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We feared curry. My parents were more than nervous; I was terrified. Mum’s wee brother had become a curry convert and we were following in his experimental footsteps up an aromatic stair to the Kashmir in Sauchiehall Street. This would have been the late 1960s and the only two restaurants in Glasgow I remember Uncle…
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I was thrilled to be asked by Cliff Hanley’s family to write an introduction to the republished Dancing in the Streets, which had an enormous influence on my life and career. And on many others I think, including the great Ian Jack. My foreword follows below. You can order the book (published by Birlinn) in…
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Welcome to the Beatcroft newsletter. This week there’s an essay fuelled by the news that the top appetite suppressant drugs are going up in price – and popularity. Read or listen to me reading it. A piece of doggerel on the same subject and then an hour-long Mixloud/Spotify collection of tunes to stimulate your appetite.…
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Five pieces of doggerel loosely to do with motorised accommodation units in a Scottish context. These were written at various times, provoked by midges, the Covid restrictions, the Great Baillieston-Sturgeon Motorhome scandal, and the dozens of ‘stealth vans’ currently infesting Shetland… The elderly traveller’s farewell to camper vans and motorhomes A camper van’s not for…
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On not-dancing, being a medical sanitation and hygiene executive, and featuring a two-hour playlist of my favourite Northern Soul and Tamla tracks I don’t dance, much to my wife’s annoyance. At least, I don’t dance if I can possibly help it. Sore knees, ignorance of the steps involved in the more obscure Scottish Scottisches, jigs…
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The three freemasons got on the Glasgow train at Reading, sat in front of us and immediately began talking, loudly about their Lodge and how one of them (young, frisky, wearing, of all things a Freemasonry sweat shirt) could progress through the various hierarchies of masonhood from Junior Deacon to Senior Deacon, Warden and everything…
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The softestSupermarket breadMy father’s words:“The quick and dead”Or was it “the whiter” and“The quicker”?The memories mergeThey fade and flicker“Eat it all upYou simply must”Even the blackened Pan bread crustsOn loaves baked freshOr toasted staleEnamel crackedAnd fillings failedFluorideSo it was saidLoch Katrine’s water, LeadFrom ancient pipesAnd better brushing wouldDo what no Gobstopper couldAnd solve our Dental…
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“In a progress up-stream, moreover, memory is not inseparable. Memories gather about us, but against the current memory can be let go, and the stream will carry it away.” Eric Linklater, The Dark of Summer You can listen to me reading Southside (Slight Return) by clicking on the player below, or the text follows the…
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All come to look for America: Del Amitri and me You know The Sopranos title sequence? Tony’s trip from Manhattan to Newark on the New Jersey Turnpike, soundtracked by The Alabama 3? Thirty-nine years ago I was driving a hired splitter van at the start of a journey initially to Florida, then California and back…
