As Jason Bourne hits 95kph on the M10 from Sheremetyevo Airport to Central Moscow, I’m on the back seat of his VW Passat wondering if I’ll reach my destination in one piece. This is stunt driving like I’ve never known in a city that already feels familiar. Under heavy skies, wide highways are fringed with tower blocks, toothstumps in the mouth of the Moscow suburbs, all the more prominent on this vast, flat terrain. This is cityscape on a scale hard to fathom, in spite of the taxi driver’s efforts to compress time and space as he swerves and weaves across lanes onto the M9, the main drag into town. Any faster and I’ll either be dead or by some process of divine will and magic, find myself back on the M8 and home in time for dinner.
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After a long cold winter, I return to my shedquarters. On the desk sits a forlorn catalogue – Witness to Mortality, published in 1997 to coincide with an exhibition by Joseph McKenzie, a photographer famed for his iconic Gorbals Children. On the cover is a bleak landscape titled The New Lifestyle 2 (Red Road Flats Newly Opened). Shot in 1968, the black and white image shows a long, empty road, slick with rain, where a solitary vehicle drives towards the vanishing point. Centre frame, a black telegraph pole divides the image, beneath which a woman in a winter coat faces the camera. On the right, startling and mysterious in the fog are two tower blocks. For me, this one picture sums up Glasgow, a heartrending sign of things to come, but somehow not the future.
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Anyone entering by the front door may have noticed that The Devil’s Plantation recently won the BAFTA New Talent Award in the Interactive category, an unexpected but very welcome prize. But unlike the previous awards given that evening and prior to the announcement, this category prompted a long speech referring to new media and young talent. In a mix of elation and rare confidence I mounted the stage where during my fleeting moment of glory I delivered thank-yous and a reminder that ‘young’ ought not to be equated with ‘new’, all the while thinking but not stating my conviction that talent is talent regardless of age, gender, race or creed. I got a warm response - I think - not that I recall much, being whisked off for the obligatory photograph that in the way of these events I will probably never get to see.

The ceremony was staged at the Mitchell Theatre, formerly known as St. Andrew’s Halls, originally designed in 1873 by James Sellars, an acolyte of Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, and built between 1873-1878 in the Greek Revivalist style. The exterior, with statuary by John Mossman, resembles a Hollywood silent-era extravaganza and thankfully is almost intact. Much has been said of the Grand Hall, with its capacity of 4000 and near-perfect acoustics.

Tragically in late October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis, the Grand Hall staged a boxing tournament after which, according to Frank Wordsall, the building went down in flames, yet another fire in a long list of fires resulting in the loss of Glasgow’s most precious buildings. During refurbishment, St. Andrew’s Halls - the grand room in particular - was greatly reduced in scale. The main arena, renamed The Mitchell Theatre, now has a capacity of 418. Back then, with mutually-assured destruction occupying our minds, the fire only made it to page 2 of The Evening Times.

Apart from memories, all that remains of the Grand Hall is a photograph, a reminder of how small our ambitions and achievements are today. With this in mind, I note that the 2010 BAFTA New Talent Awards has not received any coverage. A sign of the Times?

Tonight it was announced that my love-labour, The Devil’s Plantation is nominated in the Interactive Category for the 2010 BAFTA New Talent Awards. Needless to say I’m delighted. But I’m also very pleased for my only competitor, a wonderful woman, Helen Jackson, from Binary Fiction whose website The Lost Book, I actually stumbled on last year. And a very good site it is too. I reckon she’ll win, and I mean it sincerely because her work is so lovely and accessible whereas mine may be perceived as a bit too leftfield/arty/whatever.

It’s odd for me to be in this place, not least because ten years ago, I pretty much swept the board at the 2000 BAFTA New Talent Awards with my first feature film, One Life Stand. Truth is, I’m just pleased that my peers, especially in the new media field, deemed my efforts worthy enough to be counted. The result will be announced on the 19th March but either way I’ll celebrate whoever wins because any recognition for the work we do - too often un/low paid - is still worth doing because you can’t do it unless you love it, which makes us all privileged.

Unlike other diehard urbexers in this burg – risking life, limb and liberty in pursuit of derelict buildings, tunnels and mysterious corners – I stick to the highway. Which on the main artery to southside Glasgow gets all the harder. Hour by hour, shift by shift, the most visible new track in the city, the M74 Extension, ploughs over Eglinton Street, the old A77 - through entire communities whose names – Polmadie, Oatlands, Dalmarnock – may be lost forever in the span of a generation. So obtrusive is this road, such is the alienation it promotes, the government might as well put up a Border Control and reinstate the old Gorbals Leprosy Hospital while they’re at it.
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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 to the national broadsheets first, a tall order and - sadly - a missed opportunity since plainly the papers didn’t buy, presumably because the idea sprang from beyond the M25, with no name talent attached. Surely Harry Bell deserves some recognition?
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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 cyberspace. Not that I should presume anything about who arrives here because the joy of the online experience is often found in random corners and the places chanced upon. Besides, surely the desire to get jiggy in a remote car park is not incompatible with lesser exploratory urges.  [read more]

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 get it? Looking at the webstats for this blog, I’m delighted by the number of people who’ve visited, even if some of the search terms used tell me some visitors are more interested in say, dogging at Gleniffer Braes or Murder in Carmyle than in the Secret Geometry of Glasgow.
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