Monday, October 10, 2005


Back home after our short trip to Scotland. We had a fine time, Falkirk was fun, and Glasgow was grand.

The Falkirk Wheel is quite a thing, if you like concrete, modern sculpture or engineering, you should pay it a visit.

We stayed in an amazing B&B, it was within walking distance of the Town Hall, yet had the feel of a huge house in the country. Amazing garden, leading to plenty of bird watching activity over the breakfast delights.

The gigs were good. On the 1sst night Aberfeldy opened up with a collection of little pop gems. Next up were The Pearlfishers, who I enjoyed rather more than Orynthia did. Lush piano driven singer songwriter stuff from another age, think Jimmy Webb or Burt Bacharach, not at all rock “n” roll, I like d the ambition of it. Finally The Trash Can Sinatras took to the stage and played a lovely set of songs old and new.

The next evening saw us enjoying Malcolm Middleton (of Arab Strap) rather more than we expected to, have to say he dealt very well with some hilarious banter from a very exuberant female member of the audience. Then we enjoyed a majestic set from the mighty Teenage Fanclub. The lads were on top form, and it was great to see them in front of a Scottish audience, who sang along with gusto to many of the songs.

The next day we took the short train journey to Glasgow, a city festooned with men in kilts in a high state of expectation before the Scotland – Belarus football match. Sadly their enthusiasm was misplaced as Belarus managed to secure a 1-0 win.

We missed the football as we were enjoying our iPod tour of the musical highlights of the city. A lot of it was familiar to us, places such as the “School of Art”, “King Tut’s” and the splendid “13th Note”. New to us was the esoteric “Tchai Ovna” a very special café dedicated to tea form around the world and absolutely flippin’ marvellous “Mono”. Mono is a great place, part fantastic records shop (opened with help of many luminaries of the Glasgow music scene), part organic café, part super relaxed bar and also a live venue. I must admit that we spent ages in here on Sunday afternoon to rest our feet after the long walk of Saturday. It’s the perfect place to sit and read, and pick up some top tunes.

Other than that we enjoyed another visit to The Lighthouse, always an interesting place the highlight this time was the Marimekko exhibition.

2 comments:

Simon said...

Hi, I was at Teenage Fanclub and Malcolm Middleton too in Falkirk (cos I stay there). I saw your photos on flicker. Good work.

Tom said...

What a grand night it was. Like your site.