As I prepare for four months away to the land of Italians, where the men are famously known for their romantic tendencies, golden skin, flowing dark hair – and where the relationship between the Greek and the Roman Gods becomes a little fuzzy – I can’t help but feel excited to escape Glasgow. I have never left the city for longer than one month at a time – I, like everyone from here, have the infamous ‘fomo’ condition. Nights out in Glasgow can alter according to the choice of club, but we all have our favourite bars, our wee hotspots where we just know we’re bound to bump into people. For first and second years at university this inevitably becomes the Glasgow University Union, where we all happily charge down the sticky tiled floor and bump into a handful of our ‘closest’ pals. Now, older and ‘wiser’, we appreciate the smaller things in life – maybe not the small and overpriced cocktails from the Finnieston strip, but our tastes have certainly become defined over the last few years.
When going on holiday you fear you’ll miss a legendary night out, where the music is hot and finally that guy you’ve seen on a couple of similar nights out will finally appear and approach you, but in reality if you dodged seven days in a classy hotel with your parents just to lock the man down, he ends up not being there due to being away with his beau. We can try and escape the tropics by not hopping on that cheap RyanAir sales flight, ensuring a Glasgow Taxi can still take us to the new places appearing, like Mango on Sauchiehall Street. On Saturday night, while waiting for a couple of pints, I heard a “FUCK ME… you’re hot”. I turn to meet eyes with a tanned, dark haired, stubbly (some cute, some not) and wrinkling forty-year-old man. It’s nice to be complimented so fiercely, but sometimes it would be nice to be approached by someone who’s not a narcissist or a man old enough to be my father.
Why is it single people are famously known for going out on the pull – and do we actually go out to meet someone? When my older cousins and myself would tell my eldest brother that our latest boy drama begun from a night out in Kushion or drinks at Mosquito, he would remind us that these guys would only go out to have a temporary fling, and would be out again the following weekend for their next chance to find some bait.
All Glaswegians know that the best season for minimal rain is Spring, the sun and heat finally melt ice cream, and our Birkenstock’s take prime place in all our outfits. The Kelvingrove Park hill is our prime sunbathing spot, and while the music blares from the speakers of the people confident enough to share their taste in summer belters, men strip and show off their bodies – perhaps not resembling Greek and Roman statues. I’ve noticed some men stand topless to retrieve signals from the Glasgow goddesses on the grass, and, as my friend cleverly put it: “he’s peacocking”. On one Saturday morning, another man, swigging his Buckfast while making his friend record him, kept trying to speak to a group of university girls obviously celebrating their freedom with a picnic. The next moment I could hear him blaring out that he’s Cook from Skins. Classic. He stomped the grass causing havoc but winning no hearts. His older appearance made me think – do these older men really know what they’re doing? My grandmother, when speaking of Italian men, said they made great lovers but not husbands. But, however, during the summer months its hard not to want to have a little fling.
I’ve officially realised nights out are only temporary, and you definitely shouldn’t just attend a night where the last thing you want to do is socialise to just take the 50% chance of bumping into that guy you once danced eyes with across the bar, or the guy who said he’d call and never did. You can get lucky, but isn’t that what it’s all about. Timing is becoming more important to us as we get older, when we feel like we must grab every opportunity that the world throws at us. We may be pickier with where we go for our drinks and who we date, but it’s also about timing and when is convenient for ourselves to start something anew. While going away for four months this summer, I wonder if having a time frame would increase the chances of a fling out in the Italian hills instead of those of Kelvingrove.
The hills won’t only be alive with the sound of music this summer, everyone deserves a new spark with someone and to finally grasp the idea that things can just be temporary, so why bother with a long-term relationship when you can have the opportunity to meet your Roman God? Now that we’ve realized that nothing is permanent and plans are made to be changed, maybe we can finally relax and have things that are going at the right speed for us.
So with all this in mind, I’m off to the hills for four months. Flowers may not be the only things blooming around me, but I guess time will tell. It might be filled with flings, it might not – but rest assured I’ll reveal all in autumn when the leaves start to fall.
Written by: Charlotte Dean
