September 2005

Ah, the glory of Shetlandic skip-diving! Who knows what you’ll find? Alas, the shelves I thought were painted wood turned out to be chipboard, but still, I found room to dump two outgrown, rusted-solid bikes, and the redundant Swedish Mulltoa electric biological composting toilet. Of which more another time. But what was Minnie doing there?…

Arrival: A well-deserved break, having reached Loch Lomond on a Sunday jaunt from Glasgow aboard a slightly-too-small bike. This is taken from the balcony at the Loch Lomond Shores centre, which is a pretty stupid name for a naggingly disappointing development. A Jenners store on the West of Scotland? Hmm…the steamer Maid of the Loch,…

Ah, wondrous Bowling. So many fantastic memories from the days when it was a shabby, rundown repository for mouldering old boats, many of them sheltering long-term residents. It’s slightly, but not entirely, gentrified these days. I used to be the only person, it seemed, who came here. Now? Well, now it’s packed with picnickers. Still…

Locked: Under the Erskine Bridge, on the Forth and Clyde Canal towpath. I half thought of cycling over the bridge (there is a cycle and pedestrian path) and then coming back to Glasgow via the Renfrew Ferry, but my ability to cope with heights is much diminished since I last did that run, some 21…

Whiteinch side, Renfrew Ferry, Sunday morning. I’m sipping instant coffee and eating nuts. This is the last of the many Clyde ferries that used, in the great industrial past, to shuttle workers back and forth. One of my favourite places in Greater Glasgow. If I hadn’t been hungover and on a health kick, I might…

Randy Newman’s song Louisiana 1927 has always sent shivers up and down my spine. There’s something about that opening line: What has happened down here is the wind have changed…Apparently a direct transcript of something said by one of the survivors of the great 1927 Mississippi flood – reckoned as “the greatest natural disaster in…