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]

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 has long been well-quoted by a loose orbit of the like-minded, there are few practitioners in Scotland and those who are visible tend to be artists and enthusiastic amateurs, (same difference in these parts) not historians and writers.

In reading these accounts, I find a fondness for literary, geographic and philosophical quotation, a fumbling for coincidence and psychic connections in an attempt to circumscribe the chaos arising from not being in full possession of the facts. The term ‘flâneur’ crops up regularly in these writings, like it’s some kind of job description, just as certain sites recur: St Peter’s Seminary at Cardross is popular, as is the Glasgow Necropolis and the source of the Molendinar, though I’m unsure why some sites have a particular draw over others. What do we look for when we go to these places? And what do we take from them? And in the context of this project, can it be categorised as art?
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