St Peter's Seminary at Cardross. "A Future Reclaimed"

March 20, 2016, 1:33 am

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Hinterland at Cardross. March 2016

Above the town of Cardross on the lower Clyde, hidden among trees, lies the crumbling ruins of one of Scotland's most original and dramatic buildings. Fifty years ago this year, on the Victorian estate of Kilmahew, the foundation stone of St Peter's Seminary was laid.

Designed by Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein of the Glasgow based architectural practice Gillespie, Kidd and Coia the building was modern, experimental and brutalist, after the style of Le Corbusier. It is one of the most important examples of modern Scottish architecture.

Designed to hold 100 students, it was completed at a time when applicants to the priesthood were falling. Living conditions for those at the seminary were not always easy. There were maintenance problems with the building and difficulty heating it and preventing leaks. Having spent 10 years living in a multi-storey flat where I had ice on the inside of my bedroom window in winter and a draught blowing through a crack in one of our walls from the rubbish chute, this I can empathise with. Despite this, on a warm sunny day, with shadows falling on the concrete walls and light coming through the roof windows onto the alter of the main chapel, it was always a dramatic place to live.

St Peter's Seminary at Cardross

It closed in 1980, after only 13 years use as a seminary and was briefly used as a drug rehabilitation centre, which closed in the late 1980s. Most of the recovering drug addicts stayed in the old Kilmahew House, part of the Victorian estate, which was easier to maintain than the seminary building. This building abutted against the new buildings, making a dramatic contrast, but in 1995 it was badly damaged in a fire and had to be demolished.

Since then the building has remained a ruin. Most of the glass and woodwork within has long gone, leaving a crumbling concrete skeleton.

St Peter's Seminary in Cardross, in ruin.

Various plans to re-use the building have came to nothing, the design proving an expensive challenge to work with. However, arts organisation NVA have been working on the site for two years now, clearing debris, decontaminating it and removing asbestos. Making it safe. Now they are ready for the next phase of their grand plan. This involves consolidating the building, preventing further, irreversible decay and partially restoring the chapel area and landscape to build a 600 capacity "creative space". The estate will also be refashioned, with the walled garden reinstated. The building will still tell the story of its decay and abandonment. Angus Farquhar, creative director of NVA, was a former member of industrial band Test Dept. With the band and with NVA he has experience of putting on innovative and imaginative, site specific public events. To demonstrate the potential of the building they have therefore produced Hinterland for the 2016 Festival of Architecture, an architectural "son et lumière".

It is an ongoing plan, with funds still to be raised, but look at their website for updates and links for donations.

I was lucky enough to get tickets for my family and me for Hinterland and below are some photographs which I took on our walk around the site. This quick review doesn't really convey the visual and physical spectacle which is the building itself. We had the good fortune to arrive in Helensburgh on a glorious, clear frosty evening. As darkness fell we made our way at our allotted time to the coach on the pier which was to take us to the site. There was the excited buzz of travelling to a wedding party on the coach as we made the 15 minute trip. On arrival we were given an illuminated walking stick (which was one of the highlights of the whole event for my daughter) and directed to follow the path through the forest, lights and sounds coming from either sides of us.

The walk allowed you to tour all around the outside of the building and to snake about inside. The music by Rory Boyle adds to the atmosphere, as an impressive and ever changing light display flutters over the walls of the building. Inside the stars and bright moon are occaisionally seen through roofless gaps in the concrete and a swinging, wrecking ball sized incense ball sways over a pool of rainwater in one hall. Flashes of different layers of graffiti and architectural details catch your eye as you come full circle and return to the coaches.

It is a building I have been trying to see for a while, and part of the challenge with preserving the building is that its inaccessible site means it is out of sight and slowing disappearing. The work can now begin in earnest to save a modernist masterpiece, which has now been made visible again.

(Click on pictures below to expand)

Helensburgh at dusk

Clear skies in Helensburgh at dusk

Darkness falls on Helensburgh

Helensburgh Pier and Greenock on the other bank of the Clyde

Entering the building at Hinterland, St Peter's Seminary, Cardross

Hinterland at St Peter's Seminary, Cardross

Moon over Hinterland at St Peter's Seminary, Cardross

Hinterland at St Peter's Seminary, Cardross

Illuminated trees

Occasionally other visitors are glimpsed through the dark,
here a group stand together in the chapel holding their illuminated sticks

Graffiti inside the building

Hinterland at St Peter's Seminary, Cardross

"Expensive shit" grafffiti by an unknown critic of the building

Hinterland at St Peter's Seminary, Cardross

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Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 1. More Than Just Football?

April 1, 2016, 3:18 am

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What to do in Glasgow when the football is not on.

It is 18 months now since the 2014 Commonwealth Games finished in Glasgow. By most accounts the games were a spectacular success, with all of the sports on display getting great crowds attending from Glaswegians. At any sporting event now it seems obligatory to talk of what "legacy" the games have left behind, there is even a Legacy 2014 website extolling all the benefits the games brought to the city. Did it encourage people to be more active, seek out new sports to watch or participate in? I'm not sure.

During the games I certainly went to see sports that I had never paid to watch before, but realise that, by and large, my spectating has largely fallen back to following Partick Thistle week in week out. My children still enjoy going to their assorted badminton, athletics and swimming clubs but we have not been spectators at any of these sports in the city since the games. The football league having a weekend break for the international matches meant that I was looking for other entertainment last weekend. This made me think about what other sporting excitement people of Glasgow find in their spare time, so I will try a few different sports and see if there is anywhere in town that can match Firhill for thrills.

First up, ice hockey.

Ice Hockey

Ice hockey has been played in Glasgow ever since indoor ice rinks appeared in the city. I have written previously about the history of ice rinks in Glasgow, and when the first indoor rink was created on Sauchiehall Street ice hockey was soon on display there. The building which now houses the ABC venue was an ice rink, Hubner's Ice Palace, from 1895 to 1898. The nascent sport of ice hockey was first seen in Glasgow here in 1896, in an exhibition match on the circular rink here. The sport was invented in Canada in the 1860s, and it was Canadian skater George Meagher who organised this match.

The first international ice hockey match between England and Scotland was at the Crossmyloof ice rink in 1908. Despite the Scots using the sneaky tactic of playing on a rink which had poles down the middle and a bandstand just above head height in the centre of the rink for this match, the English apparently ran out easy winners.

Various Glasgow ice hockey teams have come and gone, as have the ice rinks. In the 20 years of the Scottish National League from 1932 it was won at various times by Kelvingrove, the Glasgow Mohawks, Dundee Tigers and Fife Flyers. Other Glasgow teams have included the Dynamoes, Flyers and (recently resurrected amateur team) the Mustangs. Also worth a mention are the nearby Paisley Pirates, founded in 1946 and playing at Braehead Arena these days, as Paisley since 2007 no longer has an ice rink at the Lagoon Leisure Centre.

Professional ice hockey in the UK is organised under the Elite Ice Hockey League. This league is made up of ten teams, who play from August through until March when the top eight teams play off to decide the champion. Of these ten teams four are based in Scotland, giving rise to some healthy local rivalry.

Braehead Shopping Centre gives its name to the Glasgow member of this ice hockey league, Braehead Clan. If you want to be really pedantic you could say that the team is named after the former Braehead Power Station which occupied this site before it became a shopping centre. To be even more pedantic you could say that they are a Renfrew team rather than anything to do with Glasgow. The shopping centre was built across the Glasgow-Renfrew boundary and as both councils planned to claim rates from the venture it went to the Boundary Commission who ruled in favour of Renfrew and its original ancient boundary. Rather oddly the banner at the side of the rink proclaims that we are in "Braehed Arena Renfrew Glasgow".

Braehead Power Station, demolished in 1980. Britain From Above website

Formed in 2010, the Braehead Clan regularly attract sell out crowds to the 3500 capacity Braehead Arena. For such a new team they seem to have many very devoted followers. It seems the majority of the crowd, at both ends, are decked out in replica shirts, which appear to come in an extensive range of large sizes. The team origins don't really fill me with a warm glow, as they were formed to make up the numbers in the league after the Basingstoke and Manchester teams dropped out. As the Canadian flag above the arena entrance indicates, the majority of the players on the team are from Canada, with a smattering of Scots and Americans thrown in and a couple of Englishmen, Scandinavians and a Welshman.

On the night we come to see them in March 2016 they are facing the Fife Flyers in the second leg of the play-off quarter finals. By contrast with Braehead Clan, Fife Flyers are the oldest professional ice hockey club in the UK. They were formed in 1938 and still play at the Fife Ice Arena in Kirkcaldy where they started out. I like their old fashioned arena and sometimes take my children skating there when we go and visit their granny in Fife. The four sided electronic clock/scoreboard suspended above the centre of the rink just seems to be the way things should be in my imagination. A couple of days earlier Braehead Clan had lost the first leg of the quarter final there. Despite leading 1-0 for most of the match, two quick goals in the dying minutes gave the Fife team the advantage. As we take our seats it is clear that this is another sell out crowd for the Braehead Clan in this important match, and despite specifying home seats when I bought the tickets we find we are sitting beside the Fife support. It is at this point that my wife tells me that as a Fife schoolgirl she used to occasionally go and support her local team and would therefore be cheering for them. Spotting the chance to back the winning team my kids join her in this, leaving only me to cheer along with the "purple army".

Accompanied by synchronised flashing colours from the crowd using their "Braehead intro app" on their phones, the Clan mascot, a Highland coo called Clangus, warms things up with a dance off . As both teams are Scottish we only have one national anthem to stand up for before face off. Last time I came to see them play it was against Sheffield Steelers. It was a bit odd having all these Canadian sportsmen make us stand for Scottish and English anthems.

Clangus gets things going at Braehead Clan

Face off, Braehead Clan v Fife Flyers

It is a fast and furious sport and despite the Flyers seeming to have most of the chances early on the first goal goes to Braehead Clan to even the tie. As the people around me find out after a few quick Google searches, away goals count for nothing so it is still all to play for. A lot of the fun from ice hockey, and the biggest cheers, comes from the players battering into each other and it is not uncommon for all twelve players on the ice to throw their gloves to the floor and indulge in a mass brawl. My first memories of ice hockey are of the USSR and USA playing out the cold war on ice at Olympic Finals over the years and of the Paul Newman film Slap Shot. This leaves me expecting a battle every time I see ice hockey, but with tonight's game being so finely balanced it seems that the real risk of losing the contest if players end up in the sin bin stops us getting to that point. Also the referee seems determined to be lenient and plenty of holding and tripping seems to go unpunished, much to the ire of the Fife fans around me.

Four men battle to extract the puck. All perfectly legal

The game is divided into three 20 minute periods, each of which lasts longer as the clock stops whenever the referees stop play. Whilst the ice is resurfaced by the iconic Zamboni machine between periods and people take the chance to head for refreshments, entertainment comes in the form of fans trying to score a goal through a wee hole for cash, or everyone who bought a foam rubber puck for a pound on the way in trying to get their's nearest to Clangus in the middle to win a prize (we didn't win). Unlike at football, alcohol is allowed (£3.80 for a pint of Carling) and if you are feeling peckish a mixed Scottish-American selection means that you can have a hot dog, nachos or stovies depending on how the mood takes you.

Time to "chuck a puck"

Back to the action

The game see-saws towards its end with Braehead ahead 2-1 on the night, drawing 3-3 for the tie and we go into five minutes of overtime to decide who goes through to the semi-final. With less players on the ice to increase the chances of scoring, the golden goal rule means that it is sudden death. With the game heading towards a possible shoot out Fife Flyers scoot up the ice and blast it into the Braehead net with 22 seconds left on the clock. Fife Flyers progress, for Braehead Clan the season is over.

Tense Fife Flyers fans await overtime

The Fifers sitting beside us are soon on their feet cheering, my family included whilst I sit and sulk. My unerring ability to be always supporting the runners-up in the world of sport continues.

Summary

The game batters along, there is always something happening and my children enjoyed their night. The crowd is mostly in good spirits, with less abuse hurled at players than you get at any average football match (although the ref was told he was going to get the "puck rammed up your fucking arse" by one of my Fife neighbours tonight). We tend to go about once a season to the ice hockey, just for a wee change. I don't see myself getting hooked but it can be a good night out.

Cost - two adults and two children at Braehead Arena = £60
(£44 at Firhill for the same group as children go free, at Fife Ice Arena in would have cost £50)

Next week.....greyhound racing and speedway.

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Glasgow Spectator Sports, Part 2. More Than Just Football?

April 3, 2016, 2:15 pm

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Greyhound Racing and Speedway

As the history of greyhound racing and speedway in Glasgow are so closely linked I will briefly look over both of these sports, which at one time were new and innovative, but both now evoke bygone ages.

The origin of greyhound racing lies in hare coursing, and to try and make it a spectator sport a London venue devised a mechanical hare to lead the dogs along a straight track as far back as 1876. When a Californian track developed a mechanical hare going around an oval track in 1912 the sport of greyhound racing took off. Glasgow's first greyhound track was set up in Carntyne in 1927, on a site which has been derelict for decades just north of the Forge Shopping Centre, recently redeveloped for housing.

After Wester Carntyne in 1927 came the White City Stadium and Albion Stadium near Ibrox a year later, then Shawfield put a dog track in place in 1932. Between 1948 and 1954 there was greyhound racing at Partick Thistle's Firhill Stadium. From 1928 many of these venues would introduce "dirt track" motorcycle racing on other nights of the week to boost incomes. Speedway, as it became known, as it requires a similar venue, has therefore always been associated with greyhound tracks.

Shawfield Stadium on the banks of the Clyde is the only greyhound track in Glasgow still going. Shawfield was initially laid out as a trotting track, for horses. Football was first played at the stadium in the 1870s. Thistle FC were an Oatlands team and an early member of the Football League. They folded in 1895, only surviving in the record books as giving Partick Thistle FC their highest ever league win, a 13-1 drubbing at Firhill Stadium in the Scottish League Division Two. Clyde FC moved to Shawfield in 1898 and it was their home for another 88 years. The biggest crowds at the stadium were, for football, the 52,000 who came to see Clyde v Rangers in 1908 or, in other sport, the 40,000 who came to see local boy Benny Lynch beat Peter Kane in 1937 to defend his boxing world title.

Shawfield Stadium

The Greyhound Racing Association owned Shawfield and planned to sell off the stadium to be developed as a supermarket. They moved Clyde FC out in 1986, who eventually settled in their unhappy Cumbernauld home. When the plans fell through GRA sold it to new owners who took in new tenants, the Glasgow Tigers speedway team who were based here until 1998. Since then it has only housed the greyhounds.

The dogs are paraded before the race at Shawfield Greyhounds

Every Friday and Saturday night the races start about 8pm, with the doors open an hour earlier. There are a couple of bars and a wee restaurant within the stadium, which is a good venue for birthday parties and the like. My children think that the snack bar here does the best chips in town. I don't go often to Shawfield, but every time that I do go I think of my grandad and great uncle Andy, who lived nearby in the Gorbals and made occasional trips to the dogs here in the 1930s. My grandad's tip to bet on the black dog, or trap 5 seems as random and as valid as any other technique.

A normal night will see about ten races, one every 15 minutes or so. Most races are handicaps with the dogs given a staggered start and ending at the finish line below the main stand. Once the dogs are paraded in front of the crowd you have your last chance to back a winner before they are placed in the traps. Like horse racing the point of going to the dogs is to have a flutter, and as with any betting you should only start off with the amount that you are prepared to lose on the night in your pocket, then stop. I'll wager that nobody has ever got rich betting on dogs. You can either place your bet at the various tote windows around the ground, or at the cluster of private bookies alongside the track, who may offer better odds.

The greyhound traps at Shawfield Stadium

Betting options are a straight "win", usually minimum stake £1, a "forecast" - predicting first and second in the correct order (minimum stake usually 50p) or a "trio" - predicting first, second, third in the correct order (minimum stake 25p but the odds and returns are obviously much higher). You can place a "reverse forecast" selecting two dogs to finish first and second in any order (two bets at 50p, so minimum cost £1) or a "trio - all ways" predicting 3 dogs to come in the first three positions in any order (six bets at 25p, so £1.50 minimum stake).

My daughter overlooking the finish line at Shawfield. She's only here for the chips

It's a good night out if there is a crowd of you, but attendances recently seem a bit smaller than they used to be. There has been some concerns raised about the welfare of dogs kept for racing, particularly what happens to them after their racing days are over. If you do have a big win maybe you would consider donating some of it to the Scottish Greyhound Sanctuary or the Greyhound Awareness League. The retired dogs make great pets and we have a friend who adopted a greyhound, a well loved member of their family now.

Cost - Entry to Shawfield Greyhounds is £6 for adults and free for children under 16. Most of the cost thereafter depends on how much you decide that you want to bet. For me it is just as much fun when you have £1 riding on it as £10

Speedway

Glasgow now only has one venue where speedway can be seen, Saracen Park or "Peugeot Ashfield Stadium" in Possil. This stadium was opened in 1937 and is home to Ashfield Football Club, who still play their home matches on the pitch in the centre of the track here. On Sunday afternoons however this is home to the Glasgow Tigers. The Tigers started out in 1946, but have only been based at Ashfield since 1999. Before that they have called various tracks home. White City Stadium in the 1940s, on and off through to the 1960s. Hampden Park from 1969 to 1972, then Cliftonhill Stadium in Coatbridge for four years, spells in Blantyre and Workington, before arriving at Shawfield Stadium in 1988. This was home for most of ten years before they settled in their current home.

White City Stadium, Glasgow, opposite Bellahouston Park,
with the Albion Stadium between it and Ibrox Stadium

White City Stadium used to lie north of Bellahouston Park on the opposite side of Paisley Road West. It was finally demolished in 1972 to make way for the M8 and Govan Police Station. It was part of a chain which had greyhound and speedway venues in Manchester, Newcastle, Hull, Nottingham, Cardiff and London. In Glasgow the White City stadium initially had a grass dog track on the outside with a cinder speedway track inside it. There are some great pictures of it on the "Defunct Speedway Tracks" website.

Signs point the way to the Tiger's stadium

On the day we came to see the Glasgow Tigers in April 2016, the season had just begun and we were drawn by the chance to see them race against their rivals from the other end of the M8, Edinburgh Monarchs. The Monarchs are a team which dates back to 1928 and their existence has been as nomadic, and at times precarious, as their Glasgow rivals. Like ice hockey, this isn't a sport that started its life in the UK and many of the UK based teams are largely made up of riders from overseas. In the case of the Tigers this includes Australia, Finland, Argentina and England.

Glasgow Tigers home stadium

The season starts in April and runs through until October with the Glasgow Tigers usually playing on Sunday afternoons at 3pm. There are 13 teams in the league, playing each other home and away over the season with play-offs at the end of the season for the top six teams, plus various cup and knock out competitions. Today's match was a league cup fixture, with Edinburgh the stronger team on last year's form. This was the first time I had come to see speedway, but the programme and compere easily guided me through the rules. As I am usually spending my Saturday afternoons watching Partick Thistle, the compere was a familiar face to me, with Michael Max providing matchday care to the Firhill crowd on Saturdays and the Tigers' fans the next day.

Michael Max keeps us right, alongside start marshal Hugh McNeilly,
assistant start marshal Heather McNeilly and team manager Stewart Dickson

Entertaining children is a big part of the afternoon here and before the racing started we were introduced to Roary the mascot and a parade of the teams on a flatbed truck before the racing starts at 3pm. Some fans turn up earlier, the doors open at 1pm, to look around the pit areas if that's your thing. The Tigers' name gives plenty of scope for tiger themed songs - "Tiger Feet", "Eye of the Tiger", and Katy Perry's "Roar" all featuring prominently. Every four or five races the track needs brushed and other entertainments are laid on, such as trying to throw a ball in Roary's bin and a children's race against the mascot. It is also a chance to grab some food, or get a drink at the bar.

Roary the mascot

"That's neat, that's neat, that's neat, that's neat....I really love your tiger feet"

Glasgow Tigers team introduced to the crowd

Spectators can stand around the outside of the oval track, or for an extra £1 per person, get a seat in the stand beside the start/finish line. There were 15 races in total, with four riders in each race going flat out for four laps. In each race the home team pair wear red or blue helmet colours and the visitors wear white or yellow. Points are awarded depending on finishing position, 3 points for first place, 2 for second and 1 for third. Nothing for being fourth or not finishing. If you are trailing by more than 10 points at certain stages, you can chose a rider to win double points in the next race, so there are various tactical shenanigans too.

