Beatcroft

I have written elsewhere about Glasgow’s St Ronan’s school, in which I was a daytime weekday prisoner until the age of six. There I was taught cursive handwriting that became an embarrassing handicap when we moved to Troon and I was enrolled in the brutal hellscape that was Troon Primary. At Barassie Street it was the Marion Richardson method of half-printing that still irritates me so much if I come across it my double-jointed wrists ache.

I was only half-fluent in old-school handwriting when I arrived and nobody could actually read what I was putting down on paper. So I applied half of what my fellow pupils were being taught to what I already sort-of knew, and that’s what I’ve been working with for the last 64 years. Until first typewriters arrived (what a godsend – clarity and speed, even using just four fingers) and then computers. I sometimes wonder if I’d ever have managed to write a book if it hadn’t been for that Amstrad 8256 and its successors.

I somehow managed to scrawl through university using a variety of medium-nib fountain pens – they didn’t hurt my hands like ballpoints, and I still have a fascination with these implements. Which is just as well, as it turns out marriage celebrants, of which tribe I am a member, must use a fountain pen and permanent archival ink on wedding documentation. Black Parkers Quink, says the Lerwick Registrar. That’s all she wrote.

But some folk these days have never used a fountain pen in their not-very -young lives, and with weddings looming, I became aware that my penmanship was very far from fluid. Also that my various fountain pens were clogged and scratchy. So I’ve been doing some penkeeping. Flushing, cleaning and practising.

Hence what you will find if you scroll down: a rhyming meditation on the decision by Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum to withdraw the Egyptian mummies that have thrilled and scared me since childhood from public exhibition, due to “a lack of consent”. I have painstakingly (and painfully) written it out using a Parker and a Lamy. The Lamy pen was far superior. Hurt less. the ‘Mummification’ poem does not exist in any other form. The Curse of Cursive. Or a blessing.

That’s followed by the playlist for the new Pollokshaws Cadillac show and a link to the Mixcloud stream. It features some very rare demos and B-sides. More to come in future editions, if there’s a demand.

Pollokshaws Cadillac, volume 18

Out of Time — Siobhan Miller

Side Note — Dropkick

In the Right Light — Alex Cornish

Sing Me to Sleep (feat. Neko Case) — Fran Healy

Sandy Land — Robin Williamson

If Wishes Were Horses — Kris Drever

Elvis Was My Brother — Dean Owens

Ae Fond Kiss — Rachel Sermanni

All Will Be Well — Michael Marra

Wet Field Day — Elephant Sessions

Lonely Never Win — Mike Heron

Nobody’s Bizniz — Last Chance

River Detectives — Chains (acoustic)

Iain Shaw and David Shrigley — Dinosaur Egg

Brian McGlynn — Blue Memories

Woza — Echoes of Another World

Memphis Louie and the Rockin’ Firebird of Death — Sandwick Road

Alex Macdonald — The Thin Red Line