were confronted by a glistening, glittering sight (the acres of glass comprising the building). A sight of such novelty (to them) that we, utterly accustomed in this modern world of glass and steel, are completely unable to imagine the impact of such a sight. I disagree, but only slightly.

I remember, as a boy of about 15, going to Glasgow one Saturday afternoon with a few friends. In that time and at that age, a trip to the big city wasn't a common occurence for us, it was something of an adventure. It was a bright sunny afternoon as we took the train from Johnstone and as we crossed the River Clyde there, off to our right, glinting and glistening in the sun, was the enormous, astonishing, glass edifice of the newly-completed St. Enoch Centre. I'd never seen anything like it before. Now, as an self-inflicted exile living in England, it's been many years since I last visited the St. Enoch Centre so I can imagine that it's been shrunk by time and life experience. However in my memory it lives on undimmed, a memory of a smaller brighter world the like of which, jaded by life(as we all are, despite our best intentions), I'll most likely never see again. But I saw it, once.