The starting tape goes up, and they're off

It is fast and furious and not without crashes. In the first race, with Glasgow's Nike Lunna taking a good early lead, the race had to be stopped after a Monarchs' rider crashed into the safety barrier. The rider was uninjured (although the safety barrier wasn't) and Lunna was unlucky to lose the restarted race. Even when a race looks done and dusted, mechanical problems can change everything. Tigers' Ben Barker seemed home and dry in the 14th race when his chain came off and he had to push his bike across the line to take one point. At the end of the day it didn't matter and Glasgow Tigers were comfortable winners by 56-37 to win the derby match.

Spectators get close to the action

Danny Ayres of Glasgow Tigers and Max Clegg of Edinburgh Monarchs

A Monarchs' rider comes off his bike and accepts a lift back to the pits

Fernando Garcia is pleased to win a race for the Glasgow Tigers

Drifting around the banked bends

The pits behind the crowd, and an old Police phone box for the team manager?

Crossing the finish line

Overnight rain meant that the track was on the muddy side. As a result of this, finishing fourth in a race meant that a quick sponge-down would be required. The same was true for those standing along the home straight, who ended up caked in mud by the end of the day. However that, plus the smell of the burning fuel and the noise of the engines is part of the attraction surely. The racing can be very exciting, with plenty of nip and tuck. My children had a great time, I quickly got right into it. We will all definitely be back here again, especially if they promise to keep beating Edinburgh as soundly as that.

Mud splattered crowd

Cost - Adults £17.50 each and children £1 under 11 years old and £6 for 12-16 year olds. So two adults and two children £42 plus £1 each to get a seat in the stand rather than just standing.

Next week.....?

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Article 1

April 9, 2016, 6:28 am

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Glasgow International 2016, a Festival of Contemporary Art

Yet again Glasgow International rolls into town, a two week festival of international contemporary art, which arrives here every second year. There are dozens of exhibitions and events on the go until April 25th, which does cause a bit of stress to a completist like me. However to maybe help you chose what to see I will give a quick review of the stuff I have managed to see in the first couple of days. One of the best things about Glasgow International is that it is all free.

West End

I started out at the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow. Apart from a small Glasgow International exhibition, there is an excellent exhibition upstairs here on the history and influence of comic books, including possibly the world's first comic book from 1825, The Glasgow Looking Glass.

Work by William Hunter, anatomist

Work by Damien Hirst, sort of artist

The theme of the exhibition here is to show "moments of mutual synergy" between science and art. What it does show is that the 18th century anatomical casts of a truncated pregnant women and illustrations from a 19th century textbook of histology are far superior works of art than Damien Hirst's Necromancer display cabinet.

Kelvin Hall , Glasgow

The Kelvin Hall is currently undergoing refurbishment before opening next year as the new home of the Hunterian Museum from Glasgow University. Whilst it is still a building site the foyer has been used during Glasgow International to house works by Helen Johnson and Claire Barclay. I'm afraid I was drawn as much by the chance to sneak a peek at the building wrk inside the building as by the artworks on show, but I was impressed by both.

A crumbling room in the Kelvin Hall

Both artists on display here used history as inspiration with painter Helen Johnson creating large canvases riffing on scenes from Ovid's Metamorphosis and reflecting on colonialism (this was the site if the Great Empire Exhibition), and upstairs Claire Barclay's elaborate sculptures reflect on the 1951 Exhibition of Industrial Power from the Kelvin Hall in 1951, but also from the annual carnival that used to be held here.

Claire Barclay's sculptures at the Kelvin Hall

Across the road from the Kelvin Hall, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was built for the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

Upstairs on the balcony, opposite to the organ is a small, but interesting exhibition by Aaron Angel , who also has pieces withing the Botanic Gardens this year. These sculptures (The Death of Robin Hood) reflect pastoral crafts, but skillfully executed and tie in with a program of organ recitals within Kelvingrove.

Four sculptures by Aaron Angel in Kelvingrove Art Gallery

Kelvingrove pipe organ viewed through the sculpture

City Centre

Trongate 103 is a hive of activity with Glasgow Print Studio, Transmission Gallery and Street Level Photoworks all holding exhibitions. Most eye catching is the stuff at Project Ability, an arts organisation supporting people with disabilities and mental health problems. They have a series of drawings by American artist Derrick Alexis Coard, imagined portraits of bearded African-American men. They leap off of the page with colour and vigour, really enjoyed seeing them.

Work by Derrick Alexis Coard in Project Ability

Further up High Street, in what is being called "Civic Room", a former British Linen Bank building in danger of vanishing unless it is looked after, is the work of Brazilian artist André Komatsu. In an early example of Victorian concrete an steel construction, he exhibits Disseminacao Concreta, a life sized clothed body of a man, made from concrete boulders. At the from of the building he also has a piece, Borders 1, on display. I really liked this concrete man, particularly in the shabby back room of this former bank, with the steel door of its safe behind his carcass. It is a lovely use the building

Former British Linen Bank, High Street Glasgow

Disseminacao Concreta by André Komatsu

At their Aird's Lane gallery the Modern Institute have a collapsed steel framework by Monica Sosnowska, modeled on a structure from an Eastern European scheme, with more twisted metal sculptures outside, whilst at their Parnie Street gallery a child-like talking desk critiques the world of art production and distribution. The work is by Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan and looks like the result of a weekend of brainstorming by the Ikea design team when someone sneaked LSD into their tea.

A Petition for an Enquiry into a Condition of Anxiety at the Modern Institute

Monica Sosnowska's work outside the Modern Institute, Aird's Lane

The main hall at the Briggait has a sculpture made of polythene sheets suspended from the ceiling by Heather Lander and Simon Harlow. This may be more impressive when seen at night when they have projections on them. Also in the Briggait are sculptures and drawings by Jock Mooney, which look set for a religious ceremony created by a comic book artist in the style of Frank Quitely.

Part of Jock Mooney's exhibition

There is more humour in the excellent exhibitions within the Mitchell Library. In the main hall Tamara Henderson's giant, totemic scarecrows inhabit this great big space. The gallery invigilator encouraged me to sit in the dilapidated car in the middle of the room to watch the video that goes along with it all. Upstairs in the Jeffrey Room, incongruously set amongst the shelves of leather bound books the works of Jacob Kerray and George Ziffo look like home made banners from a football match but riff on subjects such as racism and commercialiation. This was one of my personal favourites of my day.

Jacob Kerray and George Ziffo at the Mitchell Library

At the CCA Pilvi Takala has multiple video works on display looking back over ten years of work. They are humorous, silly and very engaging, such as trying to get into Disneyland dressed as Snow White, and being refused. I am not always a big fan of video artworks as I am too impatient at times but these are worth watching. Also there is a wall of posters for lost pigeons. Have you seen any of these birds? Some of these have been posted around Glasgow, haven't they, or am I imagining that?

Pilvi Takala

Within the Reid Building at Glasgow School of Art I really liked Serena Korda's suspended fungi, which are accompanied by musical chanting that you hear through headphones whilst walking around if there is not a live performance on the go. Her archival material in the room next door is fascinating too.

Serena Korda's Hold Fast, Stand Sure, I Scream a Revolution

I like the pop art inspired works by Emily Mae Smith on near St Enochs Square at Mary Mary Gallery. Bright, cheerful, but also with dark hints within them. I liked the marching broomsticks from Disney's Fantasia posed like Andy Warhol's gun-slinging Elvises. Pop culture reference overload.

Emily Mae Smith at Mary Mary Gallery

There is plenty to see in the Gallery of Modern Art too, with the main hall filled with sculptures, paintings and videos by Cosima von Bonin. She was born in Kenya and lives and works in Germany. Her works have lots of toy-like sea creatures and "Missy Misdemeanor, the vomiting white chick" who sits astride a huge pink rocket. Tessa Lynch's sculptures upstairs are interesting too and the blurb that goes with it talks about the "questionable existence of the female flaneur, or flaneuse". It is a funny idea to find questionable when the city is ideally set up just now for male and female flaneurs to wander aimlessly, stumbling across things and just observing people.

Sculpture by Cosima von Bonin at GOMA

Southside

House for an Art Lover, Bellahouston Park

A cluster of exhibitions sit in the "Artpark" buildings that sit alongside Charles Rennie Mackintosh's House For An Art Lover in Bellahouston Park. I didn't know this place existed and it has a fantastic permanent exhibition on the heritage, architecture and history of the are, including the shipyards which I spent most of my time here at to be honest. Gabriella Boyd and Marco Giordano fill one shed with engaging paintings and sculpture. For the other works here, I was more impressed with the buildings and gardens, where the hyacinths are just beginning to flower with their distinctive smell that you either love or loathe (*metaphor klaxon*).

Artpark at House for an Art Lover

Scotland Street School Museum, again an overwhelmingly impressive building by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, has a small exhibition in their ground floor gallery space next door to the cafe. This shows work from the varied career of Glasgow born artist Raoul Reynolds. I had never heard of this interesting character. He was born in 1882 and led a nomadic life between Glasgow and Marseilles, and died in New York in 1969. His father was a shipyard owner and his mother from a Marseilles manufacturing family. He was influenced by European avant-garde art movements but doesn't ever seem to have fitted in anywhere. His life story turns out to be more interesting than his work if I'm being honest, with hints of someone having more money than imagination. Perhaps I am just being over cynical.

Work by Raoul Reynolds at Scotland Street School

There are several major exhibitions on at the nearby Tramway, a group show including work by Alexandra Birken, Lawrence Lek, Sheila Hicks, Mika Rottenberg and Amie Siegel. The premse of the exhibition is to explore ideas around production, manufacture and history. Like the exhibitors in the Kelvin Hall the interactions with the building's history is part of that. Many of the spaces used in Glasgow for studio space and galleries are disused industrial spaces, such as this massive tram depot on the southside. Many of the works here are meant to be using that idea, but most of them weare video works and I didn't have the patience to sit through them. I admit I wasn't in the most receptive frame of mind after just being stopped by the Police on the way here for jumping a red light on my bike. At the subsequent set of lights (which were green) two pedestrians then just about bundled me off of my bike by not noticing me. I arrived at the Tramway in a peevish mood. However I was still a bit disappointed by it all. On a side note, could someone at the Tramway think about installing a few cycle racks in the vicinity, there aren't many easy places to chain up a bike nearby. Ta.

A sculpture made of coloured linen by Sheila Hicks at Tramway.

Also in the Southside, Glasgow graduate Josée Aubin Ouellette has a display of ergonomic soft sculptures on the floor of the pool at Govanhill Baths. You are encouraged to put on a pair of felt slippers and go down and loll about on these pieces. I preferred to nostalgically stare at the wooden changing cubicles lining the pool, remembering my childhood swims in Whiteinch Pool.

Govanhill Baths, Glasgow

Who knew that there was a Roller Disco in Kinning Park? (Oh.Well I didn't know). This is the scene for performances by Asparagus Piss Raindrop, the self proclaimed "crypto conceptual science fiction anti-climax band". I have seen them perform before at the Glasgow Tectonics festival and they usually tread a fine line between taking themselves very seriously and being very silly. I am not sure whch side of this line they've fallen this time but I liked the idea of them performing on roller skates to electronic music and live percussion and saxophone. It feels like an unsuccessful 1970s dystopian film that failed at the box office because of the poor special effects and I would not have been surprised to see a young Donald Sutherland with handlebar moustache appear amidst the chaos. Whilst five of them kept skating around and performing three others acted as a transvestite, a saxophonist and compere. You get the gist.

Asparagus Piss Raindrop at Roller Stop, Glasgow

What else?

There is a fantastic amount on show all over the city, much more than I have mentioned here. I plan to head to the Glasgow Sculpture Studios and Glue Factory in the north of the city and to the David Dale Gallery in the east end. I also fancy going back again to see the works at the Art School, CCA and the Civic Room which were some of my highlights.

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Counterflows Music Festival, Glasgow. April 2016

April 11, 2016, 2:22 pm

≫ Next: Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 3. Basketball.

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Review of Counterflows Festival, Glasgow. April 2016

I do enjoy the Counterflows Festival when it arrives in Glasgow. This is now the fifth year of this celebration of marginal, underground and experimental music. In previous years I have mentioned how prominent female musicians are in these fields, and this was almost a theme of the weekend festival this year, with talks on the subject this year. As before it is pulled together by Alasdair Campbell, who despite now heading up Cafe Oto in London, is as hands on as ever in running the show this year in Glasgow.

The festival ran from Thursday night, 7th April, in the University of Glasgow chapel, through events at the CCA, Nice 'N' Sleazy, The Art School, Garnethill Multicultural Centre, The Glad Cafe and Langside Halls on Sunday night.

First up on Thursday night was Irish multi-instrumentalist Aine O'Dwyer performing at the church organ in Glasgow University Chapel. With the organ perched up on a minstrels' gallery in the University Chapel it provides little visual spectacle despite the size and grandeur of the organ. In your imagination you expect to hear a church organ blasting out Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor or at least a bit of Bowie's Life on Mars, so the slowly building drones we get tonight starts off disappointing but builds up into a contemplative piece that evokes the atmosphere of the space it is in.

Mythos of Violins in Glasgow University Chapel

She was followed in the cavernous chapel by Laura Cannell and Angharad Davies playing "Mythos of Violins" with Scottish fiddler Aidan O'Rourke. A commission which evokes a sense of place, I was interested to read that in creating the piece the musicians visited St Peter's Seminary in Cardross, which I had the chance to see last week. Playing three solo pieces from different places within the building initially. They then played the final piece together, walking down through the church from the altar, where the war memorial dominates, a more elegiac and melancholic piece. It was pleasant, but in a bit of a similar tone for the whole evening.

Zeena Parkins

The featured artist of the weekend, Zeena Parkins, opened proceedings on Friday night at the CCA, accompanied by her band, Green Dome. This was an ongoing project "Lace", with improvisers on harp, drums and percussion/ electronics playing a score made of a fragment of lace. It was a brilliant piece and followed by Zeena leading a nine piece band of musicians in a meandering, and cleverly put together piece. It was interesting hearing what she could do with the harp, making it exciting and giving it many voices. A refreshing listen after being a bit disappointed with the performance in Glasgow recently of the lauded harpist Joanna Newsom.

Percussion instrument, and score of lace fragments from Zeena Parkins

Next the audience trooped around the corner to Garnethill to see Australia's Hour House (Mark Leacy and Sam Kenna), followed by Astor and Graham Lambkin but I had bailed by then. I ran off to The Poetry Club to see the legendary dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, who was performing there. As it turns out "I've had to put up with that 'dub poet' thing for years". The term he prefers is reggae poetry, a response to the established genre of blues poetry. I am a huge fan of his poems, which are at their best when heard in his own voice. Highly political and barbed, they describe the experience of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain. It was an electrifying performance. I've only ever heard his words on record before now, where they have a musical accompaniment. Hearing him read "Sonny's Lettah" live, an account of the racist brutality of Thatcher's Britain, was a rare treat.

There was a lot else on in Glasgow this weekend. The Poetry Club event on Froday night was under the Glasgow International umbrella, a city wide arts festival. On Saturday visited various exhibitions ongoing as part of that and stumbled across people marking annual International Roma Day in Govanhill. This is a commemorative event and awareness day, to highlight the Nazi persecution of Roma peoples. Govanhill in Glasgow now has a large Roma population, and they were marking the day with other members of the Govanhill community.

Local children get ready to parade in Govanhill for International Roma Day

Counterflow events got going at CCA, where Lithuanian duo Weld Mignon interwove electronic sounds, recorded voices and a prepared grand piano in an entertaining and imaginative way. This was followed by glorious solo performance from pianist and improviser Pat Thomas. When he plays piano, he plays it 'forte', at times crashing down on the keys, at other times working away at the innards like a mechanic under the hood of a car.

Across at Nice 'N' Sleazy for the late gigs the volume was turned up even higher. Brazilian trio Chelpa Ferro kicked things off with a session of electronic noise and guitar scrambling, one of my highlights of the weekend, though I do regret not picking up a pair of earplugs before standing in front of the speaker at the front of the stage.

Spanish group Billy Bao look the part as a noise rock group, playing here as two drummers and a lead singer/guitarist. I have spent more than a few evenings watching my cousin and her husband play in their various punk/crust/grindcore bands so was expecting 30 minutes of sustained drumming and screeching guitar in the style they kicked off with. However they bamboozled our expectations with prolonged silences, the stage intermittently illuminated and plunged into darkness and recordings of swing/pop melodies interrupting their set. The angsty musings of the lead singer making it one of the strangest performances you might come across. Just for clarification, they are from Bilbao in Spain, their name comes from this and not from their Glasgow footballing allegiance.

New York based experimental hip-hop artist Sensational finished the evening here, the type of eclectic and varied evening that makes Counterflows so special.

Sunday evening finds us on the Southside, home of the lovely Glad Cafe. Four piece Glasgow based art-pop collective Still House Plants, kicked off the evening proceedings. They have also been performing in Glasgow International, which kicked off in the city this weekend. Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen then took to the stage (or took to the floor as she wandered about in front of the stage whilst playing), firstly free jazz tinged improvisation, then accompanying Zeena Parkins playing her electric harp, which when flossed violently with a wire makes some incredible sounds.

Zeena Parkins on harp and Mette Rasmussen on saxophone at the Glad Cafe

The finale of the weekend was across the road in Langside Halls, starting with Zanzibar-based multi-instrumentalist Mohamed Issa Haji Matona, who brought multiple instruments, accompanied by Aine O'Dwyer with vocals and harp. It was a lovely, atmospheric set, and I would have happily heard much more of the evocative African sounds Matona got from his violin.

Matona, tuning up in the stairwell at Langside Halls

We finished off in contemplative mood with a Carnatic Music Ensemble playing the music of southern India. It is not a musical style I know anything about, but it is hundreds of years old and relies on a combination of improvisation and composition, with the voice being a strong component of it all. Here we had four musicians leading a very full house in Langside Halls in a perfect finale to a diverse, eclectic and entertaining four day festival of music.

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Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 3. Basketball.

April 19, 2016, 3:53 am

≫ Next: Swan Lake, Scottish Ballet. Glasgow. April 2016.

≪ Previous: Counterflows Music Festival, Glasgow. April 2016

It is 18 months now since the 2014 Commonwealth Games finished in Glasgow. By most accounts the games were a spectacular success, with all of the sports on display getting great crowds attending from Glaswegians. At any sporting event now it seems obligatory to talk of what "legacy" the games have left behind, there is even a Legacy 2014 website extolling all the benefits the games brought to the city. Did it encourage people to be more active, seek out new sports to watch or participate in? I'm not sure.

During the games I certainly went to see sports that I had never paid to watch before, but realise that, by and large, my spectating has largely fallen back to following Partick Thistle week in week out. My children still enjoy going to their assorted badminton, athletics and swimming clubs but we have not been spectators at any of these sports in the city since the games. The football league having a weekend break for the international matches meant that I was looking for other entertainment recently. This made me think about what other sporting excitement people of Glasgow find in their spare time, so I will try a few different sports and see if there is anywhere in town that can match Firhill for thrills.

Last week I took my children to the ice hockey. Then we tried speedway and greyhounds. This weekend with Partick Thistle out of action due to the Scottish Cup semi-finals we ended up watching basketball.

Glasgow Rocks Basketball

Basketball is one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports. Living in Britain it is hard to really see that, as it has made no inroads into the national consciousness. The game was devised in the 1890's in the USA and it is there that it is at its peak. However it is surprisingly popular in much of Europe. Many of the top European basketball clubs are part of multi-sport clubs, with Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona playing against CSKA Moscow, Panathinaikos Athens and Olympiacos in the Euroleague. Greece would not be the country that you would automatically think of as one of the world's basketball superpowers, but they are acknowledged as one of top international powers. This was brought home to me when I arrived at Thessaloniki airport one summer, in northern Greece, at the same time as a new signing for one of the local teams was arriving. Huge crowds were waiting to greet him at the airport as I got off of my flight, as my friends meeting me there excitedly told me. You would not expect to see that at Glasgow airport for a basketball player.

When I was younger if you were outside playing playing with your friends, it was usually at football or football, but football no longer holds that monopoly on people's leisure time. A wee pitch near my house in Partick is kitted out with football goals and basketball hoops. In the morning you may see a few younger kids playing football, but most of the time the pitch is hogged by groups of older youths playing basketball, both overseas students and locals. They've got all the gear on as well, the big baggy shorts and the club vests.

