Monday, April 28, 2014

Some Things You Should Know About Me..........



...............I have this thing for hideous, shabby, modernist architecture.

Tower blocks, concrete shopping arcades, hi-rise car parks, underpasses, urban motorways, municipal buildings, pedestrianised city streets..........

Growing up in a city that was transforming from one brand of hellish to another, I'm very much aware of the best of the old and the worst of the new.

The City Chambers, Central Station, The Art School (or any other Rennie Mac for that matter), Provand's Lordship, Greek Thomson, Glasgow Cathederal, the Merchant City.  Just the tip of the iceberg.  Then there's the parks.  Kelvingrove, Queens Park, Pollok Park, Bellahouston, Ruchill........ some would say The Necropolis even qualifies in the latter category.

A city screaming with history.  None of it mine.

Is that crass?  Self centred?  Possible.  It's also understandable.  We relate to our environments in a visceral manner.  The high rise flats, the concrete flyovers, the dank underpasses, they all have that imprint in my infant mind.  The M8 at St Georges Cross, viewed from Kelvinbridge, about 3/4 of a mile away seemed to hold a strange, even exotic lure to me as a child, for beyond it lay the city centre and beyond that..... well, who knew?  

As stated above, I have a great deal of pride in Glasgow's architectural history, but it's the less conventionally aesthetic, modernist, nay brutalist constructions that were rattled up in the ten years prior to and following my birth that form my sense of  identity for the pace I live, the place I am from.

In short; I Heart Rennie Mac, but have you ever stood on the Anderston Footbridge and just felt the world flow under your feet?

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Some Pertinent Information

I don't know if anybody reads this.  More to the point, I don't know if anybody I know reads this.  Does it matter?

Regardless, I shall continue, if only for my own benefit.



In November of last year I came home to find Diane, my partner & mother of my child, dead on the kitchen floor.  I had received a last text from her at about 4.45 pm whilst I was at work and had attempted to contact her without success. I just thought she'd dropped her phone and couldn't get to it due to her bad back........

The vain attempts to resuscitate her, the surreal 999 call, the house being invaded by paramedics, then Police, being taken to the station for a statement..................  All are indelibly etched in what passes for my soul.

A blood clot killed her.  A combination of a hereditory pre-disposition and lack of movement due to a back ailment.  There were symptoms, but neither of us recognised them, so we went on our merry way.  Diane would come off breast feeding so she could take more than just Ibuprofen & Paracetamol, get moving again and all would be fine once more.  

Yeah.........


Diane was my................ well, I'll leave you to fill in the blanks.  It's nobodies business and I'm not into emotion porn.  She was my whole life and you don't feel that until you've lost someone.  It's the tragedy of all relationships if you're emotionally stunted enough............

I have Calum to look after now, and he's an irascible wee beastie.  He's almost 10 months and nearly walking.  Needless to say, he's my best mate.  Friends and family have made sure he wants for little, apart from maybe a few Duracells for dad when he comes in from work and the kind, loving soul who carried him for nine months and nurtured him for the first months of his life.

Ewen