Tchai Ovna: Not Just For Hippies!

The fol­low­ing, by Allan Brown, was pub­lished in the last Sunday Times Ecosse sec­tion (there’s no direct link, as the Times’ site is an unholy mess):

If there’s one thing worse than hip­pies, it’s hip­pies with a griev­ance — a state that rather goes against the spirit of being a hippie in the first place, I’d have thought. But such is the case at the Tchai Ovna tea room in Glasgow’s west end, where the teas come from exotic lands and have names like Condor’s Mucus. The place is about to have a devel­op­ment of flats built in its vicin­ity, pro­vok­ing a hippie threat to occupy nearby trees in an effort to slow the bulldozers.

“This is about more than just a bunch of hippie tree-​huggers trying to stop the builders,” said the owner Martin Fell, over­look­ing the obvi­ous fact that it’s pre­cisely about hippie tree-​huggers trying to stop builders. “We employ 15 people and our busi­ness is under threat. It’s not just about us. The coun­cil has given plan­ning per­mis­sion to the devel­op­ers, show­ing utter dis­re­gard for the demo­c­ra­tic process and the wishes of the community.” The wishes of the com­mu­nity have been expressed, he adds, in a 500-signature peti­tion, with the added sup­port of the bands Franz Fer­di­nand and Belle & Sebas­t­ian. Not that this devel­op­ment threat­ens Tchai Ovna’s prop­erty. Rather, says Fell, it will limit the light that gets to the tea room’s garden.

So, to get this straight, 22 fam­i­lies are to be denied attrac­tive new homes so that the Mama Cass memo­r­ial lupins can grow proud and tall. And to pre­vent this, the hip­pies are pre­pared to damage sur­round­ing trees by squat­ting in them and scratch­ing them with their tam­bourines and those little bells attached to the bottom of their trousers. This is truly far-​out logic. Mugs of Condor’s Mucus all round.

What a wrong-​headed, pathet­i­cally prej­u­diced load of old cock!

Okay, so hip­pies are annoy­ing. But when hip­pies set up a tea shop sell­ing some 200 teas from across the world - and I really mean across the world, the owners travel across Europe and the Far East to get their stock, hence the ‘silly,’ over-​literally trans­lated names for the teas - in a beau­ti­ful set­ting on the banks of the River Kelvin, with a won­der­ful secluded garden out­side and a cosy-​but-​scruffy room inside, I think I can for­give them for having long hair and inter­est­ing beards. And, when the coun­cil give them less than a week’s notice to chal­lenge plan­ning per­mis­sion, then pro­ceed to use the Labour group’s block vote to make it impos­si­ble for the deci­sion to be coun­tered, I think I can for­give them for get­ting angry about having their liveli­hoods taken from them.

And what’s this rot about depriv­ing fam­i­lies of homes? The only people to ben­e­fit from the devel­op­ment are the devel­op­ers, and the spec­u­lat­ing land­lords who will snap up flats so they can charge extor­tion­ate rents to, no doubt, young, child­less professionals.

As for the ques­tion of light in the garden - a valid con­cern in itself, for me as a cus­tomer - the real issue is not that the ‘Mama Cass memo­r­ial lupins’ will wilt, but that, with light blocked by a tower block, and months of noisy con­struc­tion, even the most diehard Tchai Ovna devo­tee will find it impos­si­ble to drink there in peace. And the tea shop will go out of busi­ness. Leav­ing fif­teen people on the dole.

So, to get this straight, Brown would rather see a small number of people cash in at the expense of 15 long-​term jobs made pos­si­ble by the sort of entre­pre­neur­ship organs like the Times usu­ally applaud? And, to get this straighter, he’d rather see a tower block than a beau­ti­ful wee garden? And, let’s be ruler-​straight about this, he’d rather see 22 yup­pies bag them­selves a river­side apart­ment than see hun­dreds of Glaswe­gians enjoy and ben­e­fit from a tea shop that, to be per­fectly frank, is the best fuck­ing place in the West End, tea shop or oth­er­wise? Far-​out logic indeed!

Sadly, Brown’s inani­ties are nei­ther here nor there - the loss of Tchai Ovna looks inevitable - but if Martin Fell and the other work­ers at the tea shop want to protest, they’re well within their rights to do so, and the last thing they need is to be under­mined by some sniffy hack so far out of touch with the com­mu­nity he is meant to serve that he can’t, erm, see the wood for the trees, and would rather make a few cheap cracks at the expense of the world’s eas­i­est target (daft old hip­pies) than help save a place that makes the West End a place worth living in. (That’s the ulti­mate irony here: cre­at­ing homes while destroy­ing the very cul­ture that makes those homes so desirable!)

So, if you live in Glas­gow and are pass­ing Otago Lane, do drop in to Tchai Ovna for a cup of tea (go with a pot of White Monkey rather than the Condor Mucus) and I’ll bet that within five min­utes, you’ll be sign­ing their peti­tion and pledg­ing to help stop the devel­op­ers in any way you can. Unless, of course, you’re Allan Brown, seem­ingly the only person to ever cross the thresh­old with­out falling in love with the place.

Posted at 6pm on 21/07/04 by Jack Mottram to the news category.
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Tags: glasgow, politics, rants