Basketball in Partick

Professional basketball in the UK is organised by the British Basketball League (or BBL), formed in 1988. Twelve teams make up the current BBL Championship league, with no relegation or promotion to other tiers. There also exists the Scottish Men's National League.

The league runs from September to April, with teams playing 33 games. After this the top eight teams enter the knock-out play-offs to decide the champion. Matches consist of four 10 minute quarters, and overtime played if the teams are tied at full time.

The only Scottish team in the UK league are the Glasgow Rocks. Originally called the Edinburgh Rocks, they were formed in 1998 and were based at Meadowbank Arena. After four years as an Edinburgh team, they moved to Braehead Arena as the Scottish Rocks. Six years later they were on the move again, playing their home matches within Kelvin Hall. The last time that I came to see them must have been about 7 years ago, as I occasionally brought the kids to see them at the Kelvin Hall, as it was easy for us to get to.

With a deal between the team and Glasgow City Council they were renamed the Glasgow Rocks for the 2009/10 season and in 2012 they moved to their current home in the newly built Emirates Arena, in the east end of the city. This arena has one of the biggest crowd capacities in the league at 6,500 if the main hall is used for matches, although usually a side hall is all that is required.

The match that we have pitched up at is the last match of the regular season, Glasgow Rocks against Worcester Wolves. It is a bit of a dead rubber, with the play off qualifiers already decided. In fact the next two matches Glasgow will play after today's game are home and away ties against....Worcester Wolves.

One problem I have had with basketball is that you do seem to be unusually tall to have any chance of success in it competitively. As an average sized Glaswegian, this makes me feel that it is not a sport for normal folk like me. My presumption was that the team would be made up of gargantuan journeymen from around the world. However a surprising proportion of the squad are actually Scottish, with one (Jonny Bunyan) even being under 6 foot tall. At the other end of the spectrum is 6 foot 10 inch tall, Stirling born Kieron Achara. Club captain and UK team co-captain, he is certainly the one that the fans look up to, as he was awarded the "most valuable player" of the season before the match started tonight.

Before taking our seats in the Emirates Arena I got my daughter a big foam finger and for me a beer. Unfortunately it was just a bottle of Budweiser poured into a plastic cup, but as we are deemed too uncivilised to be able to manage beer at football matches, I always find it odd when it is an option and feel obliged to partake.

After the obligatory cheerleaders waved their silver pom-poms about a bit, we are entertained with a medley of naff snippets from the film Braveheart mixed amongst the intro music. Finally the match is off and running. By its nature basketball is high scoring and end to end stuff. It is more physical than the non-contact sport we occasionally got offered in school PE.

Rocks vs Wolves

The scores ticked over and the players swapped around a fair bit. I am guessing that getting game time for everyone was as important as anything else in this game, before the teams face each other again in the play-off quarter finals next week. Worcester have had the advantage over the Rocks in the regular season so far. I'm not entirely up on all the rules of basketball, but the referee tonight did seem particularly picky in some of his decisions, making a stop/start sport just a bit more stop/start than it needed to be.

Glasgow Rocks vs Worcester Wolves at the Emirates Arena

I tend to find sports with a selection of short musical stings and sound effects trying to generate an atmosphere a bit grinding, but I guess it is part of the basketball thing. Also the co-ordination of the chanting from the PA tends to make me want to clam up and rebel. However plenty of the people around me were happy to join in the calls of "DEFENCE- DEFENCE -DEFENCE" making up for my reticence. In the breaks between the quarters of the match a variety of child-friendly entertainments took place on the court, with children and families being a big part of the audience.

Things were evenly poised at the end of the third quarter, but in the last 10 minutes the Rocks pulled away to take the match 80-69. Things will be different next Friday night when the game will have to be a bit more competitive, with the scores of the home and away legs being put together to decide who goes forward to the next stage. Tonight we were happy to have been supporting the winning team and wandered home. As we spilled out onto London Road opposite Celtic Park at the end of the match, we were instantly reminded of the sporting clash in the city that had drawn bigger crowds to Hampden earlier that day. As we walked to Bridgeton train station I decided to confiscate my daughter's big blue and white foam hand and shove it up my jumper to avoid being mistaken for celebrating Rangers fans.

Despite being completely bemused by what I was doing with her souvenir of the match, my daughter enjoyed her trip to the basketball. I was a bit underwhelmed by it as a sporting spectacle. It is definitely a sport you see more people playing than ever before in Glasgow, but that hasn't translated into a seething mass of excited youths storming down the doors to see the Rocks play. At the moment the youths playing basketball in Partick are still sporting the colours of the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers.

Price - Adult £11, child £6, family ticket (two adults, two children) £30

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Swan Lake, Scottish Ballet. Glasgow. April 2016.

April 24, 2016, 2:57 am

≫ Next: Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 4. Rugby

≪ Previous: Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 3. Basketball.

Review - Scottish Ballet. Swan Lake.

Theatre Royal, Glasgow. April 2016

Scottish Ballet have not performed Swan Lake for over 20 years now, and this new production, choreographed by David Dawson, is not like any Swan Lake they have done before. Tchaikovsky's soaring music is as grand and lush as ever, played magnificently by the Scottish Ballet Orchestra, but everything else is stripped back: characters, set, costumes.

Swan Lake, since it was written 140 years ago has been interpreted in many different ways, with the swan scenes as drug induced dream sequences to versions emphasising the suppressed homosexuality of Seigfried. However the classical idea most people have of ballet is the tutu clad ballerinas dancing arm in arm across the stage in the dance of the four swans from Swan Lake. White, feathery, delicate and frequently parodied, never better than by Morecambe and Wise below.

The traditional story of Swan Lake was concocted by Tchaikovsky with elements of various folk tales referenced. Young Prince Seigfried is a dreamer and is not interested in his mother the Queen's matchmaking. When his friend Benno spots a flock of swans flying overhead they head off to hunt them, Seigfried finds himself alone and spying the swans in the moonlight by a lake he sees them as beautiful young women, and he falls in love with the swan princess, Odette. The are held under an enchantment by powerful sorcerer Von Rothbart, sometimes portrayed as an owl, only turning back to feminine form by the light of the moon. The spell can only be broken by true love, and seigfried promises his heart to Odette. Later as his mother presents potential partners to Seigfried, Von Rothbart presents Odile, his daughter, who seduces Seigfried and he betrays Odette. Once he has fallen for Odile (danced by the same performer as Odette) she vanishes, and full of remorse Seigfried rushes to Odette at the lake, who departs with her swans, trapped in their animal form by his betrayal.

By stripping away the rich costumes, the tutus, "the velvets and swags that dictate so much about how we see Swan Lake" David Dawson focuses on the dancing and the love story at the centre of the ballet. Empty grey sets designed by John Otto, simple t-shirts and wrap-around skirts in muted colours for the dancers in the opening scene take us away from the world of a royal court. Seigfried is a contemporary everyman, who doesn't join in the backslapping bonhomie of his friends. More surprises are in store in the second scene, where the lake is barely present, a luminous arc in the background and the "swans" are dressed by Yumiko Takeshima in grey and flesh-toned costumes with the mere shadow of wings on their back. The swans are no longer delicate cygnets bowing their heads in deference, but a strong, physical, animal presence. Their outstretched arms and cocked wrists creating the silhouette of the type of swan that you are warned can break your arm with their powerful wings. None is more forceful than the small muscular frame of Sophie Martin as Odette. There is no fire in the coming together of Odette and Seigfried in the second scene. Theirs is a romantic ideal, sealed with a love token given by Odette to Seigfried.

The whole ballet really comes to life in the second half. As the suitors vainly dance to attract Seigfried's attention the black clad Odile arrives and steals the show. Sophie Martin's dancing here makes it entirely clear why this real live person steals his heart from the ideal of Odette. With her four henchmen reminding me of the masked sidekicks of Burgess Meredith's Penguin from the old Batman TV series, Benno tries to warn his friend not to fall for her charms. She is obviously not their type of woman, but Benno's warnings are to no avail. When he gives his love to Odile, she vanishes and full of remorse he rushes back to Odette. Their pas de deux at the end is beautiful, physical and almost sculptural. this Odette is no swan trapped under a spell, but an independent soul he leaves him, never to return because of his betrayal.

Initially I was pining for the frills and velvet that the music evokes, but the simpler story of love and betrayal that they tell had caught me by the end. At times the costumes are a bit too minimalist for the story, making it look like a Muji fashion shoot. The swans can appear more like a team of synchronised swimmers than ballerinas in their flesh toned leotards at times.

Years ago when I visited St Petersburg we went to the park which gave Tchaikovsky the inspiration for Swan Lake. The non-descript pond he sat beside, that became the setting for the story he created, makes Bingham's Pond in Glasgow look like an exotic lagoon. From such a simple reality he created a soaring score. Here they have taken a soaring story and boiled it down to a simple story of love and betrayal. The music was glorious and the dancing was fantastic, but I am not sure that it really portrays "Swan Lake" as Morecambe and Wise (and me) would recognise it.

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Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 4. Rugby

April 29, 2016, 3:31 pm

≫ Next: Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 5. Football.

≪ Previous: Swan Lake, Scottish Ballet. Glasgow. April 2016.

Glasgow Spectator Sports. More Than Just Football?

I spend most of my time as a spectator of sport in Glasgow at football matches, more specifically at Firhill watching Partick Thistle. With my team being out of action for a few weekends in April, I have been looking for other sporting offerings in the city in the past few weeks. I took my children along to plenty of other sporting spectacles during the Commonwealth Games last year, but we never really stuck with any of them. Although my children go to swimming clubs, athletics and badminton clubs we rarely go to these sports as spectators. So in recent weeks we made the effort to catch some sports we don't usually bother with. We have enjoyed some sporting imports, with Braehead Clan ice hockey matches and Glasgow Rocks basketball. We took in some nostalgia soaked sports with speedway at Glasgow Tigers and greyhound racing at Shawfield Stadium. But before coming back to football in the city, we are going to give rugby a go too.

Glasgow Rugby

Rugby and football in Scotland have never really fought over the same audience, they generally draw a different crowd. Football has always been where my interest lies and, like many people, unless the Scotland national team are beating England, my interest in rugby wanes.

I have over the years been to various birthday parties and funerals held in rugby club halls, but it is fair to say I am not a big follower of the rugby. I will freely admit that some of this is prejudice on my part. I didn't know anyone who played rugby until I went to university, and the people that I met there who played the sport were, as a general rule, complete dicks (with the odd exception from Blantyre). I am sure that a large part of my lack of interest in rugby is simple inverted snobbery. It may be fairly normal in parts of Ayrshire and the Borders for people to play rugby, but beyond that in Scotland it really is played in the private schools of the land. Nobody taught us rugby on the red blaes pitches of my secondary school. When Rory Hughes was recently capped for Scotland against Italy, it was newsworthy. A Castlemilk boy, who went to a state school in Glasgow had made his way to the national squad. The exception rather than the rule. When you look at the "notable people" from Castlemilk on its Wikipedia page there are listed 15 footballers, 3 actors, 1 musician, 1 policeman and 1 rugby player.

There have been efforts on behalf of the sport to tackle this and my children have all been given taster sessions in rugby at primary school. Although my kids weren't persuaded by these sessions, I know that one or two of their classmates went on to invest in a set of gum shields and joined local clubs, so not a completely wasted effort.

Although I watch the Scotland team play on TV at times, another thing which makes it hard for me to get right into rugby is the endless tweaking of the rules of the game. If the referees didn't have a mic attached to explain each decision we would all be at a loss. The commentators flap about, trying to spot the apparent infringement, until the voice comes through their headphones telling them what apparently happened. Even then, the old tradition in rugby of never disagreeing with the referee and respecting his decision has gone out the window. This was nowhere more obvious than when referee Craig Joubert awarded a match-winning penalty to Australia in the recent World Cup, eliminating Scotland in the process and then sprinting off the pitch to universal condemnation (except in Australia I suppose).

Whilst the world's first international rugby match was played in Edinburgh, at Raeburn Place in 1871, between Scotland and England, Glasgow hosted the world's first football international in 1872 at Hamilton Crescent, Partick in Glasgow. This is where these sports have had their base in Scotland ever since, with the capital being home to the national rugby team at Murrayfield and Hampden Park in Glasgow the spiritual home of Scotland's football. Whilst Glasgow Warriors have met increased success on the pitch and regularly sell out their home matches, you are talking about 4-5000 people watching, crowds not far off Partick Thistle's numbers on a good day, whilst Celtic and Rangers in the city can both have home crowds ten-times this number.

I have watched rugby before. I've taken my kids along to watch the Rugby Sevens at Scotstoun on occasion, and the quick fire games were quite entertaining. Rugby Sevens was a big crowd-puller at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, in part because the games were held at Ibrox Stadium and there were plenty of tickets on offer. I have been to see the Scotland rugby team play in Edinburgh, when I won tickets to a match somehow. It was all very jolly, if a bit lacking in any feeling of competitive rivalry in the stands. Rival fans mixed together in the crowd, gamely cheering on their teams. It had none of the frisson of excitement that sitting just along from the Polish fans at Hampden had, when I was recently watching Scotland in a football World Cup qualifier.

Twickenham grass being prepared

I have also visited the home of English rugby at Twickenham, although I was at a training course at the stadium rather than to watch rugby. On display in their museum there was the Calcutta Cup, which Scotland and England play for annually in their head to head match. The fact that it is named after a city in India from the time of the British Empire, sculpted with an elephant and cobras and is made of melted down silver rupees seems like a fitting metaphor for the history of rugby.

The Calcutta Cup

Glasgow Hawks and Glasgow Hills

Club rugby in Scotland has undergone a lot of change since the 1990s, with the arrival of the professional era in a sport which once prided itself on its amateur ethos. The days of the Scottish newsreader working their way through the rugby scores after they had finished with the football results on a Saturday night, with names such as Boroughmuir, Melrose, Kelso and Glasgow Academicals, are long gone. There are now two professional teams in Scotland, the Glasgow Warriors and the imaginatively named Edinburgh Rugby. They play in the Guinness Pro12 League of which Glasgow were champions in 2014-15. By ending up in the top 4 places in the league again this year (2015-16) Glasgow are guaranteed a place in the end of season play-offs. This also ensures them a berth in next year's European Rugby Champions Cup.

The extensive amateur rugby league system in Scotland has about 8 tiers with over 150 teams involved and promotion and relegation possible between divisions. This becomes regional in the lower orders. Although the top league is dominated numerically by Borders' teams, Glasgow is represented in the Scottish Premier Division byGlasgow Hawks, based at the pitches at Anniesland Cross ("Old Anniesland"). Old Anniesland was first set out as sports fields by Glasgow Academy school in 1883, and used by them until 1902. When they bought farmland next door in 1902 to create "New Anniesland", Glasgow University took over Old Anniesland for 10 years. In 1919 Glasgow High School bought Old Anniesland and built a new clubhouse here in 1924, a building which still stands. Since Glasgow High, the school, upped sticks from the city centre in 1976 their school buildings have stood here also. Glasgow High rugby team merged with Kelvinside Academy in 1982 to form Glasgow HK. Then with the re-organisation of rugby across the country in 1995 they merged with New Anniesland's Glasgow Academical team (or Accies) to form Glasgow Hawks. Initially their name was the result of Accies, HK and the West of Scotland club coming together, but the latter team decided to keep going in their own right. West of Scotland Rugby, formed in 1865, now play out at Milngavie.

Colours of West of Scotland Football Club

Originating in Partick at Hamilton Crescent, West of Scotland have played in red and yellow since 1871. Their colours were borrowed, and retained, by their footballing Partick neighbours, Partick Thistle Football Club in the 1930s.

Glasgow Hawks still are based now at Old Anniesland. Their season in the top tier of Scottish amateur rugby runs from August through to March and has just come to an end with Glasgow Hawks finishing a safe 6th. Ayr Rugby Club topped the league, being ahead by a clear 12 points at the end of the season. However as the league has adopted the play-off system to decide the champions, they lost out to Edinburgh's Heriots in the final. To me that must feel very unjust to Ayr followers and I am not really a fan of play-offs deciding championships. Cup competitions I get, but a whole season decided in one game just seems unfair.

Also nearby are Hillhead-Jordanhill Rugby Club, based at Hillhead Sports Club in Hughenden. "The Hills" play in the BT National League Division 2, two tiers below the Premiership. With Hamilton champions of the league this year, the Hills have just avoided relegation finishing 10th in a 12 team league. Hillhead Sports Club was was initially home to Hillhead High School Former Pupils' Rugby Football Club. The opening on the new, reinforced concrete stand here at Hillhead Sports Club in 1934 was marked by a match between Hillhead Former Pupils and Glasgow Academicals.

Newspaper report of the Hillhead FP vs Accies rugby match, September 1934

The old stand has been demolished now and much of the peripheral land sold off to housing developers. Some put the need for this land sale down to losses accrued by Hughenden being the first home to Glasgow's new professional club, Glasgow Warriors, from 1999. Six years later Warriors had moved on to Firhill Stadium, to churn up the football pitch there instead. Whatever the reason, Hillhead Sports Club, like many clubs before them, have had to sell off some of their most valuable asset, their land, to keep functioning.

Club building at Hillhead Sports Club, Glasgow

Rugby cliché, Hughenden

I wandered round one Sunday afternoon in April to have a look around Hillhead Sports Club, not realising that it has quite a nice bar/cafe open to the public in the club building. There was also a BT Women's Premier League play-off match on, between the top two teams in the league, Hills Women's team and the Murrayfield Wanderers. It was a hard fought game, with players limping off periodically with injuries, but the Murrayfield Wanderers clearly had the upper hand and ran out 29-15 winners. As someone who usually watches football, the players all calling the referee "sir" when speaking to him just souned fake and odd, adults acting like obedient school pupils. Even when he was heckled from the small crowd, to correct some of his misinterpretations of rugby's labyrinthine rules, he was was shouted at in this same way. "That penalty should be taken from where the ball was kicked, sir!" they cried, instead of ending it with the more natural "-ya fuckin' clown!".

Hills vs Murrayfield Wanderers. April 2016

Hills players. April 2016

Hills vs Murrayfield Wanderers. April 2016

Club rugby obviously has its ardent followers, but all the televised glamour of rugby is with the professional game now. I pitched up to watch Glasgow Warriors in their last home game of the league season, with the play-offs just around the corner. They were playing Italian team Zebre, second bottom of the table. With Glasgow already guaranteed a play-off place, there was still something to play for with league position determining home and away ties in the play-off semi-final.

Glasgow Warriors have been based at Scotstoun Stadium since the 2012/13 season. When I lived in Knightswood this was just "Scotstoun Showgrounds" and had been since it was laid out as such by the Glasgow Agricultural Society in 1860, when it apparently staged livestock shows. Monthly Clydesdale horse shows were held here until the 1950s but sport had arrived at the showgrounds around 1902 when it became Hillhead High School's Former Pupils Club. In 1915 an ash running track was laid and 5 years later a stand backing onto Danes Drive was built. Scotstoun Stadium has been home to Victoria Park Amateur Athletics Club since it was formed in the 1930s. Here they are, below, winning the 1954 Edinburgh to Glasgow relay race.

In 1996 the running track was replaced with a modern eight lane synthetic track. With funding of £18 million, much of it from the city council and Sport Scotland, to upgrade it as a modern facility open to the local public, the stand was re-fitted with a fitness suite and indoor 100m warm up track. A new stand was built on the opposite side of the track and the whole facility re-opened in 2010. Initially just a training base whilst their matches were at Firhill, Glasgow Warriors now play their home matches here, and as a result competitive athletics can take place less often in the stadium. It is still home to the athletics club and the hundreds of children that take part in their junior clubs (including my daughter), but rugby is certainly squeezing them out.

Facilities at Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow

This season the rugby pitch often proved to be unplayable after a wet Scottish winter and Glasgow Warriors were forced to play several of their home games on Kilmarnock Football Club's artificial pitch. Little comment was made on the irony of Kilmarnock's Rugby Park having a more successful rugby team than football team playing here for the first time in its 115 year history. To prevent this problem in future seasons Warriors have planned to have a 3G pitch put into what is ostensibly a community facility which they rent. This has caused some controversy as they are already elbowing out the athletics tenants in other ways and such a pitch would prove unsuitable to javelin and hammer-throwing events at this multi-sports site. After an initial stand-off it seems a compromise deal if being put together.

