I’m watching the weather closely. One reason for living in Edinburgh is that it rains far less than in Glasgow. The three-day forecast tells me today is my best bet, so I take the 900 bus in hope of some light for my camera to bask in, although I know with Glasgow I’m taking a chance. You always are.

In the East Coast sunlight, I scan the aisles and the silver domes of the pensioners poking up from the seatbacks….

I didn’t know it at the time but in November 2004 I left Glasgow to live in Edinburgh. This came about after a trio of deaths in the family. That, and a creeping disaffection with my home city. Glasgow looked like it was sleeping rough, with Sauchiehall Street standing in for Pottersville, George Bailey’s hallucinatory hellhole in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Thanks to the city’s planning and licensing laws, the strip between Charing Cross and Rose Street…

Once upon a time – fifty years or so ago – I went to the movies for the first time. The cinema, a converted cork factory known as the Korky (aka The Ardgowan) was situated on Weir Street, Tradeston. Closed in 1963, it was demolished in 1965. Enchanted by this early experience, ever since I’ve conflated cinema with memory and reality and myth – and the bizarre idea it was somehow connected to me. The film I saw that…

I’m at Govan Cross. It’s been a while. During the year I spent volunteering at Sunny Govan Community Radio, a group of young Home Counties-types, underwritten by Oxfam, arrived to discuss the issue of malnutrition. They expressed astonishment at how it was easier to buy a can of Tennent’s Superlager in Govan than a tomato. Or how the local fruit and veg shop only survives because it also operates as a florist, whose brisk trade in tributes to the…