List of posts

  • 2000 YEARS IN FIVE MILES – Glasgow’s stretch of the Forth and Clyde Canal

    Glasgow is a city of displaced ghosts. These are not the banshees and the bogles of our nightmares, but restless spirits, forever trudging the streets and pathways, unable to haunt the landmarks of their lives. The tenement where they were born? Flattened under the tarmac of the M8 that rips through the centre of the

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  • LOOKING FOR 50 PITCHES

    LOOKING FOR 50 PITCHES

    Glasgow’s fabled 50 Pitches playing fields may have been consumed by a motorway and business park, but their outline and legacy can still be traced … The lush green turf of McKenna Park, home of Govan club St Anthony’s, a West of Scotland League side that has been part of the Glasgow football scene since

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  • THE SCOW

    THE SCOW

    The old boat lists, wrecked upon thistle, lashed by a sea of yellow and purple. Here, in this quiet Glasgow corner, up Houston’s Brae and around Mid Wharf Street to an oasis between the basins of Port Dundas at the Forth and Clyde Canal, an abandoned ship is run aground. The M8 may sweep around

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  • HAMPDEN LOST AND FOUND

    HERE’S a quick quiz about Hampden Park. How old is it? Don’t say: 116 years. Do say: Which one? Where did Scotland beat England 7-2 in 1878? Don’t say: Er, was it the West of Scotland Cricket Ground? Do say: Hampden Park. Yes. Really. It’s not a secret our national stadium is the third home of Queen’s

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  • UNITED GLASGOW

    UNITED GLASGOW

    Feet stamp, clouds of breath fizz beneath the floodlights, laughter and greetings echo around a secondary school football pitch in the east end of Glasgow. It’s a cold Thursday night at the end of January, and two of United Glasgow FC’s teams are training. As the noise and movement settles into a routine rhythm, left-back

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  • BRAMBLE JAM

    BRAMBLE JAM

    First published in the Nourish anthology, by the Scottish Book Trust. Author-read stories can be heard here I know my corner of Glasgow as a tangled patch, routes mapped by tiny rose white petals and drawn in swathes of shooting bramble bush. Trailing tendrils pull me along overgrown pathways, behind crumbling walls and into forgotten

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  • ROSE REILLY

    ROSE REILLY

    Eight Scudetti, four Italian Cups, and two French championships: it’s unlikely anyone will ever eclipse the achievements of Rose Reilly. When Rose Reilly wandered away from her home in Stewarton, her three-year-old legs trudged 300 yards to the main road, right across from a big dusty patch of ground. “My mum told me I disappeared around

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  • HYERES – NEXT DOOR TO HEAVEN

    Dragging our cases up the escalator from the Metro into the throng of the Gare de Lyon we round the corner of the main hall and, for a moment, I am rooted to the spot. Around 30 metres in front of us the trains are ranked end-on beneath the sunlit roof of this glasshouse. Steam

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  • PARIS – A TOP CITY BREAK FOR FAMILIES

    IT may well be the city of romance but there is much more to Paris than l’amour and dinner a deux. One of the best destinations in Europe for budget accommodation and cheap public transport, Paris is an exciting place for lovers of culture, food and shopping. But the French capital also offers a particularly

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  • KATHERINE GRAINGER

    KATHERINE GRAINGER

    Gold-medal rowing hero Katherine Grainger never had to look far for sporting inspiration as she rowed towards an Olympic triumph in London last year. But with only 31 per cent of girls reckoned to be taking part in sport – compared to about 70 per cent of boys involved in regular exercise – she shares a

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