On a recent visit to Scotstoun Stadium at dusk

I have only seen Warriors play once before, when they were based at Firhill. That was really just to enjoy the novelty of sitting in the Jackie Husband stand around about my usual seat at that time, but with a pint of warm lager in my hand. That match was a close game and the people on either side of me were endlessly turning to me to ask whether I thought that was a ruck or a maul and suchlike. I seemed to make the correct contemplative, sucking in through my teeth noises to bluff them into thinking I had an opinion on the matter.

Glasgow Warriors vs Zebre. Sold out.

Tonight's match between Warriors and Zebre proved to be a sell out, with all four stands full and standing tickets released too, with people penned behind the corner flags. That brought the crowd up to about 6000. For someone used to the footballing regulations of no standing being allowed and no alcohol at the ground, it is impossible to see why these rules are still deemed necessary for one group of sports fans (football) but not for others.

Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow

Bar and catering facilities at Scotstoun

The catering facilities at the rugby tonight were far superior to anything you get at football with a choice of drinks, and different stalls giving a range of eating options. Despite bars being sited all around the ground on a Friday night, more people were interested in getting food as you can see from the respective queues above.

Glasgow had a dip in form in the middle of the season this year, but came into this match on a run of eight consecutive victories. It is a strange aspect of club rugby, that during international competitions such as the Rugby World Cup held earlier this year, club games carry on but without the best players being available. This either works as a handicap for some teams or forces them to recruit a bigger squad to give them flexibility. Most other sports suspend other competitions for internationals, maintaining the integrity of the league as a contest.

Despite a sluggish start Glasgow soon got the points ticking over and by half time it was clear that this was going to be a rout. Big Fijian Leone Nakarawa ran in the first of his three tries at the corner with defenders bouncing off of him

Leone Nakarawa scores his first try for Glasgow Warriors v Zebre

Crowd at Scotstoun Stadium

Adam Ashe scored Glasgow's second try and as he did all night Duncan Weir secured the conversion. Weir, like Nakarawa and several other players are moving on to other clubs or retiring at the end of this season. I don't know enough to say if this is just natural churn of players or cost-cutting at Glasgow Warriors. Has their recent success been at a cost they cannot sustain with Glasgow crowds? I don't know.

Tonight they ended up running out 70-10 winners against Zebre, scoring ten tries with a conversion after each one. Getting four tries in the match secures them a bonus point and their chances of winning a home semi-final in the play-offs have improved. All that will be decided next weekend against Connacht..

Glenn Bryce scores Glasgow's third try

All that choice and I settled for chips and gravy

The sun sets on Zebre as Glasgow Warriors stuff them at Scotstoun

I don't know much about rugby but I do know that this was an embarrassingly unequal contest. The two Italian teams propping up the Pro12 league are clearly there by design rather than on merit. Perhaps the one-sided nature of the match drained any drama from this contest, but the sell out crowd seemed quite happy chatting amongst themselves for most of the game and with no obvious cheers for Italian scores there was no travelling support apparent. I didn't need to be au fait with all the rules to follow it, basically 15 big guys have got to push the ball past 15 other big guys and the referee will interrupt it every 30 seconds to get them to all stand up again. It is a sport that can produce great drama, and knife-edge matches but this wasn't one of them. As a sport it doesn't really get my juices going, except when I had the chips and gravy at half time. I walked across the car park to collect my son and his pal from their badminton club at Scotstoun, forgetting that his classmate was one of the people who got the bug for rugby with the taster sessions at school and still trains regularly with Hills at Hughenden.

"What do you like about it?" I asked him.

"It's great when you smash into someone and just wipe them out".

I shall only link to an article about Prof Allyson Pollock's research into childhood injuries in rugby, including six children paralysed in Scotland in as many years playing the sport, and leave you to form your own opinions on that one.

Cost - £30 adult £10 child

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Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 5. Football.

April 30, 2016, 1:40 pm

≫ Next: This Restless House. Citizens Theatre. May 2016

≪ Previous: Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 4. Rugby

I spend most of my time as a spectator of sport in Glasgow at football matches, more specifically at Firhill watching Partick Thistle. With my team being out of action a few weekends in April with international matches on the go and Scottish Cup semi finals, I have been exploring the other sporting offerings in the city in the past few weeks. I took my children along to plenty of other sporting spectacles during the Commonwealth Games last year, but we never really stuck with any of them. Although my children go to swimming clubs, athletics and badminton clubs we rarely go to these sports as spectators. In recent weeks we have enjoyed some sporting imports with Braehead Clan ice hockey matches and Glasgow Rocks basketball. We took in some sports steeped in nostalgia with speedway at Glasgow Tigers and greyhound racing at Shawfield Stadium. On Friday night I was watching Glasgow Warriors rugby team at Scotstoun, before coming back to football the following day.

I enjoy watching sport, pretty much any old sport (except maybe Formula 1). In the days when there was less wall to wall sport on television I would happily watch all that was available; horse racing, FA cup finals, the boat race or the wrestling on ITV. When Channel 4 came along that introduced me to American Football, kabaddi, the Tour de France and sumo wrestling. As a child watching live sport usually meant standing at roadsides cheering on my dad taking part in road races and marathons or being taken to see our local football teams in Maryhill; Partick Thistle or Maryhill Juniors. The sport which has hooked me as a spectator ever since is football.

I have been going back to Firhill to support Partick Thistle since I was introduced to them by my parents in the late 1970s. I have enjoyed re-visiting some alternative Glasgow sports over the past few weeks, but football is the only one that I really feel any emotional attachment to when I watch it.

Football - the world's favourite sport

If there is one sport that is played in all corners of the globe it is football (or soccer if you are playing it in America). Away from the corrupt world of FIFA and its grasping rush to make as much money from the game as it can, viewing the world as "potential new markets", whatever country you are in you can stumble across groups of kids kicking some sort of ball about. It may now have to compete with other sports, with people watching at home on TV and with modern distractions for younger audiences, but it is still the most watched spectator sport on planet Earth.

Whenever I am holiday I manage to drift off to locate the local football grounds. If it is out of season and there are no matches on, it still gives you an idea of how local people live and relax. You end up wandering around weird, out of the way residential streets. You read up the local club's history, often intertwined with stories of immigrants or local industries and you can learn about a town or a city in a slightly tangential way. In Greenland I learned about the challenges of internal travel in the country and trying to maintain football pitches in their weather. On holiday in Germany I got a feel for St. Pauli's slightly anarchic neighbourhood in Hamburg.

Crowd at a Greenlandic league match

FC St Pauli, Hamburg , Germany

In Greece I wandered around the down at heels ground of FC Aris with their colours reflecting the Byzantine history of the Thessaloniki area. I also visited the stadium of PAOK (Pan-Thessalonian Athletics Club of Constantinopolitans), whose history links back to their roots as a team of Greeks living and playing in Istanbul, before being deported to Greece in the population transfers that happened after World War 1 in the region. In Iceland we saw that the national stadium had more images of women players than men on show, and their nearby pitches had hundreds of children taking part, boys and girls playing together, in a national tournament. These facts may give some clues as to why this small country is soaring past Scotland in the international rankings. The Netherlands has a team named after the Telstar satellite, who play in a stadium sponsored by Tata Steel when we visited it. Who knew that Tata will continue steel production in their nearby, profit making businesses in the Netherlands after they close their British plants? All these things I have learnt on holiday, because of my mild obsession of tracking down local football teams when I am away.

FC Aris, Thessaloniki, Greece

PAOK at Toumba Stadium, Thessaloniki

My son hamming it up outside the Icelandic National Stadium

Telstar, a Dutch team named after a satellite and a stadium previously sponsored by Tata Steel

Driving to London last year my son was delighted when I stopped off in Milton Keynes to have a wee nosey at the MK Dons stadium, or in Halifax on the way back up to cast an eye over my grannys's childhood home, and nearby stadium of FC Halifax Town, The Shay.

Hampden Park

In Glasgow most people are aware that football has a bit of a divisive history, with most people expected to align themselves with either Rangers or Celtic. The absence of their poisonous rivalry has not been missed by everyone over recent seasons (despite what many Sky and BBC journalists claim), with Rangers working their way up through the lower leagues. However, for good or bad, Glasgow's two most well known teams will resume hostilities again in the 2016/17 season. In Glasgow, Celtic Park in Parkhead has a capacity of 60,000 and Ibrox Stadium is able to house over 50,000. Unable or unwilling, to disentangle football in Scotland from religious bigotry and the politics of Irish nationalism, the Scottish national team cannot realistically be seen to use either of these grounds. It is maybe worth noting that the crowd drawn to watch Scotland does not heavily rely on Old Firm fans anyway. So the Scotland team are based at Hampden Park in Mount Florida, giving Glasgow three 50,000 seater football stadiums. This has been home to Scotland's oldest senior football team, Queen's Park, in one form or another since 1873, six years after their foundation as a team. Although at one time 149,000 could squeeze in here to (try to) watch a match, since it was redeveloped as an all-seater stadium in the 1990s in can now accommodate around 52,000. Most weekends however it is still home to Queen's Park FC and their average home crowd of around 750 hardy souls.

Hampden Park, transformed into a serviceable
athletics arena during 2014 Commonwealth Games

Out with the athletics, and re-laying the
Hampden pitch. A not infrequent necessity

Though temporarily out of action for football recently, when it was refitted to accommodate athletics for the Commonwealth Games (quite successfully it has to be said) it has reverted back to being our national stadium. Personally I would happily demolish the whole place. Nowhere in the stadium is there a decent view of the football, the flatly banked former terraces leaving you miles away from the pitch and draining any atmosphere the crowd manages to whip up. Getting to and from matches is always a slog, with roads in the residential streets nearby gridlocked for hours before and after the matches. The only sense of history that can be gleaned from the place is in the wee football museum housed in the main stand. It manages the tricky task of being recently modernised and completely out of date.

(Cost of visiting Scottish Football museum - adult £8, children £3. Combined stadium tour and museum visit £12/£5)

Hampden Football Museum

So if you are not going to Ibrox, Parkhead or Hampden to take in some football in Glasgow, what other choices do you have?

Women's football

Although more and more women and girls are playing football, at higher levels one team dominates in Scotland - Glasgow City FC. I do like the fact that they don't bother with the words "Ladies" or "Belles" or anything in their name. They are just Glasgow City FC. I have taken my children often to see them, more often when they played at Petershill, but we still take in the occasional game at Airdrie's Excelsior stadium where they are now based. The team are in discussion with East Dumbartonshire council, who are planning to build a new community facility which will be the future home for the club. If this happens it will be the first time in the UK a stadium has been built for a women's football team.

Formed in 1998 and playing in bright orange, for many years Glasgow City have gone unchallenged, as the rest of the women's game in Scotland has struggled to keep pace with them. In 2012 they won the domestic treble, and won every league match that season. In 2014 they suffered their first league defeat in over six years, when Spartans got the better of them. They have consistently got into the last 32 of the European Champions League, being knocked out by Chelsea last year and by PSG at the quarter final stage the year before. Other clubs are slowly emerging and Glasgow City are regularly pushed by Hibernian in league and cup matches these days. Celtic and Rangers are now also putting some effort into their nascent women's teams. Partick Thistle Ladies' team have recently been formed and play in the SWFL Division 2 Central.

To make the matches more competitive the league has been re-arranged with two tiers now, Scottish Women's Premier League 1 and 2, each of eight teams. The league runs from March to October.

Glasgow City coming onto the pitch against Aberdeen

The Glasgow City team is now coached by one time Aberdeen player Scott Booth, and features many Scottish and Irish international players. Some familiar faces are Irish international Clare Shine and Julie Fleeting and Leanne Ross who have notched up over 200 appearances between them for Scotland. The Scotland Women's team are currently outshining the men's team, on the cusp of qualification for the European Championships.

Scott Booth on the touchline

At cup games, friendlies against English opposition and Champions League matches there can be a decent sized and lively crowd, with a large number of families and children present. However when I recently went to see them, on a cold Sunday afternoon in April 2016 when Celtic and Rangers were playing a few miles away, there was a pretty low turnout for a league match against Aberdeen. To get to the stand fans had to come up the tunnel onto the pitch as there was no need to open the concourses of the stand today, which was a bit unusual. Despite the match being rather one sided, City struggled to create decent chances but eventually ran out 1-0 winners.

Glasgow City supporters

There is still a long way to go before there is a greater level of challenge for Glasgow City FC in the women's game. So far this season they are undefeated in the cup and league and have won their matches 14-0, 1-0, 1-0, 10-0, 1-0, 8-0, 4-2 (the first two goals they have conceded this season). At present I enjoy following Glasgow's top league team, which I am happy to say is neither Rangers nor Celtic. Also my daughter quite likes wearing the Glasgow City football top she has, always a good talking point on holiday.

Cost to watch Glasgow City - £5 for adults and free for children. The bigger games can be entertaining and my children certainly enjoy coming along. But on a quieter day like this you do feel a wee bit as if you are intruding on a private affair.

Junior Football

Scottish Junior football is not football for children, but since the 1880s is the name given to non-league football in Scotland. The Scottish Junior Cup has been contested since 1886, with an earlier version dating as far back as 1880. Many of the Junior football teams have long histories and great local popularity. Local derbies like Auchinleck Talbot v Cumnock or Arthurlie v Pollok can attract crowds of well over 1000, but nowhere near the 76,000 who attended the Junior Cup Final in 1951. The biggest names in Junior football are the Ayrshire clubs, although Glasgow has many, many teams and was previously a route for players aiming for a professional career, whether it was Bertie Auld going from Maryhill Harp to Celtic, or Bill Shankley starting off in the Glenbuck Cherrypickers. Nowadays it often goes the other way. Most of the first 45 minutes watching a Juniors match tends to be about leaning over to the person nearest you and saying "Is he that annoying wee guy that used to play for St Mirren in the 1990s?"

I don't really follow any particular Junior team and this year have pitched up at Yoker Athletic's Holm Park once to see a pre-season warm-up match for Partick Thistle and I went to one Renfrew Juniors match. However I quite fancy going down to Kilmarnock for the Junior Cup Final this year, due to my family's distant footballing links to that part of the world that I've written about previously.

Yoker Athletic v Partick Thistle, August 2015

Junior football has a reputation for being one of the few sports where fights can start on the pitch and spill over into the crowd, but it has a rich history. The history of Junior football teams is inextricably linked to the rise and fall of industries in Scotland. As new communities grew up around an industry, local teams sprung up, often several within a small area, like Ashfield and Glasgow Perthshire in Possil, with their grounds practically on the same block. This link between the health of a community and the health of its Junior football is nicely drawn in the recently published book Shankly's Village: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Glenbuck and it's Famous Sons by Adam Powly and Robert Gillan. Despite its illustrious history, neither the team, nor the village that Bill Shankly and many others started their football careers at still exist. I heartily recommend the book to you.

This year the Junior Cup Final will be played on Sunday the 29th May, 4pm at Kilmarnock's Rugby Park. After Pollok overcame Hurlford last week in front of a crowd of 1600 people in the second semi-final, it will be contested between them and Beith.

Partick Thistle

I have mentioned above that my parents brainwashed me as a child by taking me to Partick Thistle matches when I was young. Whether it was an attempt to keep me away from the Old Firm, or just that old fashioned thing of supporting your local team, I don't know. I have been unable to reverse this early conditioning and been going to Firhill now for the best part of 40 years. Anyone with a bit of Thistle knowledge will see that this means that I have missed their 1971 league cup victory and had to endure the various ups, downs, downs and occasional ups since then as a result this.

Firhill Road, Maryhill. Glasgow

Younger people who follow big teams probably won't be aware of this, but football always used to be played at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. Weird, huh? On a Saturday as a family we would just make the short walk to Firhill to see what was happening. At that time the reserve team would play at Firhill when the main team were playing away, so there was usually something to watch. Huddled up on the terracing behind the goal my mum would often prepare a picnic of sorts for us to eat at half-time - no "chewing gum! macaroon!" for us. As a teenager a few of us got into the habit of regularly going to the games together, often my brother, my cousin and my pal Alan who stayed up our flats. Then as a student once I had a car, away games became possible. I know that there are parts of Scotland that I would never have visited if Partick Thistle had not spent so many years yo-yoing up and down through the divisions. Maybe some Rangers fans have just taken their punishment on the chin and got on with enjoying getting to know Scotland a bit better.

Old entrance to the south terracing at Firhill Stadium.

Firhill Shed - image taken from ptfcnet.co.uk

There is much that I miss about the old atmosphere at matches, when opposing fans were separated on the terracing of the Firhill Shed by a fence and hurled abuse, pies and much else at each other across it. However it is easy to forget that the pantomime abuse went too far at times and I don't want to go back to the days of being chased down Maryhill Road under a hail of bricks. For many reasons all-seater stadiums were introduced, alcohol banned and closer police scrutiny were introduced.

As the name suggests Partick Thistle have not always played in Maryhill. I have previously written about their early grounds here and here if you have a burning desire to learn more. For much, much more comprehensive information on Partick Thisle, the early years follow the link to the website that carries that very name.

The old main stand at Firhill, where away fans are usually accommodated

Firhill Stadium panorama

The teams (and Kingsley) come out for Partick Thistle v Inverness CT

As we come to the end of the 2015/16 season Partick Thistle are almost safe for another season in the top division with Kilmarnock and Dundee United favourites to go down or face the play-offs. The fun in all that is that both these teams have previously had a hand in condemning us to the lower divisions. Ever the unpredictables however, no Partick Thistle supporter is believing we are there yet until we are mathematically safe. The problem is that with near bankruptcy in the past, the club have now taken the unusual step of running a club within its available budget. This causes the great difficulty of putting us at a disadvantage against clubs who have decided against this wacky principle. It is for reasons like this that it really becomes infuriating when clubs gain from a form of financial doping, but rarely throw their hands up and say "mea culpa". Maybe it's the Latin that puts them off.

Skyline of Glasgow's Westend from the stand at Firhill

As near as Thistle got to creating a chance in the first half

With a superior goal difference and a nine point gap at the start of this match it appears too many of the players are thinking about their summer holidays or their next career move. After harrying Inverness for the first 10 minutes Thistle drifted out of it and showed little determination or cohesion. As a result they allowed Inverness Caledonian Thistle to go into half time with a 1-0 lead.

Kids' teams on the pitch at half-time

Liam Lindsay watching a ball

As part of their aim at future financial stability Partick Thistle have spent time and effort on trying to develop younger players. With the addition of financial assistance from Chris and Colin Weir this has become part of the Thistle Weir Youth Academy and some of their young players were given the chance of a kick-about at half time. With efforts like this and free entry for children under 16, Partick Thistle are making a concerted effort to (literally?) grow future fans. Other efforts to raise the club profile this year have included free art giveaways to fans (see here for more info) and the creation of the world famous mascot, Kingsley. However all of that effort is harder to maintain with the potential drop in income that the club would face if relegated. So the biggest effort has to be on the pitch. Unfortunately for any young fans we were trying to impress today the team started badly in the first half and then tailed away in the second. Inverness Caley Thistle eventually finished comfortable 4-1 winners (I think that was the score, I was watching through my fingers at the end). With Kilmarnock having a convincing win over Hamilton we are rapidly losing our points and goal advantage over them.

Remains of a pie and Bovril. See it as an artistic metaphor for something

Today's match was a disappointment, but I would rather we stop watching football the way Sky Sports market it, as a series of blockbusters. I prefer to see today's match as an episode in a box set. Okay, the bad guy was on top at the end today, but I am already eagerly anticipating the next installment, when the wee guy might get his just reward. Once the season is over, I will sit down and reflect on it a bit. Then a few weeks later, even if I said "never again" after my favourite character was written out, I will be eagerly tuning in again for the next series.

American research a few years back has shown that football is the most unpredictable sport to watch, when compared to ice hockey, basketball, American Football and baseball. When analysing 100 years of data from the top English league they found that you were more likely to see an upset by an underdog in football than in these other sports. Their argument was that this is one thing which made it an exciting sport. Sadly they also found that upsets were happening less frequently in the most recent data. This seems to be a result of some clubs now being able to financially out-muscle their opponents.

