BLAME Prince. Blame a woozy, loping psychedelic pop song from his album Around the World in a Day which tells of “colourful people whose hair on one side is swept back”. “The smile on their faces/ It speaks of profound inner peace,” sings the purple pimpernel. “Ask where they’re going/ They’ll tell you nowhere/ They’ve taken a lifetime lease on Paisley Park.”
The circumstances might be materially different – instead of a rental agreement for the duration of my time on earth we’re talking a 25-year mortgage (eek) – but still involve a municipal green space, smiles and (hopefully) a liberal dose of inner peace. In short, and to put this grotesquely contrived introduction out of its misery, her nibs and I have moved to Paisley. To a house across the road from a park, to be precise.
Our cats seem periodically unconvinced of the benefits but the human members of the household take a more positive view. I didn’t need my arm twisted to swap a one-bedroomed flat for a three-bedroomed ground-floor conversion with a big old garden, a whopping driveway and a garage (with an inspection pit, gents).
Eager to investigate our new environment, we took a stroll into the town centre last Saturday, a journey lasting a mere 10 minutes which took us past an uncanny number of hairdressers, barbers and beauty salons. Soon we were ascending School Wynd, a charming cobbled street mere yards from some of the town centre’s less salubrious spots, into the small but sumptuous district of Oakshaw, our heads swivelling as we drank in the handsome residences surrounding two buildings which reek of a depth of ambition now long gone: the John Neilson Institution – a former boys school now converted into flats – and Coats Observatory.
Google them. Better still, do what we did and visit them yourself. You’ll not get into the former but the latter is open to the public. Go on a Tuesday or Thursday night through the winter and we might even bump into each other – on those evenings they run viewing nights, and I for one cannot wait for them to start.
On the way home we stood and gawped at the town hall, the abbey, the Russell Institute and Anchor Mill, a fraction of the many buildings that deserve far more fetching surroundings than those which have been allowed to colonise Paisley in recent decades.
Unless you’ve been on Neptune these past few weeks you’ll know the town is aiming to become the first UK City of Culture north of the border in 2021 (I know, I know: it’s not a city). There’s work to be done and money needs spent, but the bid deserves the full support of everyone in the west of Scotland and beyond. And if it needs a theme song, I have a suggestion.
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