About

Blogging about travel, history and ficton.
I am an ex-Londoner living in Glasgow. Once you are seduced and kidnapped by a Glaswegian nothing else quite compares. There’s no going back but I swear she said we were moving 500 miles south not north when I got on the train. I have a wife who dresses in a ’40s style and causes panic amongst tired old men who think the war is back, two red-haired daughters who conspire about their bewildered parents in fluent Gaelic, a greyhound who looks sad and an elderly cat who only moves to change her sleeping arrangements.

Glasgow is a vibrant, energetic city famous for football, architecture, dominating the Turner Prize, humour and a music scene that seems remarkably overlooked by the UK press. Its history gives it a left-wing outlook derived from shipbuilding and industry, but a grandness built on the wealth of sugar plantations and slavery. The best thing about Glasgow are the people: funny, warm, down to earth and friendly.

It is also riven with division, stricken by poverty and ill-health and governed by complacency. The Glasgow Spirit eternally tussles with the Glasgow Affect. And it never ever stops bloody raining. It makes London feel like Bali.

However, this blog is less about Glasgow and more about general travel (although I don’t get to travel much these days so more trips to strange places in Scotland), history and fiction. It’s actually a bit of an experiment to increase my social media skills for my job, and, since I scribble things as an antidote to my computer-chained internet job, it seemed like a good idea to chain myself more to the computer and post them instead of letting them fester in rotting digital dust.

Bit ironic that but enjoy!