If leagues and super-leagues are set up with the aim of helping the big teams at the expense of all the others, I would say that those big teams are in danger of killing the goose that is laying their golden eggs. In Scotland the league set up seems so skewed to the interests of a minority that the danger is fans lose interest and vote with their feet. Clubs like Partick Thistle struggle to compete in the current financial environment and they are trying to get stability by rooting themselves very much more in the local community at present and I would applaud them for that. There is also clearly a need for some meaningful way to introduce a form of fan ownership to football, to give fans a voice on the daft committees running the game in Scotland.

Other actions have inadvertently thrown a wet blanket on any enthusiasm football supporters try to whip up. Football teams seems to be unfairly singled out. It is hard not to see this as a prejudice against the people they draw their support from. The all-seater stadiums and alcohol bans you see at football are not in place at crowds I saw in recent weeks at speedway, basketball, ice hockey or rugby in Glasgow. On occasions when I have gone to watch football in England you are allowed to stand about and enjoy an alcoholic drink in the ground, everywhere except at your seat. I am not trying to say that football needs alcohol, but all the other sports I went to have been able to use bars as another way to draw people to the ground earlier and to generate income, important for clubs often living very much hand to mouth. The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act brought in by the Scottish government was intended to tackle sectarianism at football matches, but has had no effect in tackling this issue at the clubs where it is a problem. Why criminalise just football fans in law, why not just an "offensive behaviour act"?

Football can still throw up the occasional surprise. Occasionally a Greece wins the European Championship, or a Partick Thistle wins the Scottish League Cup. When I sit down to watch a match in which I have no great vested interest, unerringly I am cheering on the underdog within a few minutes. The great and the good of UEFA's vested interests may try to mould the shape of football to suit their narrative, but occasionally a team like Leicester City will defy the 5000-1 odds bookies were giving their chances at the start of the season. It's one in the eye for the big bullies, and like many others I will be cheering them on tomorrow against Manchester United. Then I will be back at Firhill, waiting with renewed optimism for our turn to have a big surprise season.

"All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football."

- Albert Camus

Cost - Partick Thistle vs Inverness Caledonian Thistle adult £22, children free

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This Restless House. Citizens Theatre. May 2016

May 6, 2016, 4:12 am

≫ Next: Tectonics Festival, Glasgow 2016

≪ Previous: Glasgow Spectator Sports Part 5. Football.

The Oresteia by Aeschylus and This Restless House by Zinnie Harris

The Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, in collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland, are currently performing a new trilogy of plays by Zinnie Harris, This Restless House, based on the 2500 year old works by Aeschylus, The Oresteia. Before seeing the new plays I went back to look over Aeschylus' work, which for me brings back happy memories of my times visiting and working in Greece. On every trip to Greece I love to tick off ancient sites and the scenes of great dramas and myths. The Oresteia at the time it was first performed was commenting on real events in the Athenian courts of the day, as well as talking about kings, cities and gods that would be known to all in the audience. I have been lucky enough to visit many of the settings from The Oresteia, so before a brief review of This Restless House I have used this as an excuse write about beautiful, wonderful Greece. Ελλάδα, σ'αγαπώ.

(NB If you are unaware of this two and a half thousand year old story, this blog contains spoilers, so look away now.)

The Oresteia by Aeschylus

The origins of Western drama lie in Ancient Greece. Two and a half millenia ago festivals and competitions of drama were taking place and although only a small fraction of these plays have survived to this day, those that have are being endlessly performed, re-imagined and re-told. The oldest surviving intact drama is often thought of as Aeschylus' historical tragedy The Persians. It won a prize at a Dionysian festival at the foot of the Acropolis in 472BCE, by which time its creator had already been writing for 25 years. Only six of Aeschylus' 80-odd plays survive to this day (seven if Prometheus Bound is credited to him). He was in his sixties when he wrote The Oresteia trilogy of connected plays, telling the bloody story of Mycenaean King Agamemnon and his family.

Theatre of Dionysus, Athens, where Aeschylus' plays were often performed

Ancient Greek drama, stories still being told and re-told in Scottish theatres

The three plays of The Oresteia are named after Orestes, son of Agamemnon. They tell the story of a family fated by the bloody history of their ancestors to continue a cycle of violence and revenge. Through the centuries since it was written people have tried to unpick the additions and accretions of subsequent transcriptions, to get back to the 2500 year old original. In 1847 Wagner spoke of the effect it had had on him. It is said that has Ring Cycle was inspired by The Oresteia. George Eliot's character Adam Bede used to sit and read The Oresteia over breakfast and quoted from it. The oldest book we have in our house is a beautiful 1843 edition of Aeschylus' works, perhaps the edition that Adam Bede was reading.

The Oresteia, 1843 edition

Aeschylus himself was born near Athens in about 545BCE. Although we know him as a writer of tragedies, his epitaph in Ancient Greece spoke only of his valour in the Battle of Marathon, fighting against the Persians in 490BCE, a battle in which his brother was killed. Ten years later he was alive at the time of the Spartan defeat to Xerxes at Thermopylae. He died around the age of 67 whilst in Syracuse in Sicily. It is reputed that he was killed by an eagle dropping a tortoise upon his head, mistaking it for a rock to crack open the shell. A tragic death so bizarre you suspect it may be true.

The lion gates at Mycenae

The Oresteia trilogy of plays were first performed in 458 BCE. They start with a cycle of bloodshed and revenge and end with the world deciding whether to accept justice and the rule of law instead.

After ten years away King Agamemnon returns to Mycenae, in the Northern Peloponnese, fresh from victory in the Trojan War. He has with him Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy. Before sailing, the gods commanded Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to allow his ships to sail to Troy. With Agamemnon is away his wife, Clytemnestra, is in an adulterous relationship with Aegisthus, cousin of Agamemnon. He believes the throne is rightfully his, after Agamemnon's father, Atreus, killed the brother of Aegisthus and fed him to their father Thyestes. The bloody acts of the past ensure that bloody retribution will follow in the future.

For refusing his advances at the opening of a temple in Corinth, Cassandra, a princess and prophetess, has been cursed by Apollo with the ability to tell the future, but that nobody will believe her prophecies. The original Cassandra complex.

Temple at Corinth, beautiful Acrocorinth behind

The first play ends with Clytemnestra avenging their daughter Iphigenia, swinging her axe and killing her husband Agamemnon, and also Cassandra. She and Aegisthus become rulers of all Argos.

Ancient Argos, atop the hill, 49km from Corinth, 15km from Mycenae

Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann saw the events in ancient literature as a guidebook to the Greek world he excavated. In uncovering the city of Mycenae he found several grand tombs and from the contents within declared he had found the tombs of Cassandra and of Agamemnon. The second play opens at the tomb of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers. The daughter of Agmemnon and Clytemnestra, Electra, is discussing revenge with her brother Orestes. Electra convinces him to adopt a disguise and get into the royal palace. There he kills Aegisthus. He falters at the thought of killing his mother, until egged on by the god Apollo. Ridden by guilt he flees, pursued by the Furies (Eumenides), a curse from his mother in female form.

My children stepping into "Agamemnon's tomb" at Mycenae

Orestes kills Clytemnestra, a relief from a Roman sarcophagus, St Petersburg Hermitage Museum

The third play opens in the shrine of Apollo at Delphi where Orestes has fled the Furies. The oracle commands he travels to Athens to stand trial. The goddess Athena organises proceedings there, with a jury of citizens, Apollo as his advocate and the Furies as his accusers. With the jury divided Athena casts the deciding vote in favour of Orestes. The Furies threaten to turn their ire on the city of Athens itself, until Athena placates them with the promise of a place for Athenians to worship them in the city.

Temple of Apollo, Delphi

The cycle of revenge and bloodshed is ended with the rule of law and justice by the state. This final act is set at the Areopagus, the rocky site of a court in the time of Aeschylus. This is just at the foot of the Acropolis. Later the Areopagus was where Paul stood to deliver a famous sermon in Athens. It also gave its name to a prose polemical by Milton in 1644, Areopagitica, opposing censorship and arguing for freedom of speech.

Tourists snake up the Acropolis to the Parthenon, the Areopagus
lies just to the right on this photograph

The original music, dance and spectacle of Greek theatre is lost to us, but the stories live on. We have to re-imagine how the chorus and performers interacted with the story and the audience. The vase below shows a Greek performance of The Libation Bearers, the scene where Orestes is about to slay Clytemnestra, and she exposes her breast that once suckled him saying "Hold, oh child, and have shame." Again and again characters are presented with moral dilemmas where right and wrong are ambiguous, despite being commanded to act by Apollo, can he kill his own mother? In the background a Fury is already rising, snakes held in her hands.

Vase showing the Orestes being performed,
from the J. Paul Getty Museum

This Restless House by Zinnie Harris

I really like the photograph used by the Citizens Theatre to advertise the trilogy of plays they have produced, This Restless House, based upon the Oresteia. A family is in turmoil, a blur of movement, apart from the steady gaze of a young daughter at the centre. This is how Zinnie Harris reframes the story, by putting at the centre of it Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

Photograph used to advertise This Restless House

The three plays, put on over two performances, have been put in a contemporary setting, but the original place and characters put there. The delicate balancing act of using modern vernacular (and swearing) whilst still giving the characters gravitas works right from the off when we are introduced to the chorus. Three drunken vagrants, witnesses to everything, but largely unseen, with their impotent gnashing of teeth.

Part One, called Agamemnon's Return, opens in what resembles a shabby 1970s working men's club. After the brutal murder of her daughter by Agamemnon, Clytemnestra enters like a drunken cabaret singer, bitter and damaged. When Agamemnon returns from war, the ghost of Iphigenia is always present between them. The fetid atmosphere is built up by the dystonic musical score by Nikola Kojabashia. In Aeschylus' day the violence happens off stage, but here when Clytemnestra stabs unarmed Agamenon in his bath he runs naked onto the stage where Clytemnestra finishes butchering him, and unable to escape her fate, kills Cassandra in the process. With female characters the focus of this story, the fates of Iphigenia, Clytemnestra and Electra are now bound together.

It was around about the point where Clytemnestra was slaughtering her husband that my wife and I remembered it was our wedding anniversary tonight, an alternative interpretation of "until death us do part".

We are off to see Part Two, The Bough Breaks and Part Three, called Electra and her Shadow next weekend and I will update this blog then.

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Tectonics Festival, Glasgow 2016

May 9, 2016, 2:02 am

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Tectonics Festival, Glasgow 2016

The Tectonics Festival started life in Iceland, and has been playing in Glasgow for several years now under the leadership of conductor Ilan Volkov. As in previous years the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra are at the heart of the Tectonics performances, but are accompanied over the weekend in the Old Fruitmarket and Glasgow City Halls by a parade of modern classical and experimental musicians, composers and performers. Tectonics has now become a brand, with their diverse festivals of new music performed now in New York, Adelaide, Reykjavik, Tel Aviv as well as Glasgow's annual shindig.

Saturday May 7th 2016

As in previous years, the interconnected venues of the Old Fruitmarket and City Halls were fully exploited, with performances ebbing and flowing between spaces and on many occasions designed with the space in mind. Over the weekend pianist and improviser John Tilbury was present, marking his 80th birthday earlier this year. He opened proceedings in the main hall, playing piano on Annea Lockwood's Jitterbug, a quiet piece based on underwater recordings, with the musicians interpreting a score consisting of photographs of patterned rocks. A typically leftfield and experimental piece for Tectonics. This was followed by an engaging piano duo from John Tilbury and Sebastian Lexer, starting with Unintended Piano Music, a tribute to Cornelius Cardew, before they improvised back and forth. A low key start to a festival which has "MAKE SOME NOISE" proclaimed on its posters and on the wristbands we are all wearing.

Ane Unquietatioun

Heading into the darkened space of the Old Fruitmarket the volume picked up a bit with Ane Unquietatioun, a collaboration with modern folk singer Alasdair Roberts, Trembling Bells drummer Alex Neilson and improviser and multi-instrumentalist Ivor Kallin on viola and squawking vocals. They produced an intriguing blend of Scottish folk and free jazz.

Angela Rawlings and Rebecca Bruton (Moss Moss Not Moss) engaged in a melodic, Socratic vocal dialogue on a pedestal in the centre of the hall. Between performances Annea Lockwood's installation A Sound Map of the Housatonic River played in the Recital Room, a soothing hour of field recordings.

A Sound Map of the Housatonic River

As we entered the evening the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra got their first outing, starting out spread around the Fruitmarket hall playing a "spatial piece" by Catherine Kontz, taking its name from the hall, echoing the calls of market vendors. It was hard for me not to think about the "Fresh strawberries, fresh" opening calls of Who will buy?from Oliver Twist (as a child this was my song at family parties).

Four further orchestral pieces in the Grand Hall were more noteworthy for the spaces and noiselessness between the music than for soaring drama. At times some felt like a series of short pieces of incidental music from an ITV series. Concealed Unity by Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang, which had members of the orchestra and the Glasgow Chamber Choir dotted about above and behind the audience on the balcony of the hall, was the most memorable.

BBC SSO on stage and on the balcony for Concealed Unity

Back into the Old Fruitmarket for the late gig brought the most intriguing performances of the day. Andy Moor of Dutch outfits The Ex and Dog Faced Hermans was joined by Wilf Plum, Jer Reid and Neil Davidson on guitars and drums and Anne-James Chatton with a monotone, French vocal, taking us through a cycle of songs based on Dante's Inferno. They gave us a classy performance and a classy sound.

Andy Moor and company

Sunday May 8th 2016

On an unusually sunny Glaswegian day, we started off day 2 in the cool dark of the Old Fruitmarket again. Jon Rose is a violinist, but definitely not in the traditional fashion. With Palimpolin he gave us a gripping, virtuoso performance showing the astonishing sounds a violin can be made to produce. Spotlit in the dark at the other end of the Fruitmarket hall we then had Labyrinthine by Jane Dickson, an abstracted operatic piece for two voices (Lucy Duncombe and Anneke Kampman) above an electronic drone. At times it sounded like a Gothic children's playground, as they jumped and sang for short periods with looped vocals. It was hypnotic and atmospheric in the inky blackness of the Fruitmarket.

More concentration and effort was required of the audience next in the Grand Hall for Michael Pisaro's Lucretius Melody, based on The Nature of Things, a work of Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus. With voice, viola and guitars it felt quite medieval in tone, serene and unhurried. After this Alvin Curran was next up to shake the cobwebs away.

Musique Sans Frontieres starts in the foyer

Alvin Curran directing his piece in the Fruitmarket

Kirkintilloch Brass Band rise to the challenge

The distinctive skirl of three bagpipers started Alvin Curran's work, Musique Sans Frontieres, in the foyer. Accompanied by saxophonists and Alvin Curran on a shofar or horn the audience were led through the building and into the Fruitmarket where brass, woodwind sections and a choir were awaiting us. The next phase started with the crashing drums on the balcony, the music swinging from chaos to order under the guiding hand of the composer. The chorists and musicians mingled with the audience, throwing frying pans to the floor as they went before we were led by them back to the Grand Hall where the full BBC SSO took over on stage giving us a lustrous and warm end to the piece. Of particular note were the solo violinists of the BBC SSO, particularly the fiddling finale. Also the Glasgow Chamber Choir and the Kirkintilloch Brass Band who were involved gave a sterling performance and rose to the challenge of the work.

BBC SSO on stage at the Grand Hall, City Halls, Glasgow

A hard act to follow, but Alwynne Pritchard's piece Rockaby, had enough theatricality to manage it. Blurring the boundaries between music and drama, elaborately costumed and accompanied by the orchestra and an extensive table of sound effects it was inspired by the Samuel Beckett one-woman play of the same title. Michael Pisaro's fields have ears finished events in the Grand Hall on a tame note, with the orchestra subdued and quiet. John Tilbury performed the suppressed piano solo above rustling paper and tickled cymbals. It left a feeling of anxious anticipation with its exploration of the sound of silence and space reminiscent of John Cage, but rather deflated the earlier energy in the room.

David Fennessy's Hirta Rounds

The closing concert in the Fruitmarket was as eclectic and diverse as you would hope. David Fennessey's 16 musicians playing strings had part of the audience kettled between them as they passed the melody back and forth. Then we had the "yoiking" of Ánde Somby, animalistic chants from the Sami people that definitely showed the hand of Alasdair Campbell in curating the weekend.

Ándy Somby

The finale was one of my favourite pieces of the whole weekend and I would happily have listened to more of Nate Young's electronic noodling in front of an ensemble of 12 BBC SSO musicians, performing Mario Diaz de Leon's Standard Deviance One. To the end Ilan Volkov was on stage conducting this last piece with the energy and enthusiasm he shows all the time in curating and organising these events. When he is not on stage he is amongst the audience helping give these Tectonics festivals their unstuffy and relaxed atmosphere. The venue helps too, as do all the staff working in it, and this year the spaces were exploited fully by the composers.

I am glad to say that the dates are already pencilled in for next year's festival in Glasgow in May 2017, and this year's festival will be available on the BBC Radio 3 Hear and Now programme and on the BBC iPlayer.

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Glasgow Spectator Sports - Summary

May 9, 2016, 7:39 am

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Glasgow Sports - What are the options?

I spend many Saturday afternoons watching Partick Thistle play football at Firhill Stadium in Glasgow. There are other options in Glasgow though if you fancy taking in a bit of sporting action and when my team had a few weekends out of action I went around several of the other Glasgow sporting entertainments, to see what they offered. I have written blogs about these over the past month and below is a summary of what I found. As I usually dragged my children along with me I was also aware of how different sports try to appeal to future fans.

All opinions and prejudices expressed here regarding different sports are entirely my own. I am of course fully aware that other sports struggle for attention with the Scottish media's Rangers and Celtic obsession in the sporting pages, and I am happy to flag up anything else you feel merits a light being shone upon it dear reader.

For more detail please see my original posts

Ice Hockey

Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £60
Season runs - September to April
Catering - Licensed bar and popular offerings of American themed snacks...plus stovies.
Performance this season - finishing 3rd in the 2015-16 league they qualified for the play-offs, where Fife Flyers eliminated them at the quarter-finals stage
Atmosphere - from the fans downloading pre-match entertainment apps, to Angus the Highland cow mascot there is plenty of effort made to warm up the crowd. The commentary and musical stings keep the atmosphere going and interval entertainments come fast and thick. The crowd also get right behind their team and a full house is a frequent occurrence
Marks out of ten - 8/10. Definitely will continue to dip my toes into the frozen waters of Braehead Clan ice hockey

Greyhound Racing

Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £12 (plus betting)
Season runs - all year, Friday and Saturday nights
Catering - several bars around the stadium. Decent restaurant for a small group wanting a night out (I came here for my 40th birthday), plus my children agree the snack bar here makes some of Glasgow's best chips
Performance this season - it's just a venue, not a league
Atmosphere - the rickety old feel of the place is the atmosphere.
Marks out of ten - 7.5/10, purely for the nostalgic vibe you get at the greyhound track I will continue to keep coming, but I am not sure how long they can keep it going, as the crowds seem to shrink year on year.

Speedway

Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £42
Season runs - April to October
Catering - Licensed bar before and during the speedway, diner at the stadium now open 7 days per week and snacks and sweets available during the racing
Performance this season - second in the 2015 season to local rivals Edinburgh Monarchs, they have started this season well having already defeated their neighbours once already this year. Various cup and knock-out tournaments also across the year.
Atmosphere - with kids running races and Roary the Tiger mascot families are well catered for. Like greyhound racing the quick turnaround from one race to the next mean that there is always something to watch. And I haven't mention the whiff of burning fuel yet...
Marks out of ten - 8.5/10, this trip was my first visit to Saracen Park to watch the speedway and I will definitely return again with my petrolhead son

Basketball

Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £30
Season runs - September to April
Catering - City council run snack bar, if you want a drink they can pour a bottle of Bud into a plastic tumbler for you
Performance this season - finishing 5th at the end of the league season for 2015-16 they made it into the end of season play-offs where they were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Worcester Wolves.
Atmosphere - With smaller crowds than some of these other sports the atmosphere can be a bit flat, despite the score ticking over constantly. In some ways the constant scoring drains a lot of the drama from basketball. There were plenty of kids activities on the court, from youth teams playing in the breaks to birthday outings trying to score hoops, but the cajoling over the tannoy felt a bit forced. Cheerleaders? It feels a bit dated, no?
Marks out of ten - 5/10. I'd be more likely to give it a go if Dalmarnock train station stayed open later on Sunday evenings to get me home more easily

Rugby

Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £80
Season runs - September to May
Catering - good choice of burger / chicken/ grill vans around the ground, plenty of licensed bars and little queuing
Performance this season - Champions of the Pro12 league in 2014-15, at the time of writing this, they are in the end of season play-offs after finishing the league in 3rd position in 2015-16
Atmosphere - Again they've gone for the old Highland cow mascot, but no great efforts made to cajole the crowd, who seemed happy to chat among themselves for most of the match. Kids teams were playing all over the place on the day I was there. The "respect the kicker" and the lack of cursing at the referee seem to take some of the fun out of being a spectator.
Marks out of ten - 4/10. All feels a bit safe and nice. Not my cup of tea really.

