A bonnie journey back

After hiring a car in Glasgow recently, I drove along Greenock Road, Paisley, and stopped outside number 101, a place I hadn't been since I was nine years old. To see those massive grey blocks of tenement houses stretching for miles along Greenock Road then continuing west along McFarlane Street was to tie the fabric of my life back together, joining the time I'd come to know in sunny Australia as a migrant kid to my first nine or so years.

My mother was a dressmaker and when we lived here she seemed always to be straightening or remodelling the curtains in the bay windows that extend the living rooms of these places. In the bay window of our old ground-floor flat, stood a woman of my mother's age, hairstyle and build, critically examining the curtains, pins in her mouth. It was as if we hadn't left.

Catching sight of me open-mouthed outside, my hand still on the open car door, the woman waved and the spell broke. Of course she wasn't my mum. This was not an episode of Doctor Who, though there are, or were, several authentic blue police phone boxes scattered around the area.

Aside from rebooting my childhood memories, such as trudging to Mossvale Primary School in winter through snow, and taking the skin off my knees in falls while sliding wilfully along the frozen puddles that formed in long depressions in the pavements, Paisley has much wider appeal. It's the largest town in Scotland – it somehow hasn't yet qualified for city status – and the home of the famous Paisley print, a legacy of the town's importance as a centre for textiles in the early 19th century.

Paisley Abbey, regarded as one of the finest churches in Scotland, has a history dating back to the sixth century, when a priory was established on the site of a Celtic church founded by Saint Mirin. In 1245, the priory was raised to the status of an abbey, answerable only to Rome. I can remember being marched into the abbey as part of a phalanx of school kids each year to listen to mandatory church services before being released into the delirious freedom of school holidays.

The grassed front yard of my old home in Greenock Road seemed so much smaller than the one I remembered playing in, a legacy perhaps of my being smaller at the time. But Scotland is a small country, especially when compared to Australia. I recall being driven from Paisley to Glasgow and thinking it was a long way. It's about 12 kilometres. Glasgow today seems a million miles from the town depicted in a hundred routines by Billy Connolly and others in which violent drunks roam the streets or do the one foot stuck to the pavement dance outside pubs. Not for nothing did a head butt come to be known as a "Glasgow kiss"

But the Glasgow of the current century is as cultured and cosmopolitan as any European capital. The city frequently appears in "best destination" lists and was declared the winner in a recent Rough Guides poll of the world's 15 friendliest cities (Melbourne came in at No. 10; Sydney didn't appear at all). The truth is that in contrast to their reputation as mean and flinty, Scots are actually kind and welcoming.

Glaswegians take particular pride in their city, and why wouldn't they? Glasgow is a UNESCO City of Music and it hosts an average of 130 music events every week across the gamut of musical expression. As well, there's the Style Mile, a shopping precinct that runs from Argyle Street in the south to Sauchiehall Street in the north. Here you'll find retailers such as House of Fraser, John Lewis and Scotland's only branch of Hamleys, arguably the finest toy shop in the world.