I LIVED in Garthamlock until I was about seven or eight before moving down the road to Springboig.

From my childhood bedroom window on Gartloch Road, two structures rose up into the sky over the flats behind us. They were of course the Garthamlock and Craigend water towers.

Their massive cylindrical tanks sit atop long spindly legs, making them look like something from The War of the Worlds, gleaming white when the sun would hit them.

I have always been obsessed with them. I liked that one was a lot taller than the other, making it look like it was standing beside its wee brother.

Coming back from trips to Ayr or Loch Lomond with my granda, you could see the water towers as you came off the motorway, like they were waiting for you, greeting you like old friends.

As a wee guy, I had no idea what they were for. Obviously, I was told they were water towers but that meant nothing to me.

On a walk one day to Hogganfield Loch with my maw and the dug, I requested that we go by the water towers so I could have a good, close look at them.

I was amazed to see that there was a door at the base of each of the towers. That meant there must have been a way to get to the top and I’d finally be able to unravel the secrets of these concrete monoliths.

Obviously, access was denied to me by my maw who told me to stop being daft.

On a visit to see my great-granda who stayed in Cranhill a few weeks later, I was able to get a good look at another of these water towers – The Cranhill Water Tower. This one is square and brutal looking. At the bottom, it is guarded by a wire sculpture of Poseidon, God of Water.

From a quick flyby in the motor, I could see the door at the bottom of this one as well but, letting my eyes drift further up the central column, I could see glass panels showing a staircase inside.

Now I don’t know what happened in my brain at this point, I don’t know how I arrived at the conclusion I made, but I thought straight away that at the top of the Cranhill water tower was, obviously, a shop. A shop that sold jackets, specifically.

I asked that we go there to get my new jacket for going back to school one year and was met with confused looks from my family and was instead whisked off to the Forge.

I also thought that when my aunties spoke about going to “the dancin” it meant the Provan Gas Works for some reason, which looked to me like big, futuristic nightclubs.

Perhaps this shows I’ve always had a fertile imagination or maybe it means my grasp on reality has always been quite tenuous. The various structures around Glasgow like the ones I’ve mentioned have always fascinated me, and I like to imagine that everyone from here had their own ideas about what they really were when they were younger.

Their own mad theories that they believed in steadfastly until adulthood and the accumulation of knowledge stole the fun of it from them.

Last week, I got the Craigend and Garthamlock water towers tattooed upon my body.

Something I’ve wanted to do for ages but was, to be perfectly honest, too much of a coward for a long time.

I wanted them on my ribs but, having already had something inked on one side of my ribcage, decided I wasn’t ever going through that kind of bone-shaking pain willingly ever again.

I elected for my stomach instead, just under my ribs.

Sitting down in the tattoo place, the guy asked me if I was sure that was where I wanted it.

“Aye,” I said. “On the ribs is too sore.”

He just laughed and said, “Aw, mate,” sympathetically.

Seconds later, I was regretting this decision as he used the needle to draw the long straight lines of the tower. It felt like I was being sliced open.

“What are these, by the way?” the guy asked me.

I explained, while sounding like I was dying, how they stored and supplied water for homes in the East End and how I’ve always been fascinated by them.

Just as the pain reached unbearable levels, and I swear I started to see stars, it was over.

I looked at it in the mirror and was chuffed to bits. I showed the tattoo to my pal who has the Cranhill one tattooed on him.

“Nice to be able to take a wee bit of home with you wherever you go,” he said.

And he’s right. That’s something I hadn’t thought about when I got it done.

Now, no matter where I go or wherever I end up, I’ll always have one of my favourite views there for me to look at.