Football - Partick Thistle

Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £44
Season runs - July to May
Catering - football catering would be familiar to someone arriving at the stadium from the 1920s I imagine. Pies and Bovril the go to snack, and uniquely amongst all the sporting options here "no bevvying" allowed
Performance this season - a battling performance after a slow start in 2015-16 season to ensure another year of top flight action next season. They continue to perform above expectations (and their budget), not that you would know by reading any sports pages.
Atmosphere - Kids get in for free and can meet players after the matches, various imaginative give-aways and offers this year, but the atmosphere at football, more than any of the other sports here is really dependent on the team's performance and opponent. A poor show can mean that the referee, the manager or last week's hero can be in for dog's abuse next week.
Marks out of ten - 10/10. It is history, tradition and the eternl possibility of a surprise upset or successful cup run that keeps me coming back. Definitely hope over experience, but there's always hope.

Football - Glasgow City

Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £10
Season runs - March to October
Catering - the bar in the stadium is the usual gathering place before home matches, with light snacks available
Performance this season - runaway champions in Scottish league and cup competitions for many years, really needing to be challenged more if Scottish women's football is to progress
Atmosphere - most league games can be sparsely attended, but usually a very relaxed and jolly affairs, with lots of families and children about
Marks out of ten - 9/10. The longer that Glasgow City can stop the old firm grasping control of the women's game the better and I'll keep cheering them on.

1901 Queens Park vs Third Lanark exhibition match

↧

The 12th World Festival of Youth and Students. Moscow 1985

May 11, 2016, 3:24 pm

≫ Next: Spectator Sports in Glasgow, Part Six - Boxing.

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The 12th World Festival of Youth and Students. Moscow 1985

In 1985 I was lucky enough to attend the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, and I recently came across the diary that my 14 year old self kept during the festival. These festivals started in 1947 and during the Cold War were held in the capital cities of various Eastern bloc countries. With 27,000 participants from 157 countries the 1985 festival was one of the largest ever held. Mikhail Gorbachev had just come to power in Moscow, so it was also being seen as an indication on the direction of travel for Soviet international relations.

There is an interesting contemporary briefing paper online from the US State department, which warns about the festival being a tool for Communist propaganda. They promised that the festival would "seek to submerge one-sided political statements, resolutions and appeals in a carnival-like atmosphere featuring sporting and cultural events." Oh, those dastardly Commies!

In 1985, at the age of fourteen, I was an active member of my local Youth CND branch and went to Moscow as a delegate from Glasgow West Youth CND. In those times a day out to Helensburgh or Dunoon usually entailed a march up to the Faslane Peace Camp or to the gates of the American base at Holy Loch. My parents were involved in trade union politics and in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. For many years our flat in Maryhill had hosted political activists and trade unionists from all around the word if they were, for example, on speaking tours around Scotland. We had Hassan from Iran, Palestinians, Iraqis fighting against Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party in the days when he was still an American ally, Portuguese campaigners against their fascist dictatorship and Chileans fleeing Pinochet among those passing through. Activists from South Africa were our most frequent lodgers taking their turn on the sofa. I cannot see a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky without thinking back to a former cellmate of Nelson Mandela who often stayed with us. He would look across Maryhill Road at a big billboard advertising the whisky and laugh at his memories it brought from back home, of "Walking Johnnie" as he knew the character on the bottle.

Badges I was wearing before, during and after my trip to Moscow

The opportunity then for me in 1985 to go to an international festival whose slogan was "For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship" was something to really look forward to.

I dug out my old diary that I kept during the trip when tidy up recently. Although it is only very cursory, for me it has brought back many memories of what was a fascinating experience. There is not much documentary evidence from the festival online, so I have also put here a few photos of some of the bits and pieces that I brought back from the trip. Sadly I think I only had a 24 exposure film in the wee basic camera that I took with me and as a 14 year old, I seem to have been more interested in enjoying myself whilst there, rather than documenting what I was up to.

In this 20 minute Russian film from the festival I can briefly see myself walking into the Olympic Stadium at the opening ceremony 11.50minutes in. The Scottish delegation stood apart from the British delegation (in the film they are walking in front of us, the red track suits of - I think - a Sheffield athletics club, rather than British communists as they were described on the BBC evening news at the time). Wearing a kilt I had borrowed from a scout leader my mum knew, I am carrying a banner with a quote from Robert Burns on it. Marching through the streets to get to the arena we learned the phrase we would chant into the night on many of the days afterwards.

Мир. Дружба. фестиваль. - Peace. Friendship. Festival.

For any students of the Cold War, those interested in the Soviet entertainment of Western teenagers or possibly any of the other 27,000 people attending the festival, I present to you my recollections of Moscow.

Moscow diary of Paul, aged 14 and 3/4

Friday 26th July 1985
"Arrived at Glasgow Airport at 11.45am and checked in. Went to the departure lounge at 1.00pm. The Aeroflot plane left at 2.00pm and we arrived in Moscow at 5.30pm our time, 8.30pm Moscow time. We got through customs by 11pm and met some guides, who were very chatty with me, because I was the only one wearing a kilt I think. It wasn't actually very comfortable wearing it on the plane but they liked it. We got a bus to Hotel Cosmos at midnight and after checking in, etc at the hotel got to my room at 2.00am and got something to eat before going to sleep."

My festival pass (big hair that day) which gave you entry to events
and free entry on public transport and a brochure from our hotel

The Hotel Cosmos had been built in for the 1980 Olympic Games held in Moscow.

It is a huge hotel and was home to delegates from many nationalities.

It also had conference rooms, a bowling alley in the basement and each night the foyer filled with musicians and delegates from different countries partying.

It's other claim to fame is as the setting for the finale of Timur Bekmambetov's Russian vampire film 'Day Watch'.

Clip of Hotel Cosmos from the film "Day Watch"

Saturday 27th July 1985
"Stayed in hotel until 2.00pm when we got on the coach to the Moscow Olympic Stadium for the festival opening ceremony. It was exactly like the Olympics with people walking out onto the track behind their flag. I was picked as one of the people to walk around it. At about 4.00pm we moved off. The Scottish group went around together, behind the UK group. We had a piper who is sharing a room with me and is from Motherwell. We were all arranged on a training track near the stadium and walked through a couple of streets before we marched into the stadium. The stadium was huge. After walking round it we went to our seats in the stand to watch the rest of the ceremony. South Africa marched around behind the ANC flag and got one of the biggest cheers and also the Palestinians came in behind their flag. After the countries had all walked in there was gymnasts, dancers, bands, trumpeters, etc, etc. Gorbachev (who was there) made a speech and the Olympic flame was lit for the festival. At about 9.00pm hundreds of doves were released and the ceremony was over. We then came back to the hotel at 11.00pm and had dinner before going to bed."

Waiting with our Scotland banner to
go into the stadium, beside Lenin

Performers on the field and an ever changing series of images produced by
the well rehearsed crowd at the Olympic Stadium Moscow. 1985

Above are a couple of my photos from the opening ceremony.

The Scottish delegation were often accompanied by our lovely banner of a dove in front of a saltire (here in front of Lenin).

So I can say I was at one of Gorbachev's early speeches. Although it was obviously in Russian, we were provided with a text in English. He had become General Secretary of the Communist Party four months earlier, in March 1985. He soon engaged in a series of reforms of the Soviet state (Perestroika) and attempts at bringing about nuclear disarmament.

The Olympic Stadium, previously known as the Lenin Stadium, had been renovated for the 1980 Olympics and had a capacity of 100,000.

It is now known as the Luzhniki Stadium and has been re-fitted since with a roof, etc. It will host the 2018 World Cup Final.

Sunday 28th July 1985
"Got up at 9.00am and got on a coach to the Soviet Club. Each delegation has its own club I think. There we were greeted by singers and dancers, and with bread and salt before going into a concert for us. There were dancers, comedians, gymnastics, singers, a man whistling, etc. After this we came home for lunch. Then we got the buses to an Anti-Fascist conference. There were lots of Soviet people at it. Then we got the buses to the Moscow Dynamo's stadium where another Anti-Fascist rally was on. There were speeches followed by dancers, etc and eventually at 11.00pm fireworks. We then got the buses home, had dinner and went to bed."

Rally to mark the 40th anniversary of the defeat of Fascism

The Anti-Fascism conference and rally marked the 40th anniversary of the defeat of Fascism in Europe. At the rally a troupe of performers in red, waving the red flag of the Soviet Union, were pursued by the Fascists in black. Finally other performers joined the battle behind the British and American flags and Fascism was chased out of the arena. The conference theme was about the continuing fight against Fascism and it is clear from the later rally that the credit for victory in the second world war was being shared with the Soviet allies too.

It is hard to comprehend the devastation wrought upon the Soviet Union by the Second World War, within living memory of many in 1985, and the effect it had on the psyche of the country. Almost 2000 towns were wiped off the map during the conflict, along with 70,000 villages. Over 26 million Soviet citizens died during the war, more than half of them civilians.

Central Dynamo Stadium was home to the Moscow Dynamo football team until 2008, when it was demolished and they moved to the Khimki Arena. It was able to accommodate 35,000 spectators.
I remember being very impressed by the whistling man at the Soviet concert. A rare talent.

Monday 29th July 1985
"After breakfast I went with a few other people to the British Club by Metro. We got lost but eventually found it and there were various meetings on which we went to. We came back after lunch and I went out alone for a walk before coming back and going to sleep. We then got dinner and went to the joint Scottish/Irish ceilidh which was great fun. It went on until 1.00am and carried on later back in the hotel until 4.00am. I met one of the Dunnes strikers at it who had stayed at our house last year and chatted to her."

My father and others at the front of this 1980 torch-lit procession in Glasgow

As I mentioned above, my parents were involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement and this was why I met a familiar face in Moscow in 1985.

The Dunnes Store in Henry Street, Dublin, was where 21 year old Mary Manning worked in 1984. Her trade union, Idatu, passed a policy that its members should not handle South African goods, supporting a ban called for by those opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The difference in July 1984 was that Mary took her union's policy and implemented it, refusing to check-out a customer's South African fruit.

When suspended she and ten of her colleagues went on strike and picketed outside the Dunnes Store, including her 18 year old friend Alma Russell.

Mary and her colleague had taken their turn on our sofas in Glasgow when she was speaking to trade unionists in Scotland about the issue.

The strike continued long after I met up with one of our former lodgers in Moscow, ending two years later in 1987. The end came when the Irish government introduced a ban on South African produce. In 1990, after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela visited Dublin and met up with the Dunnes strikers, who had played their part in hastening his release from prison.

Some gifts I have held on to from East German and
Cuban delegates that I met at the festival

Tuesday 30th July 1985
"Slept in till 12.00 when I got lunch. After which I went to the East Germans' club. We were greeted by singers and I was shown around by one of them. She showed me potters, glass makers, wood carvers, etc and gave me many presents. We then came back for dinner. After dinner we got the coach to the British party. It is funny that the Scottish group doesn't seem to be part of the British group really. At night in the hotel the interpreters all come to join the Scottish group. On the way to the British club the interpreter showed us some typical Moscow streets, buildings and some well known ones. The British party was poorly organised but the Reggae band Misty in Roots were really good. Dick Gaughan was singing too and Everything But The Girl are here too. They are staying on the same floor as me at the hotel. A Soviet architect I met drew me a picture and talked about Charles Rennie Mackintosh. After this at 1.00am we carried on the party in the hotel foyer and I met the East Germans again who were good fun."

Sketch for "my friend Pol" by a Russian fan of
Charles Rennie Mackintosh that I met

Each country had, along with their standard delegates like me, a cultural delegation with them to entertain the rest of the world.

Misty In Roots I remember well, as Two-Tone, ska and reggae was what I was into at the time. Dick Gaughan was there with the Scottish delegation but being a wee bit more mature than the rest of us seemed to make his own agenda, and maybe spotting that I was a good bit younger than most of the others there, often took me under his wing a bit.

Everything But The Girl weren't really my thing back then, but I recognised them at the hotel as a couple of the really cool and trendy girls back at school were into them. I made a point of remembering to name drop the fact I had seen them over the summer, running hand in hand along the hotel corridor, giggling. EBGT were one of several bands penciled in as "lefties" back in the day, when bands were allowed to show an ability to think as well as perform.

Tracey Thorn's recollections of their Moscow trip in her excellent memoir "Bedsit Disco Queen" make farcical reading. She does pick out their impromptu turn in the foyer of the Cosmos Hotel as their one performance that did feel like a real gig.

Another gig she describes, going on stage after a magician pulling doves out of a hat, rings very true of the entertainment laid on during the festival.

I had forgotten about the daily boiled cabbage on the hotel menu until I read about it in her book. She also mentions the "near-mute translator-guides" but I think they were probably just intimidated by her and Ben.

My memories of the guides are of them all gravitating towards the Scottish group and my festival events programme is signed with cheery bon mots from about twenty of them we were drinking with on the last night.

I was 14 years old and having a ball.

Others, a bit more worldly wise, may have been able to cast a more cynical eye over what they saw.

Wednesday 31st July 1985
"After getting up I went across the road to the Park of Economic Achievements. which was quite interesting. There is a great statute to Yuri Gagarin of a rocket shooting into the sky there. There was a cinema thing which surrounded you on all sides of the room, but the guide I was with didn't like the film much because it was from the point of view of a tank driver. I don't think he liked the USSR being all militaristic in the film. Then after lunch I chose to go to the Anti-Imperialist tribunal which was on in the hotel. There were people from many different countries talking. I had to leave before the end and I went to meet some Soviet lawyers until 9.00pm when I came back and had an early night at 11.30pm."

Some of my maps, tickets and event programmes
that I have kept since my trip to Moscow

Thursday 1st August 1985
"After breakfast at 8.00am I got the bus to Red Square. We passed the tomb of the unknown soldier before going in to Lenin's mausoleum. After passing through it we walked along past the other graves in the Kremlin wall. Then we got the bus to the British Club for a meeting with the ANC about South Africa. Then after a late lunch I stayed in the hotel and wrote a couple of postcards. At 6.00pm we got on the bus to go to the Bolshoi Ballet to see Romeo and Juliet. We were really high up on one of the balconies and had binoculars on the seat in front which you could use. The interpreter complained that she didn't like modern versions of the ballet where they didn't have the full costumes but I loved being there. Afterwards I was dancing about in the hotel foyer till 3.00am."

Programme from the Bolshoi ballet production of Romeo and Juliet 1985

I know! I got to see the Bolshoi Ballet. They performed Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and I can't remember much about it, other than like the guide I was a bit disappointed that they hadn't appeared on stage in elaborate costumes with grand stage sets. I remember crowds of people outside too, as we came in asking if we had a spare ticket, a very rock and roll atmosphere in the street outside if I remember rightly.

You can see that dancing about in the hotel foyer until the wee small hours was a recurrent theme. Wearing a kilt and hanging about with my roommate and his bagpipes meant that we were always drawing a crowd, even if the East German girls had a bit of a tendency to find endless comedy in trying to shove a hand up your kilt. Stella Artois was (curiously) the beer on sale in the hotel I recall. My diary is a bit hazy on detail here, as I knew full well that I would be coming back and reading it to my parents when I got home.

Friday 2nd August 1985
"I got up fairly early and after breakfast went with Dick (Gaughan) and four of the interpreters to Gorky Park because there was lots of things on here that they all wanted to see. Here there is various exhibitions and concerts from each of the different Soviet republics. Then we came home for lunch and I went to the Progress Books shop and bought some books. After that I just rested and after dinner went to the Soviet State Circus. It was very good and there were lots of Soviets watching it. The floor of the circus could sink away and then a swimming pool was lifted up and some seals did tricks, then that lifted away and an ice rink came up. There were lots of dancing skaters and then an ice skating bear, which was a bit strange. It went on till 12.00pm. After this we came back to the hotel and partied till 2.00am."

Soviet stamps marking the festival which we were all given,
with the mascot, Katya, featuring prominently

The Russians do like their circuses and this was a memorable circus experience.

Although, I can still recall the strange sight of that big bear standing on its hind legs, with its feet in a pair of leather ice skates that made its feet look too wee, skating about on the ice.
The ornate mosaic-ed Moscow metro system has made no impression on my diary, despite me using it many times during the week.

Saturday 3rd August 1985
"After breakfast a dozen Scots and a dozen of the interpreters took a coach out to the Olympic Village for the big match, singing "Flower of Scotland" all the way. The 1985 World Cup final - USSR v Scotland (+1 Englishman). I was in defence. The game was drawn at 3-3 with the Sassenach having to get taken to hospital in the process (I think he broke his ankle). Then we drove to the Lenin Hills to see views of Moscow. There was a wedding group up there too. Following this we got a guided tour of Moscow on the way to the hotel for lunch. In the afternoon I stayed in the hotel until 5.30pm when we went for the bus to the closing ceremony. It had ballet, acrobats, dancers and more fireworks. We all had torches to hold and waved them about once it got dark. The atmosphere was really electric and at the end they put out the Olympic flame. Eventually we got back to the hotel at 1.00am and I went straight to bed."

Closing ceremony, 12th World Festival of Youth and Students, Moscow. 1985

Sunday 4th August 1985
"In the morning I went around the Park of Economic Achievements again with a couple of the guides as it is just across the road from the hotel. We seen various farm animals, rockets, etc and the huge statue of the man and woman holding a hammer and sickle in the air. After that we returned to the hotel at 2.00pm for lunch. After lunch we got the bus to the Kremlin and got a tour of it before posing for photos in Red Square. We then came back to the hotel and made some presentations to the guides from the Scottish group. Then we packed and had a subdued party through the night until 5.30am when we left to get the plane home and said goodbye."

The Scottish delegation at the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students,
in Red Square, wearing our "Scotland at the WFYS" T-shirts

Reading my diary again has brought back some great memories for me of my time in Moscow at the festival. There must be other documentary evidence of this Scottish group being there, as there were photographers with us from the Cranhill Arts Project, part of our delegation who were premiering a film at the festival about Glasgow, which they had made.

("Clyde Film" is available to watch on the National Library of Scotland website here.)

The guides would talk openly about their country I thought, and about their hopes for the new president. I was sure that Oliver Tambo was there from the ANC and that Yasser Arafat was at one of the meetings I was at, but I have made no mention of him in my brief diary entries, so who knows?

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the "carnival-like atmosphere" that the Americans promised us we were going to be exposed to.

Мир. Дружба. фестиваль. - Peace. Friendship. Festival.

↧

Spectator Sports in Glasgow, Part Six - Boxing.

May 29, 2016, 7:14 am

≫ Next: Going Doon The Watter

≪ Previous: The 12th World Festival of Youth and Students. Moscow 1985

"History in the Making" - Ricky Burns vs Michele Di Rocco

The SSE Hydro has always looked like the perfect stage for professional boxing contests, and last night it was the venue for local favourite Ricky Burns's attempt to claim his third world title. He was the headline act on a night of boxing laid on by Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing organisation and shown live on Sky Sports. The 10,000 seater arena has good views from every seat in the house and can create a great atmosphere when the entertainment is right, with the seating banked up steeply on three sides.

The SSE Hydro arena, Glasgow

The Hydro has been used for boxing once before, when it was home to the boxing events at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. I saw some of the finals here and was very impressed with the organisation and the performances. I enjoy watching boxing on TV but have rarely went to see professional bouts. When I have bought tickets recently the events have been cancelled at short notice for various nefarious reasons. Prior to that I have taken in the odd evening of amateur boxing in Glasgow, which can be anywhere from the Fairfield Working Mens Club in Govan to the function suites at Hampden Stadium. With the demise of the Kelvin Hall as a sporting venue, where Benny Lynch and Jim Watt have previously fought, the Hydro has been a welcome, and well used, addition to the city's venue options. As a child I remember our annual trips through to Edinburgh for the Miners' Gala, where one of the most memorable events was the big tent in Holyrood Park hosting amateur boxing bouts, so I was looking forward to this night.

