Among the city's many treasures, none shines brighter, in my view than the Burrell Collection. After checking into my hotel, I hastened there now by taxi, for it is a long way out.

 'D'ye nae a lang roon?' said the driver as we sped along a motorway towards Pollok Park by way of Clydebank and Oban.

 Tm sorry,' I said for I don't speak Glaswegian.

 'D'ye dack ma fanny?'

 I hate it when this happens when a person from Glasgow speaks to me. Tm so sorry,' I said and floundered for an excuse. 'My ears are very bad.'

 'Aye, ye nae hae doon a lang roon,' he said, which I gathered meant Tm going to take you a very long way around and look at you a lot with these menacing eyes of mine so that you'll begin to wonder if perhaps I'm taking you to a disused warehouse where friends of mine are waiting to beat you up and take your money,' but he said nothing further and delivered me at the Burrell without incident.

 How I like the Burrell Collection. It is named for Sir William Burrell, a Scottish shipowner, who in 1944 left the city his art collection on the understanding that it be placed in a country setting within the city boundaries. He was worried not unreasonably about air pollution damaging his artworks. Unable to decide what to do with this sumptuous windfall, the city council did, astonishingly, nothing. For the next thirtynine years, some truly exceptional works of art lay crated away in warehouses, all but forgotten. Finally in the late 1970s, after nearly four decades of • dithering, the city engaged a gifted architect named Barry Gasson, who designed a trim and restrained building noted for its airy rooms set against a woodland backdrop and for the ingenious way architectural features from BurrelPs Collection medieval doorways and lintels and the like were incorporated into the fabric of the building. It opened in 1983 to widespread acclaim. Burrell was not an especially rich man, but goodness me he could select. The gallery contains only 8,000 items but they come from all over from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome and nearly every one of them (with the exception of some glazed porcelain "gurines of flower girls, which he must have picked up during afever) is stunning. I spent a long, happy afternoon wandering through the many rooms, pretending, as I sometimes do in these circumstances, that I had been invited to take any one object home with me as a gift from the Scottish people in recognition of my fineness as a person. In the end, after much agonizing, I settled on a Head of Persephone from fifthcenturyBC Sicily, which was not only as stunningly flawless as if it had been made yesterday, but would have looked just perfect on top of the TV. And thus late in the afternoon, I emerged from the Burrell and into the leafy agreeability of Pollok Park in a happy frame of mind.

 It was a mild day, so I decided to walk back to town even though I had no map and only the vaguest idea of where the distant centre of Glasgow lay. I don't know if Glasgow is truly a wonderful city for walking or whether I have just been lucky there, but I have never wandered through it without encountering some memorable surprise the green allure of Kelvingrove Park, the Botanic Gardens, the fabulous Necropolis cemetery with its ranks of ornate tombs and so it was now. I set off hopefully down a broad avenue called St Andrews Drive and found myself adrift in a handsome district of houses of substance and privilege with a comely park with a little lake. At length I passed the Scotland Street Public School, a wonderful building with airy stairwells that I presumed was one of Mackintosh's, and soon after found myself in a seamier but no less interesting district, which I eventually concluded must be the Gorbals. And then I got lost.

 I could see the Clyde from time to time, but I couldn't figure out how to get to it or, more crucially, over it. I wandered along a series of back lanes and soon found myself in one of those dead districts that consist of windowless warehouses and garage doors that say NO PARKING GARAGE IN CONSTANT USE. I took a series of turns that seemed to lead ever further away from society before finally bumbling into a short street that had a pub on the corner. Fancying a drink and a sitdown, I wandered inside. It was a dark place, and battered, and there were only two other customers, a pair of larcenouslooking men sitting side by side at the bar drinking in silence. There was noone behind the bar. I took a stance at the far end of the counter and waited for a bit, but noone came. I drummed my fingers on the counter and puffed my cheeks and made assorted puckery shapes with my lips the way you do when you are waiting. (And just why do we do that, do you suppose? It isn't even privately entertaining in the extremely lowlevel way that, say, peeling a blister or cleaning your fingernails with a thumbnail is.) I cleaned my nails with a thumbnail and puffed my cheeks some more, but still noone came. Eventually I noticed one of the men at the bar eyeing me.

 'Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?' he said.

 'I'm sorry?' I replied.

 'He'll nay be doon a mooning.' He hoiked his head in the direction of a back room.

 'Oh, ah,' I said and nodded sagely, as if that explained it.

 I noticed that they were both still looking at me.

 'D'ye hae a hoo and a poo?' said the first man to me.

 'I'm sorry?' I said.

 'D'ye hae a hoo and a poo?' he repeated. It appeared that he was a trifle intoxicated.  

I gave a small, apologetic smile and explained that I came from the Englishspeaking world.

 'D'ye nae hae in May?' the man went on. 'If ye dinna dock ma donny.'

 'Doon in Troon they croon in June,' said his mate, then added: 'Wi' a spoon.'

 'Oh, ah.' I nodded thoughtfully again, pushing my lower lip out slightly, as if it was all very nearly clear to me now. Just then, to my small relief, the barman appeared, looking unhappy and wiping his hands on a tea towel.

 'Fuckin muckle fucket in the fuckin muckle,' he said to the two men, and then to me in a weary voice: 'Ah hae the noo.' I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement.

 'A pint of Tennent's, please,' I said hopefully.

 He made an impatient noise, as if I were avoiding his question. 'Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?'

 Tm sorry?'

 'Ah hae the noo,' said the first customer, who apparently saw himself as my interpreter.

 I stood for some moments with my mouth open, trying to imagine what they were saying to me, wondering what mad impulse had bidden me to enter a pub in a district like this, and said in a quiet voice: 'Just a pint of Tennent's, I think.'

 The barman sighed heavily and got me a pint. A minute later, I realized that what they were saying to me was that this was the worst pub in the world in which to order lager since all I would get was a glass of warm soap suds, dispensed from a gasping, reluctanttap, and that really I should flee with my life while I could. I drank two sips of this interesting concoction, and, making as if I were going to the Gents', slipped out a side door.

 And so I returned to the twilit streets along the south bank of the Clyde and tried to find my way back to the known world. It's nearly impossible to imagine what the Gorbals must have been like before they started tarting it up and inviting daring yuppies to move into smart new blocks of flats around its fringes. After the war, Glasgow did the most extraordinary thing. It built vast estates of shiny tower blocks out in the countryside and decanted tens of thousands of people from innercity slums like the Gorbals into them, but it forgot to provide any infrastructure. Forty thousand people were moved to the Easterhouse estate alone and when they got there they found smart new flats with indoor plumbing, but no cinemas, no shops, no banks, no pubs, no schools, no jobs, no health centres, no doctors. So every time they wanted anything, like a drink or work or medical attention, they had to climb aboard a bus and ride for miles back into the city. In consequence of this and other considerations like lifts that were forever breaking down (and why, incidentally, does Britain alone among nations have so much difficulty with moving conveyances like escalators and lifts? I think some heads should roll, frankly) they grew peevish and turned them into new slums. The result is that Glasgow has some of the worst housing problems in the developed world. Glasgow Council is the largest landlord in Europe. Its 160,000 houses and flats represent half the city's total housing stock. By its own estimates the council needs to spend something like .3 billion to bring the housing up to standard. That doesn't include provisions for new housing, but simply making existing housing habitable. At the moment its entire housing budget is about .100 million a year.