Small Finds #2

The Loneliest Bench in Glasgow

The loneliest bench in Glasgow sits on a low hill in the south of the city. The bench sits on the hill. No-one sits on the bench. I have passed it most days for several years and have never seen anyone sitting there. That seems not to be its purpose. It is not a bench for bum and back, but for the eyes and mind.

It is a portrait of loneliness, a perfect composition, silhouetted against the sky. There is something heraldic about it in summer: dormant on an azure field. But it better suits cold winter mornings when the air is pale and clear. At that season its stand-offish companions, a pair of trees a little down the slope, have shed their leaves, and the three of them – beech, birch and bench – seem to spell out some runic phrase that might be important if only we could read it.

I have said that the bench sits on a hill, but really it is little more than a steep rise. At its foot is a run of shops bookended by funeral parlours. The bench, in such a neighbourhood, takes on a symbolic air. It stands for absence, loss. It goes with the too-big bed and the empty place at the table.

Benches, of course, sometimes become memorials. Small brass plaques record the names and dates of those who liked to sit and watch the world pass. There is a memorial bench in Greenbank Gardens that I have long enjoyed: ‘Muriel Broadbent, Muriel Low, Oh what a wonderful girl to know. 1914-1983.’ Such an elegant tribute, love garbed as wit.

I had thought that the bench on the hill had no plaque. No-one ever sat on it, so no fond memories would accrue. But when I walked up there the other day, I noticed that there is, now, a name plate, dedicated to someone’s late ‘Uncle David’.

It could be that he was the only person who ever took his ease there, and I had just never noticed him. Or perhaps Uncle David enjoyed the bench as an object to be looked at, not from. What, after all, would one see? Grass, railings, traffic, dutiful walkers of dogs. The trouble is that you can’t appreciate the only thing worth seeing – the lonely bench itself. At least so I found as I sat there, huddled in a scarf, writing these last few words.