shoes

I am not good a polishing shoes. I never have been. I make a mess, not only of the shoe, but everything in a metre radius of it. So I find myself standing with my foot up on a box in cities around the world having some one else polish my shoes, when I get desperate. It often costs less than doing it myself anyway (so I tell myself). In some cities (Rio, Mumbai) the polishers are often young boys, who do their job diligently and with minimal communication. In other places, (Santiago de Chile) this job seems to be the domain of older men, who ask polite questions and seem astonished to have a woman's foot on their box. But today the polisher was neither young nor old, mid thirties I am guessing, and I quickly recognised a familiar rhythm to his speech. "Glasgow?" I asked, although I already knew the answer. I then told him some portion of me hailed from the same northern city. A long chat followed (I was wearing super grimy boots). The guy left Glasgow at 18 and had been working his way around the world ever since, cleaning shoes and doing other tasks along the way. He assured me that the rumours are true: there is no city on this planet without a Glaswegian population. He has cleaned fellow Glaswegians' shoes in Berlin, Sydney and San Francisco. Like me, many of these diaspora Glaswegians have foreign accents, but they all assured him of their origins. Glasgow has been exporting people for several centuries now, so I suppose this is hardly surprising, but it was interesting to note none the less.
He cleaned my shoes well. I tipped generously, and we both continued our day.