Ewan Morrison: 'Farewell to little old ladies who are wider than they are tall and old smoking men'

THIS week really is my last tango in Partick. Not that I am ceasing to write – no, you shall have to endure more of me yet – but because I am moving out of the city. The following is an ode to my beloved burgh.

Farewell to Partick, childhood home of Billy Connolly.

Farewell to being within staggering distance of the pubs of Byres Road – and to the pub with the Gaelic name and the grumpiest folk musicians in the world, where a gangster once thought I'd made a pass at him, and to which I have not returned since for fear of my life.

Farewell to Dumbarton Road, with more charity shops than shops, from which I have refurbished my flat and myself these past three years for about £300.

Farewell to Partick Hill, whose slopes I often climbed, marvelling at how it exactly maps the social classes with the dole office at the bottom and the mansion houses of Hyndland at the top.

Farewell to the cartoon characters of old Glasgow who are somehow still alive here – the little old ladies who are wider than they are tall and the old smoking men who line the streets outside the Ettrick Bar diligently spending their retirement money on cancer research (their own).

Farewell to being woken from slumbers by the sound of the drunk at 3am every Sunday shouting 'STEVIE, STEVIE!!!' to the entire street.

Farewell to the skeletal grey man with the sunken eyes who lurks in a certain doorway and who once dropped his syringe on my doorstep.

Farewell to the site of the first ever international football match (1872), and to the place that gave Partick Thistle Football Club its name and hence offered weak liberal types like myself the possibility of a way out of violent confrontation when stopped by angry mobs demanding an answer to the question: "Rangers or Celtic?"

Farewell to White Street, renamed Shite Street, for bringing the world the "Shite Street shuffle" – a dance-like movement done on tiptoes so as to avoid stepping in masses of indigenous dog crap.

Farewell not to the Orangemen, for they are few here, but to the legions of orange ladies – the girls who, for want of a holiday in Ibiza, have transformed their faces with fake tan products to look almost healthy, albeit in a bright orange way.

Farewell and all praise to Partick Housing Association, who put a roof over my head within a week of my being made homeless – who gave me space enough to get my life together and, it must be said, ultimately, get out of Partick.

Farewell to the new arrival of Polish Kielbasa sausage and its replacing of the loathsome Lorne.

Adieu to Delizique, the only beacon of hope for miles around in the time of the great culinary depression. Long may it give inspiration to the upwardly aspirational at the bottom of the hill.

I say farewell not just because I am leaving but because Partick too is in a rapid state of change. The "For Sale" signs are proliferating, the delis and luxury flats and joggers multiplying. By the time the new expressway lanes and the foundations for the massive Tesco development are completed, the things I say farewell to now will themselves have started to fade into the past.

Farewell Partick.