FROM the leafy streets and glorious parks to the bustling shops and busy cafes, Glasgow’s west end has always been a city hotspot.

Did you grow up there? Have you special recollections of days gone by?

The Evening Times Thanks for the Memories series of reader events rolls into Hillhead Library on January 31, from 10am until 12 noon, and we want you to be involved.

Following on from the success of similar events in the Gorbals and Bridgeton, we are hoping the people of the west end will turn out to tell their stories and share their photographs.

Our aim is to create a words and picture archive, built on the remarkable tales our readers can tell, ensuring they remain for generations to come.

Do you remember the old shops on Woodlands Road? Did you visit Kelvingrove Park as a child? Perhaps you have happy memories of your schooldays in Hillhead or Dowanhill or Partick.

The west end, which is home to Glasgow University, has a transient population, so Ralph Green, is an unusual case.

The 72-year-old grandfather and retired lecturer has lived in the west end for almost his entire life – apart from three years when his work took him to Fife.

“There is an edge to the west end, a community spirit, you don’t get anywhere else and I love living here,” smiles Ralph. “I do a lot of work with David Hayman’s charity Spirit Aid, I was involved with my local residents association for 14 years and I have campaigned for the likes of the Children’s Wood and the Botanic Gardens…community is very important to me, and the west end is a special place.”

Ralph grew up in a tenement on Arlington Street, off Woodlands Road, the son of Alan William Green, a shoe shop manager and housewife Pearl Hanley, who met at the Locarno dance hall. He was the middle child and fondly remembers hours of playing outside with his older brother Alan and younger sister Jacqueline.

“We were always outside on the streets, in the parks, making our own fun and using our imaginations, searching for discarded lemonade bottles as you could get tuppence for them,” smiles Ralph. “I remember playing hockey with walking sticks and tennis balls on roller skates down West End Park Street, and inventing Secret Seven style adventures ‘doon the dunny’ – one day we created great excitement when we found an old gun and the police had to be called.”

Ralph recalls the shops along Woodlands Road, including Rigby’s the grocer’s, where you could buy a bag of broken biscuits and Hepburn’s the confectioner’s.

When he was 15, Ralph’s family moved to Otago Street.

“The aspiration was always to move to Kelvinbridge, or Knightswood,” smiles Ralph. “Knightswood was the peak – everyone wanted to live there.

“I remember the pictures houses – the Gem, on Great Western Road beside Burnbank Gardens, and the Seamore and Blythswood cinemas in Maryhill.”

He adds: “I was a paper boy so I knew all the streets around here. I once did a paper round with Liberal Democrat MP Menzies Campbell, who worked in the newspaper shop on the corner of Montague Street and Great Western Road and heavens, could he move fast. He did become an athlete of course.”

He smiles: “I also did a milk run, for Sloan’s Dairy at Carrington Street – I remember the big metal barrow full of glass bottles.

“Many of us were in the Scouts and Boys and Girls Brigade in those days, of course and on Sundays I remember going to church and then parading in Kelvingrove Park behind Woodlands Bowling Green – it’s a shame you don’t see that any more.”

We’d like to hear your stories and see your old photographs as part of our Thanks for the Memories series. We will be at Hillhead Library on Byres Road on Tuesday, January 31.

The drop-in event, from 10am until 12 noon, is open to anyone with fond memories of the neighbourhood and we’d love to see any old photographs, cinema tickets, newspapers or other artefacts you may have kept from the ‘old days’. If you can’t make it along, please send your stories and old photos to ann.fotheringham@heraldandtimes.co.uk