“If a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner, that God is eminently triangular…”

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, marked in capitals, the main sites – Crookston Castle, Camphill and Carmyle Fords form the base of a triangle linking to the Necropolis at its apex. At its outer edges, the end points: Duncolm, Dumgoyne, Bar Hill, Woodend Loch, Hamilton Motte, Tinto Hill, Torrance House, Harelaw Cairn, Dumdruff Hill, Dunwan Hillfort, Walls Hill, Seedhill Craigs and Dumbarton Rock. I’m intrigued to find that they total 13, an auspicious number.
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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 seemed I might not get the chance to use them. In a re-run of last summer, skies in forty shades of grey and torrential rain are the norm. Only it’s not. Glasgow gets its fair share of rainfall but I’ve never known rain like it; rain cast from liquid lead. Bullet rain.
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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 together from maps, Google Earth and other people’s accounts? Not really. Not if I want to feel the ground under my feet, breathe unpolluted air and leave with photographic evidence. That, and any excuse for a picnic.
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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 to its people? Passing the site of the Stirlingfauld Flats recently I was surprised to see the huge mounds of rubble gone, used in the making of new roads. It’s like the old saw – the best thing to come out of Glasgow is the M8.
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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. unelected and unaccountable - outfits. It’s one thing to be accused of criminality, but in a corner of Glasgow where several murders and countless sexual assaults on women have been committed in recent times, it’s hard to grasp why police resources are being squandered on non-crimes. Dressed in my pyjamas in my own kitchen, under interrogation by two Glasgow cops, this question could use an answer.
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Now that the clocks have moved forward, the days are lighter and the air sweeter. No better time for me to make the third and final set of trips if I’m ever to complete this project. It’s fitting then that the first of these requires me to attend to unfinished business – Carmyle Fords, a place of some significance to my inspiration, Harry Bell, on his quest to find a fording point across the River Clyde. The location is one of several emanating from Camphill Earthwork in Queen’s Park where, less than a year ago, Moira Jones was brutally murdered. At time of writing the trial is taking place at the High Court in Glasgow where the accused, a 33-year-old Slovakian, Marek Harcar, pleads innocence. With this dark cloud hovering on my mind, I make a detour to Queen’s Park to pay my respects. Little did I know what I was about to find.
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The City of Glasgow has a film charter and apparently I’m in breach of it by not notifying the Film Office or providing them with a script. Not that I have one. And since I have no crew, actors, car chases and pyrotechics either, I hardly qualify as a legitimate production - just a shambling, slightly lunatic presence loose on the streets. I can’t afford to declare myself. To shoot here, according to the council’s rate card, it costs - bizarrely - £736 for a commercial or TV four-hour shoot, £220 for the same duration if it’s a documentary you’re making and, big of them I’m sure, no charge if the film is for educational purposes. But what does it cost, I wonder, if it’s art? [read more]

As someone who got early release from Edinburgh - *rubs wrists* - after four years – I knew immediately I was firmly back on terra cognito when I spotted a few familiar signs, typically screenprinted on corrugated plastic. These signs are a prominent fixture in any city, but in Edinburgh – at least in the genteel district I was privileged enough to live in – they were invisible. Stepping off the bus, train or car within a mile or two radius of Glasgow City Centre, the most casual observer can’t fail to notice the security sign. Or rather, the name and phone number – rarely a website address – of a host of companies announcing themselves as the guardians of vacant and occupied properties or shiny developments yet to be populated, a tough proposition in these doomiest of days.
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