A wee photo post for you, because I was called upon this week to go to Glenrothes for work. It is not the most photogenic of locations, being one of those ugly new towns that are all shopping centres and roundabouts, but as I had already travelled for over three hours (!) I thought “what’s another hour?” and went for lunch in St Andrews, which is much prettier.
It’s not been a great year for me. All work and not enough play made Karen a dull girl in 2023; Artemis’s avian romance ended in tragedy; and there was the major disappointment of not getting Eurovision tickets 😭 But it hasn’t been all bad. Let’s have a look at it.
How is your Christmas prep coming along? Mine is going pretty well. All the presents are bought, wrapped and sent; the cards have been posted; and I have applied my Christmassy nail wraps (a very important step). I don’t have to worry about all that nonsense about buying enough food for an army because, as the black sheep of the family, I always spend the day itself at someone else’s house. But, for the last few years, I have contributed a gingerbread structure each year, so that’s what I was doing all of yesterday, and some of the day before.
Just a quick one to say that I’m giving a talk to the Old Glasgow Club this Thursday, 9th November, at the Renfield Centre, 260 Bath Street, G2 4JP. The talk is called Rambling Round Victorian Glasgow with Hugh MacDonald (although he will not be making an appearance in person).
I’m planning to cover 2023’s reading in my usual “year in review” post, but this is slightly different. Book recommendation site Shepherd asked me for my top three reads of the last 12 months, October to September.
Ok, perhaps a bit of a niche subject, but something I came across while working on Hugh MacDonald’s Rambles Round Glasgow (he knew a lot of poets, as well as being a poet himself), and thought I might as well get an article out of.
My recent book talks and book trails went very well, and thank you to everyone who has asked about them. It didn’t even rain on the book trails, which was nothing short of a miracle!
Kicking off my autumn (ok, late summer, but it doesn’t feel like it) season of book talks and walks, I’ll be appearing at Bridgeton Library on Thursday 24th August from 6pm to talk about Hugh MacDonald (who was born only a few minutes’ walk from the library) and the process of annotating the 21st Century edition of his classic Rambles Round Glasgow.
K C Murdarasi 