It’s not every day you wake to the sound of unfamiliar voices in your house. This morning I discovered two police officers in mine, come to investigate – well, nothing as it turned out because as the officers later conceded, no crime had been committed. This episode serves to show how we citizens going about our lawful business are under constant surveillance, our identities, movements and whereabouts held on myriad files and databases increasingly managed by private – i.e….

I’m not sure exactly when the question enters my mind, possibly at Junction 10 of the M8 motorway or maybe opposite the Shandwick Centre in Easterhouse while watching people queuing at the bus stops. It’s this – when Harry Bell set out to discover the old, now-invisible tracks criss-crossing Glasgow, did he ever envisage the extent to which roads would dominate the city? Or how in Easterhouse, an area of low car ownership, the city becomes ever more inaccessible…

With three trips remaining on this project, I’m anxious to hit the road. The weather, however, is playing up – one minute the sun’s out, the next the clouds conspire to steal the light. My destination today – Tinto Hill – involves a day trip, but one I’m almost tempted to invent rather than venture 50 miles south east of the city. Does my physical presence matter, I ask myself, or could I simply make a virtual journey, pieced…

I’m nearing the end of my 33 trips, the magic number I set myself in 2007. In that number, I decided, I would bag as many of Harry Bell’s sites as possible in an attempt to prove that the aligned sites of Glasgow and its environs hold the key to a secret geometry. My trusty OS maps – the Landranger 64 and the Explorer 342 – are a bit frayed at the edges. For the last ten days it…

Spinoza

On my crowded desk sits a diagram of Harry Bell’s network, described by him as a pattern of possible prehistoric communication lines, or PCLs. It seems even at the end of his quest he was still hedging his bets. At first glance the pattern is incoherent, its lines forming a vague exploded star containing a set of triangles within triangles. At its centre,…

What other people get up to in their garden sheds is nobody’s business, but subscribers to this blog may be interested to learn that mine is currently being deployed as a multi-media factory, if a MacPro, a MIDI keyboard and a bunch of software qualify as the means of production. Since my final trip in May I’ve spent too much time within these walls, piecing together 66 short films for The Devil’s Plantation website due to launch in October….

In 2006 the city of Glasgow was named by Conde Nast Traveller magazine as the UK’s favourite tourist destination, beating London and Edinburgh to the punch. Another promotional stunt disguised as fact? As a native I find these accolades dubious perhaps because I’m conditioned to the negative reckoning of my home city: violence, substance abuse, impenetrable argot. I’m writing this on the week Glasgow played host to the MOBO Awards, the first outside of London, several of whose…

Today is a momentous one. After two years and countless trips – since if I’m honest it took far more than the 33 listed here – finally I’m launching The Devil’s Plantation website. For anyone reading, especially those who subscribe to this blog, I want you to be the first to see it. Naturally I’m quite nervous from several angles – whether the site actually works, or if anyone will look at it and if they do, will they…

My thanks to everyone who has visited The Devil’s Plantation so far, especially those who took the time to comment. I’m heartened by your positive response. The website is live and visitors now have the choice of visiting this blog or the main site. With any luck my efforts won’t dissuade anybody googling ghosts on the M8 motorway or dogging at Carron although they might be disappointed – or downright perplexed – to land on my tiny patch of…

Last summer I was contacted by a freelance journalist, Gordon Cairns, who claimed to have found my blog ‘by chance’ – the best way, I reckon. His pitch: that 2009 was the 25th anniversary of the first publication of Glasgow’s Secret Geometry, so he asked if I would contribute to an article about Harry Bell. Sure, be glad to, I replied. That I never heard from him again came as no surprise since he had to sell the idea…