Earliest memory of Glasgow? I was born and grew up in a tenement one up, a room and kitchen, in Anderston, where I lived with my mum and dad, three brothers and two sisters. Describe your house: My parents slept in a recess bed in the kitchen and we slept in two double beds head to toe…my father also bred canaries, who lived in four cages screwed to the wall of our bedroom. What school did you go to? Our windows faced the boys’ gate of Finnieston Primary, which all of us kids and my mum attended. My mum’s first teacher was Duncan McCrae, famous for Whisky Galore. A famous pupil was Gordon Jackson who starred in many films and TV series. I remember one day after school being sent to the chemist by my mother for some ‘Ipecacuanha Wine’ – an old tonic. I couldn’t pronounce it, so the chemist sent me home to ask my mother to write it down, and by the time I got back, after stopping to blether to my pals on the way, he had shut for the night. That was one slap on the
WHO remembers the scramble? Horses and carts on Glasgow streets? Surf washing powder and Dandy Tea? These photographs take us back to Glasgow, 1955, when the summer was so hot, there were reports of melting tarmac. These images of Glasgow have been recorded not just in official statistics or in people’s memories, but in a remarkable photographic survey carried out by the city’s camera clubs and now part of Glasgow Museums’ collection. The idea for a citywide photographic survey began as a discussion after one of Partick Camera Club’s weekly meetings. Under the leadership of Adam Stevens, Partick Camera Club’s energetic president, it soon blossomed into a full-scale project involving ten of Glasgow’s camera clubs with 86 amateur photographers, and resulted in 600 photographic prints that record all aspects of Glasgow life.
Andrew Wilson’s Growth report predicted at least 10 years before a new currency could be established ROBIN McAlpine gives the example of converting vending machines to accept new coins to suggest that the issues that would have to be overcome by an independent Scotland are not difficult ( Independence would not be easy but Scots could pull it off , The Herald, December 11). It is a very strange example, particularly in an increasingly cashless society. He uses this example to support his proposition that the decision to become independent may be difficult but, once taken, implementing that decision is just hard work and not difficult at all. That is an inaccurate and disingenuous argument.