From St Andrew’s Bus Station, Edinburgh, I catch the 900 bus to Glasgow. The day is overcast but warm and the bus is busy with students and pensioners taking advantage of the cheap ride to the city. Long before we reach the M8, I notice a man sitting adjacent – probably in his 30s, nondescript scruffy, looking slightly troubled, but bearing no clue to his status. Reaching into his rucksack he pulls out a packet of custard creams. I…

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….

On the 900 bus a trio of females – mother, two daughters – occupy three rows, two seats apiece. Each of them has a mobile, each with its own ringtone – George Michael’s Careless Whispers the winner in the irony stakes. The younger of the two sisters gets a call – her ringtone some generic electro racket. Hullo? She listens. Who’s this? she asks. She listens some more. Unsure but assertive, she speaks up. Who is this? Alerted, Big…

This quote from Harry Bell’s Glasgow’s Secret Geometry serves as my compass:

Seng-t’san (d. AD 606)

In brilliant low autumn sunshine I make the journey to the De’il’s Plantin, the Devil’s Plantation, or as it’s rather more prosaically known, Bonnyton Mound, off the Humbie Road, roughly seven miles south of the city between Newton Mearns and Eaglesham. I take with me: a flask of…

After my outing to the Devil’s Plantation, the next stop is Crookston Castle, but with the days growing rapidly shorter, I’m watching the five-day weather forecast for the right conditions. Every day the gap between sunrise and sunset closes by four minutes, almost half an hour a week, so the trick is to set out early on my 100 mile round-trip.

Carrying camera kit and sandwiches, I take the M8 and M77 to Pollok, the scheme in the south-west of…

The compulsion isn’t new. Whether it’s urban exploration, fugueing, psychogeography or – as my mother would say – wandering like a fart in a trance, the urge to explore exerts an irresistible pull. Abandoned lunatic asylums come high on the list, as do decommissioned schools, old churches and cemeteries.

These peripatetic diversions differ from say, the study of local history or archaeology due to their random nature and apparent lack of focus. Unlike in London, where the practice of psychogeography…

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…

The days are longer if not always lighter.

After months of domestic upheaval, in late April I return to live in Glasgow after four years in Edinburgh. If nothing else the move makes gathering material for this project less arduous.

Now based in the city’s southside, I’m close to several of the places I’m recording for the Devil’s Plantation website, the closest being the Camphill Earthworks, claimed to be an Iron-Age site and a major hub in Harry Bell’s Secret Geometry…

It’s the late May Bank Holiday Monday and for once I’m blessed with light. Grabbing my chance and my camera kit I return to Queen’s Park in the evening to shoot video of the Scottish Poetry Rose Garden and the viewpoint from the hilltop close to the flagpole where a sign points out the landmarks radiating across the city.

Parked illegally at Goals, I unload the kit, passing the 5-a-siders. From here it’s a short walk to the Rose Garden….

With Mercury in retrograde all communication is in a state of confusion. Since the house move in late April I’ve waited in vain for our new broadband connection and grown frustrated at my inability to make contact with the world. Then again, I tell myself, what’s the point of all this communication unless you have something to say?

Several years ago on a rare trip to London, I struggled to tell an acquaintance about an idea I had for a…