Glasgow
-
Those were the days of miracles and wonder… Glasgow 1985, and it’s the Rock Garden in Queen Street, sometimes the Halt in Woodlands Road, the Fixx in Miller Street. All kinds of London record company characters are blowing in via the Holiday Inn to check out the action. The haircuts, the clothes, the drugs and…
-
A long stay in Glasgow, the Covid comeback that began it finally receding. It’s the curse that keeps on giving, this plague, isn’t it? Malevolent in its ever-changing variety of symptoms, this time including desperate wheezing and excruciating toothache, every morning a different molar. Inhaling Sensodyne didn’t help. And no free jags for pensioners under…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
“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…
-
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…
