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Chapter eight
Branching out across Scotland
Glasgow, West and South west Scotland
Glasgow, as we have already heard, ran its own training classes from the very early days of the STGA. Members decided to set up the Scottish Tourist Guides Association Glasgow branch in 1967 after the Edinburgh based Association announced plans to scrap the course for members in the city. Guide William Davies was Chairman and the Lord Provost of Glasgow became its Honorary President. By the early 1980s the Glasgow tourist guide course was being run at the University of Glasgow at Oakfield Avenue by its extra mural department.
Young mum Jan Philip saw an advertisement for the course in the Glasgow Herald and applied. Jan, who was born in Dumfries and brought up in Ayr, married her husband, Ian, in 1969 and worked as a research assistant in hospitals and university departments in Glasgow. She gave birth to a daughter in 1979 and applied for the course three years later. ‘I went for an interview and thought I had no hope in hell,’ she said. ‘Nobody would want to take on somebody who had a three-year-old. But they did and it was a super course. It really was. It opened one’s eyes to the great world of Scotland and through that to tourism. We had two nights a week. I think it was Tuesday and Thursday at the extra mural department and then they organised a weekend away for us into the south west. I think there were just over 30 on the course which lasted one winter.
‘Our first time in a coach with a microphone was exam day. We had two practicals. One to Edinburgh and one to the Trossachs and there were walks as well. The first time I had ever had a microphone in my hand was when I was being examined. I was called forward to the front of the coach. I knew at the time I was in a super place coming down the Royal Mile towards Holyrood Palace. It was just a gem of a spot to be given and they gave me a microphone and I couldn’t think of a word to say. The only time in my life! However when we got to the palace I was still to take them out to the forecourt and talk to them and that was all right. So when I got home and told my husband how terribly I had done he, for the rest of the week and between the next outing, would come at me anywhere in the house with a spoon and say talk about whatever he asked to be talked about. So, by the time they gave me my second chance on the Trossachs day, they couldn’t stop me. Then we sat our exams, written and practical, in 1983 and most passed. One or two didn’t and didn’t reappear. One sat again the next year and did reappear. The course tutor was Innes MacLeod’ Jan continued. Jan says one of the main characters in the Glasgow branch was a guide called Filita Brown. ‘She was a wonderful lady who was Spanish speaking because the family had owned estates in some place in Spain,’ she said. ‘Margaret Houston was very much involved in the training as well. Another guide called Robin Hodge was also very involved with the running of the branch. Fausto Ferrari of Ferraris restaurants was also a member.’
Jan said they met other branch members in Scotland at Christmas parties. When Jan and her colleagues were doing their course, Glasgow was going through a major transformation. The city had been in the doldrums since the closure of the majority of shipyards on The Clyde and there was high unemployment. In 1985 the new Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre was opened on former dockland and started attracting clients from all over the world. Guidelines reported in Autumn 1987 that, with the increasing popularity and importance of Glasgow as a tourist centre, more demand was being made for the services of guides of the Glasgow branch. To meet the increased demand, particularly in the language sector, a training course was organised that winter.
‘There were well over 100 applicants for the thirty places and they were clearly well suited and/or qualified so that selection was not easy,’ it was reported. ‘Two thirds of those
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