Malls Mire

Malls Mire was dark and murky and brackish. It stood between Prospecthill Circus and the Polmadie marshalling yards just down from ‘the Clenny’. Why it was there I don’t know and I never knew anyone who did. We just knew that kids seemed to drown in it on quite an alarmingly regular basis.

Thing is, if you’re a mum or a dad and you tell your child not to do something, they will almost certainly do it. “Don’t go near that Malls Mire” my mum would tell me when we were up visiting my Granny who lived in the flats, but sure enough that’s where I’d go. There were always loads of kids at the edge of the mire and you can bet they’d all been told not to go there.

The Mire drew you to it like some sort of malign force. It was dank and evil, stagnant and deadly and it was irresistible to us young kids. ‘Dares’ were dared and the weak were bullied towards its edge and threatened with a dousing. The braver lads made rafts and ventured out in it.

Then you’d hear on the grapevine that another little kid had been taken by it. Rumours abounded that there was a ‘monster’ in the Mire that gobbled up little children then spat them out for the ambulance men to deal with. The whole thing was very sinister.

Eventually, they covered it over, concreted the whole thing, and it was eventually forgotten about. But at night, as the trains speed through Polmadie Marshalling Yards and the wind blows back toward the high flats, oh, it would break your heart!