SSE Hydro in 2014 for the Commonwealth Games boxing finals

The big problem faced by professional boxing is that those running it are all in it to make money for themselves. Why else would there be so many championship divisions with WBA, IBF, WBC and WBO champions on the go at present? Then you can get "regular" and "super" champions of some bodies to add to the chaos. Promoters cherry pick fights their man is likely to win in order to guarantee the next payday. It is a big turn off for many, and you watch so many fights unsure if you are watching a true contest, or some fall guy stepping in to make someone else look good.

At end of all this, a successful boxing career, such as Ricky Burns has had, can in end in bankruptcy and contract disputes with promoters. After slowly rebuilding his career after splitting from promoter Frank Warren, Ricky Burns, now promoted by Eddie Hearn, has stepped up a weight division to try to grab the vacant WBA World Super-Lightweight title. The "History in the Making" tag is to mark this achievement, as it would make Burns a three-weight world champion, having previously held Super Featherweight and Lightweight titles.

With the main fights of the evening going out live on Sky Sports, the boxing was listed as starting at 5.30pm with a preposterous 12 or 13 fights listed to go ahead. For the majority of the early bouts, they played to a sparsely filled hall. Joe Ham taking on Paul Holt drew more punters away from the bars, fighting 6 x 3 minute rounds at bantamweight. In his eighth fight since turning professional after the 2014 Commonwealth Games he took a comfortable points victory. The personable Glaswegian has been a regular supporter of the campaign to build a statue in the city to honour Benny Lynch and is building up an impressive record of victories now.

Joe Ham vs Paul Holt

"...and still undefeated...Joe Ham"

More of a brawl came from former British Champion Jon Lewis Dickinson and Belfast's Tommy McCarthy with McCarthy emerging on top after 10 x 3 minute rounds in a British Cruiserweight Championship eliminator. Evenly matched at the beginning, McCarthy began to pull ahead and won by a unanimous decision as he makes steady progress in the division.

Jon Lewis Dickinson and Tommy McCarthy

Conor Benn, son of Nigel Benn, fought his second professional bout high up on the billing, a workaday four round fight against Halifax's Luke Keleher. Clearly the promoters trying to build him up, but it was a shame Charlie Flynn wasn't given the chance at this point on the night to fight in front of a big home crowd.

Scotland's Willie Limond has been boxing professionally since 1999 and the 37 year old was intent on having one more big title push. His hope as stated in the programme, was to take the British Super-Lightweight belt from Tyrone Nurse tonight, aiming to set up a world title fight in Glasgow later this year against Ricky Burns if the pair of them ended up victors on the night. The crowd were getting right behind every punch he threw in some lively early rounds, despite a large section on the floor of the hall being distracted by trying to get selfies with American Heavyweight Shannon Briggs who ambled into his ringside seat during the first round.

Limond seemed to run out of steam as the fight went on and it was stopped in the ninth round when the referee decided that he had had enough punishment from the reachy Tyrone Nurse. After a long and impressive career, it may be time for Willie Limond to hang up his gloves.

Willie Limond vs Tyrone Nurse

There were still three fights on the undercard to be fought when TV schedules required us to skip to the main event, Ricky Burns vs Michele Di Rocco. The 34 year old Italian, recent European Super-Lightweight champion has an impressive record with forty victories and only one defeat, and is more comfortable at this weight than Burns, making him slight favourite in some people's eyes. The hope of many in the home crowd was that they could help push Burns onwards to victory.

The hall was full by the time the ringwalk started for the Burns vs Di Rocco fight and it was clear this would be a partisan crowd. It was also clear that signs of some "over-exuberance" were breaking out all around the arena before a raucous and shambolic rendition of "Flower of Scotland" was bawled out by the crowd in the Hydro.

Ricky Burns and Michele Di Rocco take to the ring

Ricky Burns rolled back the years to put on a performance that he has previously shown he is capable of, as he went at Di Rocco from the first bell. With an impressive performance, his jabs repeatedly hit home and the lively crowd were lifted to their feet from early on. The Italian looked as if he was taking it though until he was knocked to the floor in the eighth round. Although he got back to his feet he was clearly in no state to continue and the referee brought it to an end.

It was an imposing performance and makes Ricky Burns the first Scottish boxer ever to have won titles at three weights. As we approached midnight I headed home with most of the audience, with chants of "Ricky Burns...Ricky, Ricky Burns" to the tune of KC and the Sunshine Band's Give It Up echoing out. Three fights, including Scottish Commonwealth Lightweight Champion Charlie 'mailman' Flynn taking on Pole Norbert Kalucza were still to come in an emptying hall, which seemed incredibly unfair on the boxers promised their arena exposure. Charlie Flynn later won his eighth professional fight, on points.

Ricky Burns is declared the new WBA Super-Lightweight World Champion

On a night like this with a partisan crowd there can be a great atmosphere at the boxing. However early in the night the hall was almost empty and later on a decent proportion of the crowd were marockyoolusly drunk. Obviously fights can have varying lengths but the programme was always fairly fluid as we danced to the tune of TV audiences, and seemed cobbled together at times. As a result crowds of people ebbed in and out between the arena and the bar as we waited for the headline act. A leaner, meaner line up may have helped engage the crowd in the hall but I guess we are just window dressing for the TV audience. The people sitting around us were absolutely pished by the end of the night. As one guy with a mop cleared up vomit a couple of rows in front of us another group beside us seemed oblivious to the fact Ricky Burns was fighting down below us. They fell back on the only tunes they could think of to shout as a crowd "Waghorn's on fire, your defence is terrified" and "Fuck the IRA" and thankfully headed off before the fight finished.

Many people were here for a night out, rather than for the boxing, which is fair enough but the stewards were clearly being kept busy by scuffles threatening to break out here and there. At times it was just as entertaining to watch the audience as to watch what was going on in the ring. However there are few venues that you can get away with that level of drunkeness and not get ejected.

It was an excellent night of boxing, but I'm not sure that having a vague feeling you might get lamped if you looked at someone the wrong way added much to an excitable atmosphere. With that and the dolly-birds tottering around between rounds with the the cards above their heads, it feels like boxing needs to raise its game a wee bit and come into the 21st century. It is an expensive night out, and the amateur boxing at the Commonwealth Games was laid on in a much more professional manner. It was better organised, had a sharper schedule, big screens above the ring to help watch the action and MCs talked to the audience, rather than spending all night with their back to you as they faced the TV cameras with you as a backdrop.

↧

Going Doon The Watter

May 30, 2016, 4:30 am

≫ Next: Bruce Springsteen - The River Tour. Hampden Park, Glasgow. June 2016

≪ Previous: Spectator Sports in Glasgow, Part Six - Boxing.

Doon The Watter

Sailing "doon the watter" has a long history in Glasgow. Particularly during the Glasgow Fair in July when there would be a rush of people going down the Clyde, whether for day trips or to holiday by the coast. Since the launch of Henry Bell's, Port Glasgow built, Comet steamboat in 1812 trips down the Clyde started to become affordable to more people. This led to the growth of towns such as Helensburgh, Gourock, Largs, Rothesay, Dunoon and Millport which developed as seaside resorts for day trippers and those taking a holiday from Glasgow. The number of steamboats grew and as the development of the railway network made it easier to get away from the city the holiday trade on the Clyde coast boomed. In the early 20th century there were soon thousands of people queuing for buses, trains and boats out of Glasgow on holiday weekends.

Queuing for the bus to Gourock at the Glasgow Fair.
Picture: Newquest Herald and Times

In the past couple of weeks I have had the chance to visit some of these places again. The towns are now often bypassed as holiday destinations by Glaswegians for places further afield, but they are still popular places for day trippers (and, it has to be said, for retirement). With the towns down the Clyde coast still entertaining visitors with crazy golf, ice cream, buckets and spades and even an outdoor swimming pool it is easy to get a nostalgic sense of the former glories of these places.

Some of my grandfather's old holiday postcards home from
Millport, Stevenston, Arran and Ayr.

My grandfather on my dad's side had a habit of holding on to old postcards, which he passed on to me years ago. These were either received by him, or his parents from numerous holidays over the years from the early 1900s up until about 1939. Those pictured above were sent back to my great-grandad in Glasgow, where he worked in a foundry in Parkhead and then the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. A trip doon the watter to Millport, Stevenston, Arran or Ayr was a pleasant break in the fresh air away from the smoke and grime of Glasgow in the early twentieth century.

The Millport postcard above shows a match on the Millport Golf Course between professional golfers; JH Taylor and Ted Ray vs James Braid and George Duncan from July 23, 1913. The postcard showing The Cross in Stevenston tells us that Isa was "having a great time down here" with the postmark showing that she was holidaying during the Glasgow Fair. The 1921 postcard from Caticol, Arran bemoans the poor weather that they are having and the 1932 postcard showing the "River Ayr Walk" tells us that they are have "...had a great holiday in Ayr. One of the best."

My mum at the front, her brother and sister and my grandad
on holiday in Dunoon

A couple of decades later, in the 1950s mum was also enjoying seaside holidays down the Clyde. This holiday photograph above from 1959 has my mum stood in front of her brother and sister and my grandad, having a break on the shore at Dunoon.

As a child of the 1970s, like many other Glaswegians, my earliest holidays were to these same places. I can remember going to Arran with my parents, my granny and grandad (above) when I was about 5 years old. My other memorable early holidays were to the Butlin's Holiday Camp in Ayr and a holiday stay in the youth Hostel at Fintry, making me the fourth generation to take my holidays in these places.

A trip further afield to Leven in Fife

In the days before telephones were widely available many of the postcards are passing on such mundane messages as "weather fine, we will be back on Saturday". Others have the address they are staying at and expect postcards back, as one grumpy card from the 1920s says "Your mother is disappointed that you haven't written".

Occasionally one of the postcards gives a wee glimpse into what people were up to, such as this one from Leven in Fife is from July 1931 and tells us that "Willie has been golfing, of course. Weather not good....Mr C and the boys are A-1. Alex cycled here on Saturday and was tired".

PS Waverley

PS Waverley, now based in Glasgow at the Science Centre

A few steamboats still take tourists around Scottish beauty spots, such as the Steamship Sir Walter Scott on Loch Katrine. The last paddle steamer to be built in Britain is currently docked at Balloch, on Loch Lomond. The Maid of the Loch. was built in Glasgow in 1953 at the Pointhouse Shipyard where the Glasgow Riverside Museum now stands. She is slowly being restored to bring her back into steam operation.

Ready to leave on our trip

If you want to get a feel for the old days of paddle steamer trips down the Clyde there is only one option of course. The world's last sea-going paddle steamer, the beautiful PS Waverley. The first PS Waverley was built in 1899, named after Sir Walter Scott's novel. During the Second World War she was used by the navy as a minesweeper and was sunk in 1940 whilst evacuating British troops from Dunkirk. She was replaced in 1946 by the current Waverley, built at the Pointhouse Shipyards just across the River Clyde from where she is usually berthed now at the Glasgow Science Centre. All through the summer months various routes run to Largs, Helensburgh, Bute, Cumbrae and the lochs. You can either get a ticket to let you on and off at various points along the route or stay on board all day and enjoy refreshments in one of her two bars. This is often the most popular outing, and this longstanding tradition is the origin of the phrase "steaming" or "steamboats" to describe a state of drunkeness which may result.

Heading under the Erskine Bridge on PS Waverley

With the Waverley's 2016 season just started on the May holiday weekend, we decided to take a trip from Glasgow to Helensburgh, via Greenock. It can take a surprisingly large number of people spread throughout the various lounges, decks and bars. As everyone jockeys for position to get the best view, you soon realise that there is hardly a bad seat on the place. As people start to wander about, space opens up. You can soon see how little Glasgow now uses the river that runs through its heart. You puff down the Clyde today are rarely meet another boat, in stark contrast to old photographs when the banks were deep with ships and boats of various sizes. Passing the old shipyard slipways and the couple of remaining yards it is hard not to think we really need to try harder to utilise the Clyde and support those still working on it. At many points the biggest industry on the banks of the Clyde in Glasgow seems to be scrapyards, with huge piles of metal on either bank awaiting transportation overseas to be recycled.

One of the bars on board the Waverley

The dining saloon offers rolls and bacon in the morning and meals later on, and you can take a break from watching Glasgow float past by going below deck to watch the mighty engine pumping away, a blur of beautiful brass and steel.

My favourite urinal to watch Glasgow
sail past whilst I pee on the Waverley

Powering across the Clyde from Greenock to Helensburgh

After two hours we disembarked at Helensburgh pier and waved goodbye to the Waverley from the shore. It is a marvellous way to spend a few hours.

There may no longer be an outdoor swimming pool in Helensburgh, but I have vague childhood memories of swimming in it with my grandad in the late 1970s before it closed. I think I can remember the sides of the pool being very rough. More unbelievably, as I look into the murky water from the pier, I used to get the train here with school friends in the 1980s and we would all launch ourselves into the Clyde to swim. Helensburgh was home to Henry Bell, who started the steamboat fad with his Comet (he also owned the Helensburgh public baths). It was once also home to such luminaries as the inventor of the television, John Logie Baird, and Holywood actress Deborah Kerr.

The Waverley leaving the pier at Helensburgh

My grandad's old postcards show evidence of their trips on steamboats down the Clyde. These postcards below are of a boat arriving at Blairmore Pier near Dunoon, and of the PS Lord of the Isles in the Kyles of Bute, near Tighnabuaich. The Lord of the Isles ran the Glasgow to Inverary route from 1891 to 1928.

More old family postcards, with steamboats.
Blairmore pier, Holy Loch near Dunoon and the
"Lord of the Isles" in the Kyles of Bute,

Often the most well known family in these Clyde seaside resort towns were the local Italians who made the ice cream. Like Zavaroni's in Rothesay and Nardini's in Largs, if you come to Helensburgh you need to finish your trip with a visit to Dino's.

Dino's Ice Cream parlour, Helensburgh

Gourock Outdoor Pool

A popular attraction in many Scottish seaside resorts was the outdoor pool. Only two outdoor public pools still operate in Scotland, at Stonehaven and at Gourock. The pool at Stonehaven opened in the 1930s and could get 6000 visitors on popular days, one year recording over 100,000 visitors. These pools usually were filled with filtered seawater. My mum's dad loved swimming outdoors and was always taking any opportunity to swim in rivers and the sea, but one of his favourite places was Stonehaven pool. This picture below is of my grandad in his younger days on the diving boards at Stonehaven pool. It took me a while to locate it until I saw the old postcard below on this website where you can see the diving boards from another angle. Diving into pools was a thing my mum says her dad always enjoyed and if there wasn't any diving boards at a pool, he would often climb up on the doors of the poolside changing cubicles to dive into the water.

My grandad on the diving boards at Stonehaven outdoor pool 1930s

Early postcard of Stonehaven outdoor pool and the diving boards

On the west coast we still have Gourock outdoor pool. Originally opened in 1909, they have been heating the water since 1969. Refurbished 15 years ago the pool is open from May to September. For £4 I enjoyed a lovely swim on a day of unexpected sunshine last week, with views of Kilcreggan and the Cowal peninsula across the Firth of Clyde. A mouthful of water and the unexpected buoyancy soon remind you that as in the past, the pool is still filled with filtered seawater.

Gourock outdoor pool 2016

Millport on the Isle of Great Cumbrae

A trip to Millport offers one of the easiest ways to spend a day by the sea that doesn't seem to have changed much from my great-grandfather's time. Driving, cycling or getting the train to Largs you then take the ferry over to the Isle of Cumbrae. The ferry runs every 15 minutes and takes barely 10 minutes to cross. If you don't take your car you will find a bus waiting for you when you get off the ferry for the short run down to Millport, the only town on the island. Millport itself is a decent size with just about enough bars, cafes and shops to distract you. Kayaks and boats can also be hired and there is a golf course just behind the town.

Crocodile Rock, Millport

Described by the local website as one of Scotland's most popular tourist attractions, everybody knows the Crocodile Rock on the beach in Millport. It was apparently first painted around 1913 but was so popular with visitors that it has been regularly re-painted to freshen it up ever since. It recently was given a centenary celebration. If you are unconvinced that it looks like a crocodile, wait until you cycle a couple of miles up the coast to see the "Lion Rock".

Crazy golf, Millport

Tidal paddling pool, Millport

My daughter and myself passed our recent day out on Millport in the traditional manner, hiring a bike from one of the numerous local shops providing them and taking a wee tour. The road around the island is about ten miles long, with very little traffic once you are away from the ferry terminal. There are various beaches and rockpools to explore as well as the traditional seaside entertainments of trampolines, crazy golf, amusement arcades, ice cream parlours and an old tidal paddling pool.

Calmac ferry leaving Cumbrae for Largs

Getting back to Largs we had to visit Nardini's for a pokey hat before heading up the road to Glasgow.

Nardini's Cafe, Largs

I always enjoy trips to these towns, partly for the nostalgia but also because they are beautiful places, filled with unexpected art deco architecture and views across the water. There are few places more magnificent in Scotland than the elegant curving glass roofed Wemyss Bay train station which connects to the ferry terminal for Rothesay and the Isle of Bute.

For me though the best thing about trips down this way is remembering my happy childhood trips with my granny and grandad and my great uncle Andy. With me sitting on my mum's knee in the front seat of my grandad's car and my granny, dad, great uncle and my brother squashed in the back, a run down the coast was always an exciting day out. Just as my grandad did with us, I now find myself breaking off the bottom of my cone to scoop a wee bit of ice cream onto it to give my daughter a mini-cone. Maybe in 40 years time my children will be doing the same thing with other children.

My brother and me on a 1970s family holiday, Pirnmill, Arran

↧

Bruce Springsteen - The River Tour. Hampden Park, Glasgow. June 2016

June 2, 2016, 12:51 pm

≫ Next: Adam Ant vs Coldplay

≪ Previous: Going Doon The Watter

Live Review: Bruce Springsteen - The River Tour. Hampden Park, Glasgow. June 2016

As a long time fan of Bruce Springsteen I would enjoy seeing him perform two hours of Christmas Carols but The River, his double album released 35 years ago, contains some of my all-time favourite songs. So I was delighted to find him bringing his "The River" tour to Glasgow. When the tour started in America, on stage Springsteen and the E Street Band worked their way sequentially through the twenty tracks of the album but, as is his wont, the performances are evolving and changing every night.

In Glasgow, as he came onto the Hampden stage at 6.45pm under a glorious sunny sky, he opened with the song I had been singing all day in anticipation of the concert, "Waitin' On A Sunny Day" (from 2002 album The Rising). Right from the off he was down at the front, working the crowd and soon dragged a 10 year old fan up onto the stage to sing along with him. She gave a spectacularly self-confident rendition of the song before giving him a hug and getting back down into the crowd.

Keeping the upbeat mood he went into "Spirit In The Night" from the 1973 album Greetings From Ashbury Park, NJ, but which I first knew as the B-side to a 7 inch version of Born To Run that I have. This single was one of many that I bought from a rack in the newsagent across the road from my granny's house. These were old cast-offs from jukeboxes with the large hole in the middle, but often strange double-A side combinations. Like many people I worked my way backwards through Springsteen's catalogue, as I was only 2 years old when he released this album. My mother had bought Born In The USA when it was released in 1985, which were the first Springsteen songs that I heard. Touring the UK in 1985 he gave a donation to help the striking miners that year, which further endeared him to me. At that time I was making my first trips to record shops and started picking up second hand copies of his earlier albums.

In these days of Amazon and music downloads, record shops are few and far between. In the 1980s there were plenty of places to browse through racks and shelves of records, not just my granny's newsagent. I would spend many a Saturday starting at Dumbarton Road and working my way up to Great Western Road with a couple of friends, looking into umpteen record shops on the way. The first stop when I got off the number 9 bus in Partick was West End Records on Dumbarton Road. They also had a branch in Clydebank Shopping Centre and sold a lot of record company excess stock, often unfortunately with a punch hole clipped in the corner of the cover.

West End Records, Dumbarton Road Glasgow, not long before the whole block was demolished

After taking ownership of my mum's copy of Born In The USA it was in this shop that I picked up Springsteen's breakthrough album Born To Run from 1975, and later on progressed to The River. The River had come out in 1980 and was made by an artist caught between moody, downbeat storytelling songs and bright, rosy fist-pumping anthems. I didn't own many gatefold double albums then and spent many hours poring over the lyrics on the songs on it. The track The River was my favourite, but as a teenager I struggled to see why Mary and the singer in the song were so pessimistic and down about her getting pregnant and married at 19 years of age. 19, that was ancient! However, the image of this disillusioned pair dreamily thinking back to their teenage days of canoodling down by the river, wondering "Is a dream a lie that don't come true, or is it something worse?" appealed to me.

Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt
sing Two Hearts in Glasgow

In Hampden, four songs in we finally got to some songs from The River, the opening three tracks including Steve Van Zandt and Bruce duetting on Two Hearts. Drifting off of the setlist to take requests from the audience we got a storming performance of Rosalita and then Sandy from the 1973 album The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. This album of rambling storytelling songs I picked up in Realistic Records on Dowanhill Street. This second hand record shop opposite the Dowanhill Bar was where I found various gems over the years, including Big Country's The Crossing in all three sleeve colour variations and Eurythmics debut album In The Garden. Unless you got hold of the Guiness Book of Hit Singles it was harder to work out what albums and singles an artist actually had in the pre-internet age, so rummaging through record shops often turned up surprisng things.

Some of the Springsteen singles I've accumulated

In later years my amble northwards would divert from here to Music Mania at the bottom of Byres Road. Run by a Canadian with a dodgy moustache I picked up some complete rubbish like Bangs and Crashes by Go West. Then you could visit Woolworths if you were after chart singles, later Stephen Pastels record shop upstairs in John Smith's bookshop where Starbucks is now, before going into Echo nearer the top of Byres Road for more obscure stuff. The grumpy brothers that owned the shop (and also ran it as Listen in a previous incarnation) would always be happy to help. A wander up to Lost In Music in Ruthven Lane was good for older 7 inch singles and that is where I found Springsteen's My Hometown/ Santa Claus is Coming To Town classic disc.

Sad wee farewell letter from Lost In Music in Ruthven Lane

After three more tracks from The River, and an audience member's sign request for Lonesome Day, from the The Rising album, the music took a darker turn. Starting with Death To My Hometown from 2014's Wrecking Ball album before American Skin (41 Shots) and Murder Incorporated. These are two of my favourite Springsteen songs, American Skin in particular was a thrill to hear. Both are critical of gun violence in America, the former written in response to the police shooting in New York of an unarmed black man in 1999, killed when officers fired 41 shots at him. Murder Incorporated is about the normalisation of gun violence in society. Both songs are sadly more relevant to major problems in American society now, than even when they were written.

Taking requests from the audience we moved through I'm Goin' Down from Born In The USA to the excellent Johnny 99 from 1982 album Nebraska (one of my favourite albums) this time sung with a lively country and western twang. Despite the persisting bright sunshine we were into the more gloomy tracks from The River that I enjoy, with the title track and then Point Blank.

Late evening sunshine in Hampden Stadium, Glasgow

Other highlights for me in the main set were Because the Night, written by Springsteen in 1978 with Patti Smith and released by her as a single that year, Thunder Road from Born To Run and Badlands from 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town.

A vigorous encore of barnstormers such as Born In The USA, Born To Run and the sad/happy Glory Days got the 55,000 crowd singing along to every song before a couple more audience members were plucked from the crowd to join him on stage in the Courtney Cox role for Dancing In The Dark, before Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, which has now become a tribute to the absent Clarence Clements at Bruce Springsteen concerts.

As he did last time in Glasgow, he finished with The Isley Brothers song Shout, which got the crowd jumping and singing along, but I would have much rather had any one of a dozen Bruce Springsteen songs to send us home that we hadn't yet heard, rather than a song more associated with the teenage Lulu. Looking at the setlist.fm website, Bruce Springsteen has played this song 84 times in concerts. Which two bands do you think have performed it live more times than he has? (answers at the bottom of this page, Lulu not included as we are talking about the internet era here).

As the band left the stage we were sent home with a solo acoustic rendition from Springsteen of This Hard Land, taken from the Tracks album of unreleased tracks.

This was one of his best performances that I have seen, 34 songs in three and a half hours of non-stop music, holding a stadium crowd in the palm of his hand as usual. He is in no way running out of energy as the years go on, although with plans for a solo studio album next, this may be the last time for a while that he tours with the E Street Band. Tonight he ticked off about twenty of my favourite tracks, many of which I'd never seen live before, but as that still leaves me plenty more to try and catch next time he is in town.

There's plenty more music where that came from...

Q - Bruce Springsteen has performed "Shout" live in concert 84 times over the years according to setlist.fm. Which artists have sung it live more often?

A - Bon Jovi have sung it 214 times, and Green Day 221 times...apparently.

live review Bruce Springsteen Glasgow concert Hampden

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Adam Ant vs Coldplay

June 8, 2016, 9:12 am

≫ Next: Malcolm Middleton. Ladyhawke. Channeling '80s Synth-pop

≪ Previous: Bruce Springsteen - The River Tour. Hampden Park, Glasgow. June 2016

I am not a big fan of Coldplay, but for some unfathomable reason my teenage son has taken a shine to them. So when he found out that they were playing in Glasgow he was keen for us to go along to see them. When I was his age I was dancing around my living room to the music of Stuart Goddard, better known as Adam Ant. As luck would have it both acts were playing in Glasgow within a few days of each other meaning we could both get to see our teenage idols this week. So a quick live review of Coldplay at Hampden and Adam Ant at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

Adam Ant. Kings of the Wild Frontier Tour. Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. June 2016

Adam Ant was one of the first "pop stars" that I got really into when I was younger. My big cousins were a couple of years older than my brother and me. They would make us tapes of their favourite music and although we were never convinced by the early stuff from The Smiths that we were presented with, Madness and Adam Ant were two that got us hooked.

Adam and the Ants

My cousin was right in to Adam and the Ants, with posters of Adam Ant all over his bedroom walls, usually stripped to the waist, or dressed in armour. Despite the lewd nature of the lyrics in many of his songs, his biggest fans were teenagers who enjoyed the fun, the swagger, the dressing up and the silly dance moves in the videos. Any sauciness in his image and the words of his songs went completely over my head. It just looked like really good fun.

After the band's first album Dirk Wears White Socks failed to make any impact, they were dropped by their label and their then manager, Malcolm McLaren, persuaded a couple of band members to leave Adam and the Ants and join him in creating Bow Wow Wow. Undeterred, Mr Ant ploughed on and re-formed his band, with Marco Pirroni on guitar and two drummers driving the new distinctive style forwards. Kings of the Wild Frontier was their breakthrough album and that is being played in full on this tour. The title track reached number 1 in January 1981 and Dog Eat Dog and Antmusic were also hits from this album. I knew every track on this album word for word, as my cousin's recording of it was played endlessly by me and my brother. Unlike a CD or download you couldn't just skip a track so hearing it played in full for me tonight was a great throwback to the days when the whole organisation and sequence in an album mattered as much as the big hits.

Adam Ant. Kings of the Wild Frontier Tour

He arrived on stage with flouncy shirt, Hussars' jacket and pirate hat as you would hope. There were plenty in the audience trying a similar look, including the Apache war paint stripe across the face. What may have looked groovy in the mind's eye was not always successful in the flesh I am afraid to say. Mixed results - we'll leave it at that. On stage Adam was looking well, in front of a bass player and two guitarists (including Will Crewdson who currently plays with The Selecter) and, of course, two drummers. From the Kings of the Wild Frontier material Los Rancheros and Killer in the Home stood out. Once that was out of the way. He relaxed into the evening giving us another hour of all the old hits plus notable B-sides to the 7 inch singles that I used to own; Beat My Guest (Stand and Deliver), Christian D'Or (Prince Charming) and Press Darlings (Dog Eat Dog). Vive Le Rock is another favourite that was played with gusto.

Adam Ant, Glasgow 2016

Like Bruce Springsteen a couple of days earlier, I was disappointed he played a cover version in the encore (T Rex's Get It On) when it was his stuff that I was wanting to hear. The whole encore was played more rock music stylee than post-punk Antmusic style, which I could take or leave, but that's me just being picky.

He is an unpredictable character, but tonight had plenty of energy, loads of charisma and had the crowd on their feet from the first minute, despite it being in the rather staid surroundings of the Glasgow Concert Hall.

Coldplay. A Head Full Of Dreams Tour. Hampden Stadium. Glasgow. June 2016

I will confess from the outset that coming to see Coldplay perform a stadium concert was never going to be my idea of a great night out. My son however loves their music. When I was 14 years old I was starting to buy some singles myself. I could listen to my mum's Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and The Specials albums or all of my dad's Tamla Motown stuff. My musical tastes today are still coloured by exposure to this stuff I suppose. My son isn't a fan of the post-rock and experimental stuff that I usually play at home (mainly to wind him up). Using Spotify and Youtube his tastes have lean towards listening to sweeping movie soundtrack scores and lots of Coldplay. This music for him is a kind or aural wallpaper, bubbling away in the background whilst he does other things. He was dead keen to see them perform in the flesh which is why we ended up in Hampden. The recent warm sunny weather was meant to change with thunderstorms and downpours predicted, which would have been entertaining, but the forecasts were wrong and we were treated to another warm, summery night.

Coldplay at Hampden Stadium, June 2016

When I was at university Coldplay had released the Parachutes album, which I liked, but it is the last piece of music by them that I have bought. Ever since then they seem to have brought out different versions of that same album, tweeked each time to make it more and more suited to playing in bigger venues. They now have a mighty back catalogue of anthemic hits with "Woo-hoo-woo" choruses and vapid ballads to fill a two-hour stadium set.

Coldplay at Hampden Stadium, June 2016

They are well practised at this now and do put on a helluva entertaining show. From the start they fired off the pyrotechnics and confetti canons. Everyone in the stadium was given illuminated wrist-bands to pulse away with appropriate colours for each song. Chris Martin admitted a few songs in that we were missing a lot of the lighting show they had rigged up, as we remained in the Scottish summer sunshine until near the end. We had balloons, fireworks, lasers and the whole crowd on the pitch and in the stands around Hampden were clearly buoyed by it all presenting an impressive singalong to every track.

Wee stage amongst the crowd, Coldplay at Hampden Stadium, June 2016

Despite the huge crowd Chris Martin is a dab hand at making it feel intimate, with wee mentions to King Tut's, a tear wiped away from his eye as the crowd out-sing him on Fix You and he works with the boundful energy of a big puppy between stages in the stadium. Tributes were paid to Muhammad Ali with a short video of the great man as we came into the song Everglow and later we were given Heroes in tribute to David Bowie. As they neared the end they took it down a level on a wee stage at the back of the stadium, finishing See You Soon with a chorus of The Proclaimers 500 Miles, which seemed a bit ill-conceived as he gave us the first ever rendition of that song which nobody could sing along to. Finishing off on the main stage again he sent everyone home happy with rousing renditions of A Sky Full Of Stars and Up & Up.

They do put on a very well produced and entertaining show, which the crowd lapped up. However hearing it live I found the music as vapid as it is in recordings. It is the first concert that I have been to when the artist thanks the audience for sticking with them "and putting up with all the shit that comes with being a Coldplay fan". He wants to be our friend, a big smiley, happy puppy. I prefer my rock stars to be daft or rebellious, unpredictable and inventive. I have always been more of a cat person than a dog person. My son disagrees. He thought it was the best thing he had ever seen, and who can argue with a satisfied customer.

Coldplay at Hampden Stadium, June 2016

Coldplay at Hampden Stadium, June 2016. The end

live review

live review, Glasgow, Coldplay, Hampden Stadium, June 2016. Adam Ant Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

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Malcolm Middleton. Ladyhawke. Channeling '80s Synth-pop

June 15, 2016, 9:35 am

≫ Next: Belle and Sebastian at 20. Glasgow University Union, Glasgow

≪ Previous: Adam Ant vs Coldplay

Live Review - Malcolm Middleton. Glasgow Art School. 27 May 2016

Now 10 years after Arab Strap played their retirement gig at the Glasgow ABC, Falkirk's pop-miserablist Malcolm Middleton is touring to promote his 9th solo album, Summer of '13. A perky album of synth-pop flecked tunes, a bright album looking for a sunny Scottish summer to accompany some barbecues up and down the country.

Malcolm Middleton's Summer of '13

Ably accompanied live by Suse Bear of Tuff Love and by cheap date Johnny Lynch (he also provided the solo support act as Pictish Trail) Middleton was entertaining as usual. The new stuff held up well, but as he played old and new songs you realise what an impressive back catalogue of fabulous sing-along tunes he has now amassed. Fuck It, I Love You, Red Travelling Socks, A Brighter Beat, Blue Plastic Bags and We're All Going To Die were all performed. Each one a lovely wee nugget of observational poetry. Despite the new songs fitting him well, the best was saved for the end with the encore of solo, acoustic songs really standing out. A fantastic song writer on fine form. With Aidan Moffat among the crowd tonight there are hints that a reunion is on the cards.

Ladyhawke. Live gig review. King Tut's Wah Wah Hut. Glasgow. 14th June 2016

New Zealander, Pip Brown (Ladyhawke), has just released her third solo album Wild Things, a return to the synth-pop influenced sounds of her first album. She squeezed into a sweaty and sold out King Tut's Wah Wah Hut last night touring with it. She battered through 90 minutes of music, preferring to sing rather than chat. She gave stripped down versions of many old songs, sounding for a long period like a '90s indie-rock cover band. For me she was at her best when the new songs were given a good, proper synth-pop going over. Stand out track A Love Song deserves a wider audience, and was lapped up by an enthusiastic crowd. She gives the impression that there's a budding heavy metal lead singer hiding behind a shy pop veneer. Live she comes across as neither fish nor fowl. Go on, relax and enjoy your inner '80s synth-pop persona.

Ladyhawke at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut

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Belle and Sebastian at 20. Glasgow University Union, Glasgow

June 16, 2016, 2:42 pm

≫ Next: Edinburgh International Film Festival 2016. Moon Dogs.

≪ Previous: Malcolm Middleton. Ladyhawke. Channeling '80s Synth-pop

Belle and Sebastian, gig review. Glasgow University Union, Glasgow. 15 June 2015

"Belle and Sebastian were the product of botched capitalism. It would be nice to say they were the children of socialism, but it would be a fib."

Marking their 20th year as a band Belle and Sebastian are soon to play a couple of nights in London's Albert Hall. Before heading off for that they played three consecutive nights in the more intimate/ hot and sweaty setting of the Glasgow University Union debating chamber. Nominally this was part of the Westend Festival, which has been going for almost the same amount of time. Whilst the festival seems to be running out of steam a bit these days, retreading the same events year after year and being unable to fund their popular parade, Belle and Sebastian seem to be going from strength to strength. Touring with their latest album last year, Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, took them to bigger venues than they have ever played before, such as their recent Glasgow gig at the SSE Hydro. However they have always been at their best in less formal, more intimate occasions, whether at events like the Save The Children fundraiser that they helped organise last year or in their earlier gigs in the QMU and Maryhill Central Halls.

GUU bar for the gig

The GUU is a lovely old building, but when I was at university it was also home to some lovely, old fashioned, reactionary students. I was always carrying a wee QMU diary in my student days at Glasgow Uni but tonight, I suspect like much of the band, enjoyed being able to take a short walk from my home to the venue. They were clearly at ease here, standing on stage a wee stroll from where most of their songs were written and early recordings made. Has there ever been a more westend band than Belle and Sebastian? So connected to this local area are they that the local tourist authority has been publicising a Belle and Sebastian walking tour around these nearby streets.

Always slightly dorky (like their audience) they have always just been themselves, and found success that way. Over the three nights the setlists lent heavily on the earlier albums and they played 43 different tracks over the three nights. On stage for almost two hours on the Wednesday night that I saw them, they ticked off so many of my old favourites that it felt greedy wishing I'd heard Fox In The Snow or If You're Feeling Sinister the night before, or Like Dylan In The Movies or The Boy Done Wrong Again on the Monday night. However starting with The Stars of Track and Field they
had me on side from the beginning. "You only did it so that you could wear, your terry underwear" - one of my favourite lyrics in their whole lyrically pleasing back catalogue.

Belle and Sebastian at the GUU

Other stand out tracks included a feisty rendition of Electronic Renaissance and, from The Life Pursuit, Another Sunny Day (mainly for the line "We're playing for our lives, the referee gives us fuck all"). During The Boy With The Arab Strap a group of fans brought up on stage to dance appeared to be on the verge of collapse in their over-exuberance. It did leave me wondering what the collective noun for their devoted fans is? An embrace of fans? A flounce of Belle and Sebastian fans? I don't know.

Stuart Murdoch invites the crowd to come up and dance

Getting hotter, sweatier and better as the show went on we were treated to Monica Queen joining them on stage to reprise her vocals from the excellent Lazy Line Painter Jane. One solitary track from their recent album popped up in the encore before we were sent home with I'm a Cuckoo ringing in our ears. A belter of a performance, a lovely warm and fuzzy evening and miles better to see them like this than in the cavernous Hydro. Haste ye back.

Belle and Sebastian Live review gig review Glasgow GUU

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Edinburgh International Film Festival 2016. Moon Dogs.

June 18, 2016, 4:18 am

≫ Next: Edinburgh Festival 2016 - Edinburgh International Book Festival

≪ Previous: Belle and Sebastian at 20. Glasgow University Union, Glasgow

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2016. Moon Dogs.

The annual Edinburgh International Film Festival is in full swing just now, celebrating its 70th edition. I have never before been to see anything at it, but had the chance this year to head along the M8 from Glasgow to attend the premiere of Moon Dogs, a Celtic road movie set between Shetland and Glasgow.

I had a couple of family members involved in the film and also two of my wee nieces were meant to be in it as extras, bopping about at a club, so I have known about this film for a while. With a couple of my aunties and cousins we trundled east on Friday night to see if Keira and Issy's dancing made the final cut.

I don't know anything about film-making but hearing second hand the lengths people have to go to, to secure funding and bring an idea to the screen it makes you wonder why people bother even trying. Beyond the world of superhero blockbusters it seems to be a very hand-to-mouth existence. Any screenings of films which involve a Q&A with the director or cast that I have been to, such as the Graeme Obree documentary film Battle Mountain, Sunset Song directed by Terence Davies and a recent award-winning Scottish film starring Kate Dickie and George MacKay, For Those In Peril, the same message is heard. We struggled to get funding, we had to cut these corners to stick to budget, we are now struggling to get any distribution, to make back any of the money put into it. Directors, writers, producers often appear to have to do much work unpaid in order get the film completed.

Moon Dogs is the first feature film from director Philip John who hails from Wales and has worked on Being Human, Downtown Abbey and Outlander for TV. In the film, after his girlfriend leaves Shetland for university in Glasgow, Michael (Jack Parry-Jones) and his step-brother Thor (Christy O'Donnell - who you may recognise as a handsome young busker from Buchanan Street) embark on a road-trip to the big city, aided and abetted by Caitlin (charismatic Irish singer and actress Tara Lee) who they meet on the way. The other major cast member is the Scottish scenery. From grey skies over Shetland and Orkney, through the green Highlands to Stirling and Glasgow (where I got to play "spot the location"). The three young lead actors, from Scotland, Ireland and Wales, are always entertaining whilst on screen and the different personalities of the characters create friction along the way. Naive young Michael gets all the best lines, whilst my teenage sons were rooting for Caitlin and your heart goes out to Thor's emo-introspection. You want to give him a big hug.

Cast, crew and musician Anton Newcombe at the Moon Dogs premiere, Edinburgh

Music is an important part of the story and it was imaginative to avoid the easy heedrum-hodrum Scottish music option and choose American experimental/ psychedelic/ rock/ innovative musician Anton Newcombe (Brian Jonestown Massacre) to provide the soundtrack. Working on his first movie score he seems to have really thrown himself into it and his music was present during filming, as he explained at the screening, and is completely interwoven into the plot. I could happily sit and watch it with my eyes closed, but then I would miss the Scottish scenery.

Other well-kent Scottish faces appear in the film (such as Denis Lawson and Tam Dean Burn, all eyebrows and attitude) and the step-parents (is that a word?) played by Jamie Sives and Claire Cage are warnly played. However the young leads in the film are the stars, full of personality and strong character. Gently rebelling.

It was a really enjoyable night out in Edinburgh, lovely to hear from the cast and crew at the end and I can only wish the film well, as it makes Scotland look lovely. And yes, my nieces smiling faces did make it onto the screen, the true stars of the whole production, obviously.

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