August 2021

One of the sharpest, funniest books ever written about Glasgow Freshers Week, Glasgow University, 1973. Getting on for a half a century ago, and I was swilling about Gilmorehill with hundreds of other hapless 17-year-olds, simultaneously thrilled with myself and absolutely terrified. Swaggeringly confident second-and-third years told us world-weary tales of drinking, political activism and…

Deep-fried, Kevlar crusts, the Domino’s effect and the Brigadoon option Bellshill, Lanarkshire, home to so many of my formative food experiences: The iced drink (ice cream soda) and super frothy, utterly tasteless milky coffee, both products of 1960s and 70s Italian cafes. The pre-gospel meeting Sunday frenzy of phenomenal home baking (Ulster Scottish, courtesy of…

If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit… McVitie. Once a Scottish name for a Scottish biscuit, a company founded in Edinburgh and then subject to ever-more-convoluted takeovers until now, with the closure of the factory bearing that name in Tollcross, Glasgow, It’s just a label. The Turkish multinational Yildiz Holdings, rebranded as…

Chittery bites, Troon Swimming Pool and vending machine glories The best soup came out of the Troon Swimming Pool vending machine, all salt, fat, flour, onion powder and, though we wouldn’t have known it then, monosodium glutamate. It was scalding hot and went a little way towards reducing the hypothermic shivers induced by compulsory swimming…