Beatcroft

Pollokshaws Cadillac, volume 9

The latest Pollokshaws Cadillac show is streaming now on Mixcloud here. Or click the image above. Full playlist at the end of this newsletter, but it includes JJ Gilmour, Thrum, Beggar’s Opera, Pictish Trail, the Hallanshankers and something exclusive and new from David Heavenor.

The ghost of Jo Grimond

It’s been a hard week, with my work as a funeral celebrant taking precedence. That’s been geographically widespread, taking in Shetland’s second most northerly island of Yell, the deep south mainland community of Levenwick and the west mainland outpost of Walls, pronounced Waas, and indeed written as such in Shetland dialect.

All three are beautiful places, but Waas has a special, west-Highlands vibe I think, and I can never resist gazing at the now-faded electoral graffitti on the bridge parapet next to the shop. “Jo X” is all it says. Lord Jo Grimond, that is, Liberal peer and before that much-loved MP for Orkney and Shetland. He it was who steered the Zetland County Council Act through parliament, which gave Shetland unprecedented local control over on — (and (slightly off) shore oil and salmon farming developments. Control which has been gradually eroded and centralised in Edinburgh over the years.

Jo Grimond also ensured that car drivers in Scotland’s island communities are exempt from both MOTs, (but not excise duty) as long as the island lacks an MOT station. Cars must be ‘roadworthy’. But as police checking barely exists that can result in some, well. Anomalies. Also you can drive unaccompanied on a provisional licence. Be careful. Even on suburban Arran, if you’re in the firth of Clyde…

Jesus has left the building

Jesus has left the building. That was the title of a 2009 photographic project by artist, musician and teacher Iain Shaw, capturing the conversion stories of disused church buildings throughout Scotland into…pubs, discos, antique shops, theatres and Kingspanned apartment blocks.

Even then, a decade before the fire sale currently under way in which the National Kirk is rushing to offload all but its most financially viable places of worship, there were dozens of churches going, as Philip Larkin’s extraordinary poem has it.

Now it’s reached the stage where the Church of Scotland is pretty much making itself look ridiculous, not to say deranged. It has resorts in Israel and a multi-million pound waste of space and personnel in George Street, Edinburgh. But it would rather get rid of some of the country’s most historic kirks and worse, force communities to raise funds to buy them when they could legally transfer ownership for a handful of beans.

As I write, the Kirk’s properties webpage is advertising for sale – as well as manses, fields, woodlands and halls – an incredible array of churches. Take your pick from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Old Kilpatrick, Irvine, Inveraray, Blairgowrie, Girvan (two), Gretna Green, Dumbarton, Bridge of Weir, Falkland, Invergarry, Forres, Kinross, Broughty Ferry, Clydebank, Anstruther, Galashiels, Craigellachie, Newmilns, Hawick Fraserburgh (two), Colliston, Friockheim and Hownam. It’s all very sad, like watching an olld, sick superstar footballer drunk and begging on the street.

It was announced this week that the Tingwall church, once the ‘mother kirk’ of Shetland and familiar to TV viewers as a location in the TV detective series, had been sold, for something like the third or fourth time since the Church of Scotland dumped it at auction. £35,000 it went for, snapped up by legendary London publican Farika Holden, owner of The Cock Tavern in Kennington. She plans to turn it into “a photography centre” though she will have to deal with fact that it’s surrounded by a working graveyard owned by the local council. I hope she’s serious. A serious house deserved at least that.

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

(Philip Larkin, Church Going)

Bargain dram

I was looking for a kind of everyday cheap, inoffensive whisky and buried down on a bottom shelf at Tesco in Lerwick came up on this for £19: But what on earth is Glenfairn?

Well, it’s Tesco’s own-brand Glen Mysterious, or rather Glen Multifarious, a name covering a multitude of whisky styles – you can get a Glenfairn Islay and a ‘Floral Highland’ as well as this ‘Sweet Speyside’.

It describes itself on the label as having notes of toffee, honey, vanilla, sultanas, emon drizzle cake and white chocolate.

Bottled for Tesco by Whyte and Mackay, Glenfairn has won awards at the prestigious, sort of, International Wine and Spirits Competition. Also the legendary Richard ‘The Nose’ Patterson, Whyte and Mackay’s colourful master blender for many a decade, had a hand or nostril in producing it. Oh, and as the only Whyte and Mackay Speyside single malt distillery is Tamnavulin, that’s what this is.

And for £19, watered to 40% in the bottle, it’s good value, with only a kind of charcoal and sulphur note on the nose (and a mild acrid whiff on the aftertaste) to give away how young some of the Tamnavulin casks used for this must have been. Honestly, for under twenty quid, ye cannae whack it.

The Pollokshaws Cadillac. Listen here

Smile — JJ Gilmour Reflections of My Life (Rerecorded) — Marmalade Blue Boy — Orange Juice

Let’s Go Round Again (12” Version) — Average White Band Ides — King Creosote

Hold It — Pictish Trail

If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It) — AC/DC

Scottish Rain — The Silencers

Rattlesnakes — Lloyd Cole & The Commotions

So Glad — Thrum

Starry Eyes (feat. Gerard Love & Mitch Mitchell) — Radhika Think — Beggars Opera

Born in the City — Glencoe

I’m Not What I Used to Be — Sister John

Come Out Fighting — Easterhouse

Growing Up — Scheme

Cape Wrath — Hallanshankers

Here Once Again — David Heavenor