Toast

Was Hippocrates a season ticket holder at Cathkin? Stone memorial hidden away at the back of the terracing.

It's always nice to get aquainted with the appliances in ones new home. The Hoover, the washing machine, the cooker and the central heating. Oh, and the smoke alarm............

It was Sunday morning (ok, it was 1pm, but that's still the morning as far as I'm concerned.) and I'dstuck some toast on. I absently wandered through to the living room and stuck the tv on, only to become slightly transfixed by the hypnotic drone of the F1 car racing. God! I miss Murray Walker. The only man in the world that could make watching paint dry sound exciting. Instead we have a couple of inane public schoolboys to add to the tedium of watching 24 men driving round in circles for an hour and a half.

.........but I digress. It was around this point the bloody smoke alarm went off and I realised I'd burnt me toast. Thankfully nothing was on fire, but what to do about the infernal racket the alarm was making. I opened doors/windows to let the smoke out, but to no avail. I then tried holding the button on the alarm casing. Still nothing. next I unscrewed the casing and tried to wrench the battery out, only to find it was connected to the mains and any further tampering could see me doing a rather entertaining 'St Vitus Dance' atop a set of wobbly metal ladders. The next few hours are too tedious to go into, but by the time I'd asked the chap upstairs to give me a hand getting the battery out (I'm such a gurl!) and the girl next door had stuck her head in and wished me luck and little else, my nerves (and hearing) were more than a little frayed.

Anyway, my knowledge of household systems is a little clearer now I suppose, but I haven't made another slice of toast since............

Taking the nets down. All part of yr duty as a Thirds player.

Ok. Some links. Third Lanark AC have a wee site up. It's not too flash but it does tell you when they're playing. It's free, you get to watch the game from the terracing of what was once known as Hampden Park (back in the mists of time), and more recently was the home of the last club to go out of business in Scotland, the original Third Lanark AC . It is just amateur football that gets played at Cathkin Park today, but the last time I went to see them, I came away wondering why I bothered going to Firhill at all. The video of the game can be found here. Mud, meaty tackles, loads of goals and some nice football, just ignore the naff Star Wars theme they've tacked onto the video in post production. Furthermore, if you watch between 7.31 and 7.46 you'll see my lanky frame descending the terrace steps behind the player being interviewed. Yes, I am an old buffer..........

Acrobatics in the penalty area
Panoramic view of Cathkin Park

Cathkin Park

Tedious posts on the subject of football. No3 in a series of 3.

I'm starting to feel like Gordon Ottershaw from Riping Yarns. Spent most of Monday afternoon looking for the fabled home of Third Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers Football Club. Third Lanark AFC for short. Their infuriatingly sad demise can be found summarised here.

(A favourite (apocryphal?) terrace sport of the sixties and seventies was urinating on the backs of the legs of the person standing in front of you. This usually took place when the toilets (an El Dorado bottle) were enagaged and you were too drunk to find the stadium latrines. )

I made my way to Mount Florida expecting to spend a few hours going round in circles before going home with nothing in the camera. That was until out of the corner of my eye I spotted something resembling a dilapidated and disused football ground. Within a few minutes I was ankle deep in mulched leaves and looking down a fuck off big wedge of concrete terracing. Hard to believe that tens of thousands of people used to stand in this now ruined and overgrown stadium and watch a really quite successful football team do their thing. It was actually originally called Hampden Park and was the second home of Queens Park FC. It also hosted a Scotland vs England International in the late 1800's. The 'Hi Hi' as Thirds were known (not 100% sure why) moved into the ground in around 1903 when Queens Park moved over the hill to the third and final incarnation of Hampden Park, where they play to this day in tandem with the Scottish national side. The ground was renamed New Cathkin Park.

Cathkin Park is a remnant from an age when major football grounds were breathtaking amphitheatres of deep, curved terraces designed to hold vast amounts of people and not a lot else. Facilities were usually negligable and shelter from the elements was minimal unless you got under the enclosure or you had a main stand seat. You only really see these sorts of stadiums on the continent now, the vast majority of clubs in Britain opting these days for grounds that look at first sight to be made of lego, all tidy right angles and lovely plastic coloured tip up seats.

(My guess is that the sections of terracing overgrown by trees consisted of old style, possibly pre-war gravel and railway sleeper steps. The modernised concrete steps and steel crush barriers seem to have been spared most of the ravages of time and nature. )

Anyway, there I am, wandering around in the fading light and damp air trying to imagine the place packed to the rafters , say season 1960/61 in which the team scored 100 goals and finished third in the league. Instead the derelict surroundings only conjour up images of what the atmosphere at the ground must have been like in 1967, during it's last days, with crowds of a few hundred turning up to watch a doomed team go through the motions.


( Looking towards the site of the now demolished main stand. Park benches fall sorely short of modern day all seated stadium requirements.... Still, I'm sure the SPL will make arrangements.... )


Like the abandoned Blaze pitches I used to play on the place has a ghostly aura, but there are no memories here for me to cast up and make light of the situation. The damp, oppressive weather and the bare trees growing out of the older sections of terracing can only put one in mind of the grounds sad demise rather than it's glory days.