the devil’s plantation: update 03Feb10 | 3

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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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The Devil's Plantation

May Miles Thomas is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Glasgow. This is the blog for The Devil's Plantation, a project supported by the Scottish Arts Council's Creative Scotland Awards. The idea: to explore the Secret Geometry of Glasgow and find magic in ordinary places. It's also about a journey in her home city. Dear green place or derelict dystopia? The project: a video-based website inspired by the writings of the late Harry Bell and her fellow fuguers - poets, writers, lost souls, piss artists, dossers and dreamers - that reveals the hidden tracks that cross the city, connecting the old and new. Here May stumbles over the city's myths and stomps on its remains: city of murder, architecture, industry, ill-health, feral violence, petty corruption, neddery, new money, crime and the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Not so much Glasgow as Glasgone.