The last time I was at the Louisa Jordan I was seeing Leonard Cohen, not a clinician. It was then the SECC, a concert hall which spawned others – the Hydro and the Armadillo – on what is now called the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. Today it’s an emergency hospital.

If you’ve been to a concert here, and you take the four-minute journey by train, you will be familiar with the approach – the Smartie tube, a sealed pedestrian tunnel which runs down from next to the station entrance for several hundred metres, turns over the Expressway, and down onto the concourse. It’s normally jammed with concert-goers.

It wasn’t on Monday when there were just two security men guarding the mouth of the tunnel. “It’s a sealed site,” one said. “Do you have medical appointment?” I had. “Can you show me?” Which I did.

Inside the tunnel the asphalt is divided into painted green and red lanes, for coming and going, or perhaps the other way round. There’s monitoring at the door of the hospital, using hand sanitiser is a must, then you go through into the echoing height of the entrance corridor where the franchises are closed and the beer taps are dry although there is one open, selling food and drinks. But not coffee to me. Staff only. There’s another reception with Covid-related questioning then I’m directed to an attendant.

Up to then nothing has really much changed until you go through the doors from the wide corridor – as you would in the past into the hall to take your seat. It’s quiet with no support act being largely ignored, no jostling and no-one clutching a drink. Not even the normal hubbub you get in hospitals.

The vast arena is now partitioned off into different specialisations, wards and clinics, and subdivided into cubicles for examination. Looking up at the latticed steelwork of the roof about 30 feet above it felt slightly eerie, like a temporary set, or, rather, a massive field hospital in a war zone, which is exactly what it is. Because of the pandemic pressure on hospitals in health board areas, many outpatient appointments have been recycled to the Louisa Jordan to cut down on waiting times. I’m not sure how successful that is, or whether other treatments are being put back, which is surely the case. I suppose a Holyrood inquiry after the fact, when it will be academic, will establish the truth of it.

Afterwards, I was again walking alone up the incline to the station, on the long, final stretch, past where the tube has doglegged right, glancing down at my paper (some of us still buy them).

I was on my side of the divide, the red side, and when I looked up ahead a tiny figure, at least 50 metres away, was walking on the same side towards me.

I looked down at the ground, checking I was in the right lane, pushed my paper inside my pocket and when I looked up after no more than a second or so the figure had disappeared. It wasn’t possible. There are no doors or exits from the tunnel. But it happened.

Roads of the future

THE latest futuristic idea, for our utopian, carbon-neutral world, is what might be called Scalextric roads. Tens of thousands of miles of motorways and down to the humblest byway will be embedded with wireless charging points so our electric cars will be topped up as we go.

There used to be a show on TV called Tomorrow’s World where all sorts of inventions that would make our lives dramatically different in the future were previewed, notable only because almost none of them ever came to pass. My wager is that this one will join them. But imagine if it did take place – you try to take a sharp bend and end up covered in stoor under the settee.

Appy teenagers?

FIONA Shackleton, the Baroness of Belgravia, is England’s most famous and expensive divorce lawyer. Among the relationships she brokered the sundering of were Charles and Di, Fergie and Andy, and Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. Mills even tipped a jug of water over her.

Now she’s working on a compatibility app for teenage school kids who might be contemplating marriage although that’s a bit previous, surely? It’s based on Exeter University research which found that the most frequent causes of relationship failures were unrealistic expectations and incompatibility. Well, duh to that.

The idea that headstrong teenagers are going to be dissuaded from marriage because an app tells them so betrays a serious lack of knowledge of young people. This could be a Tomorrow’s World idea, like paper underpants, floating bicycles and the worm omelette. Here’s mine: a divorce app that obviates the need to pay for lawyers like Shackleton.

Hitler’s helping hand

DID Hitler play a part in Jimmy Shand’s journey to stardom? Well, that’s right up there with the daftest stories of the year. According to The Courier, as the drumbeats of war were deafening in 1939, Hitler is said to have stepped in to make sure that a prototype accordion made in Germany was delivered to Jimmy in Dundee.

“Hitler apparently took some piano lessons in his youth and he agreed that it could be sent out to Sutherland Street in Dundee and the rest is history,” his son, also Jimmy, told the paper. It’s a far-fetched tale that can’t be gainsaid because all of the principals are dead. Jimmy Senior past away 20 years ago this past Wednesday.

This is a more likely one, recounted by my old editor, the suave and dignified Brian Groom. The accordionist John Kirkpatrick once visited him. As he was leaving, the great man handed him a copy of his latest tune book. Kirkpatrick said: “Oh, thank you very much.” Shand said: “That’ll be £12.50.”

All bets on by-election

I BET Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP Margaret Ferrier had a cushy Christmas. She’s the parliamentary refusenik who has trousered more than £20,000 (plus expenses) since she flagrantly broke Covid rules and subsequently refused to resign. She has a well Brasso-ed neck, does Ferrier.

You’ll recall that on Saturday, September 26, she felt she was exhibiting Covid symptoms, took a test then travelled to Parliament on the Monday two days later. She had confirmation that she was positive that evening, but took the train back to Glasgow the next day. She had also been to the beach and a hairdresser over the weekend – she might even have performed the conga with other passengers up the corridors of the Avanti train for all I know.

On the Wednesday, she “coughed” (excuse the Covid reference) to the parliamentary authorities and on Thursday, October 1, she reported herself to Police Scotland.

If it were you or I our goose would be cooked (a Christmas nod) and we would already be paying the £10,000 fine in instalments. But since then a curious inaction. So, for three months, Ferrier has been collecting her taxpayer-paid wage and carrying on.

The police and Crown Office moratorium has meant that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has not been able to pass judgment, which would – and will – result, I’m sure, in a House of Commons suspension of at least 10 days.

That would then trigger a recall petition in the constituency and you can bet, indeed I will if Willie Hill will take it, that more than one-in-10 of the voters would sign it, which would force a by-election and she’d be out on her ear.