We are sailing

On Friday evening I did something I haven't done for about 30 years....
I went "doon the watter in the Waverley."
This is a colloquial Glasgow expression referring to a previously popular activity enjoyed by Glaswegians. It meant sailing 'down the water' (i.e. down the River Clyde) usually in a paddle steamer.
When I was a young boy in the 1950s, living in Port Glasgow (about 30 miles downstream from the centre of the city) I used to watch these steamers regularly from the window of our house and at that time I knew each of their names and could identify them all- The Queen Mary II, The Jeanie Deans (her chief engineer was a neighbour of ours) the King George V, and The Waverley, among others. They sailed to such exotic locations as Campbeltown, Tighnabruich, the Kyles of Bute, Rothesay, Millport etc.
Sadly, there is now only one survivor of these more leisurely days - The Waverley- now the last sea-going paddle steamer in the world.
The original Waverley was in fact sunk at Dunkirk, but a replacement was built in 1947 and it was the last of the Clyde steamers to go out of service when "going doon the watter" went out of fashion and holidays to Majorca and Ibitha became the preferred option. A group of enthusiasts have managed to keep the Waverley going, however, and sailing down the Clyde has become something of a novelty again.
It is, of course, a very different river now. Once it was a noisy, bustling waterway on whose banks were being built some of the world's largest and best ships, like the great Cunard liners. Now the only ships built on the Clyde are warships.
It was a beautiful evening and I really enjoyed the sail, especially as we glided past the place where I was born and I was able to see it from a completely different angle.
I always enjoying seeing familiar places from an unfamiliar perspective, whether that is from the air as you come in to land or from the sea or a river, or just from the other side of the street.


I think too often in life we imagine that we know a place, or a person, or a truth, (or even God) when in actual fact we have only seen them from one particular angle, and in one particular light. It's the job of poets and artists and musicians, and maybe occasionally preachers, to shake us out of that complacency and waken us up to the fact that there is always more, so much more, than we saw before.