Scottish things and people that I like

John Byrne - Fantastic painter and playwright, you might have come across some of his work without realising it as he has been commisioned to do album covers for The Beatles and Gerry Rafferty among others.
He wrote Tutti Frutti which was a big deal in Scotland, in the late eighties and deserves a DVD release but this, I'm told, is somehow stymied by rights/credits issues.
He also wrote an incredible trio of short tragicomic plays set in 1950's Paisley called The Slab Boys trilogy which are worth checking out.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon - a turn of the century author who wrote a series of books called 'A Scot's Quair', concerning a young womans life growing up on a remote Croft, it's a rite of passage tale with the slightest mystical flavour. You might say he's almost like a Scots Steinbeck, it's great stuff.
There's a film apparently being made as I speak but I don't know if it's just going to be dealing with the first book 'Sunset Song'.

Lots of experiments with footballs and small children.

http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ddb/teaching/hume/hume.jpeg

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http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~awarwood/omega.html

Scared the living shit out of me as an 7 year old.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/cult/2005/02/21/17166.shtml

Madchen OTM about Deuchars IPA. Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted is a good un too.

John Byrne is pretty awesome. I've never seen Tutti Frutti though. Apparently the reason it's never been repeated is that the BBC are being funny about royalites for the old rock n roll songs used on the show, but that always struck me as rather dubious.

Alexander 'Greek' Thompson. Renowned architect who made Glasgow look like it does, whose buildings have all too often been demolished or left to crumble by shortsighted/corrupt (ahem) local councillors.

The Barrowlands ballroom!

[ahem subs pls check spelling] but otherwise good fucking call.

i'm still not entirely sure what it was. a dude showing cartoons? that sounds kinda neat.

and my mum *FORGOT* to send in my birthday card to get read out. Unlike Mari0n W1ls0n's mum, who didn't. So on my birthday weekend, I had to suffer girl-cleverer-than-me getting her card read out by Glen. boo.

Ah yes - I forgot the hankies!

and this ...

So on my birthday weekend, I had to suffer girl-cleverer-than-me getting her card read out by Glen

this explains everything, stet :)

Glen Michael was in fact my first "gig" in Cumbernauld.

bloodthirsty barbarians who paint themselves blue and hurl themselves at the English, and yet the ultimate, almost parodic genteelness of the twee worldview of B&S, almost as if it's a an exaggerated reaction to the former (see also Momus). Is that all about the Highlands/Lowlands divide?

I don't think I'm particularly twee. I feel a sense of kinship with people like Alasdair Gray (I met him years ago in Aberdeen) and also with people like Stuart Murdoch, and also with Robert Burns. The gentleness in these people might be described as fierce, and, as in "The Wicker Man", there's a strong pagan sensuality and Celtic lyricism. My own ancestors were Gaelic speakers from the Hebrides (mainly the island of Mull, which my mother has written an excellent book about), and at least two of them (the McKechnies, Angus and Donald) won the bardic crown at the Mod for poetry in Gaelic.

i tried to visit mull once but the clouds poured down for two straight days and it was the most i could do to just see its outline across the harbor.

Also Tracer Hand OTM. So many top words. Like "cushty", "gallus", "chankin" and "chips"

I like scenery and unfounded belief in crappy national football teams and tattie scones and butteries and wee pubs in the Briggait where men play banjos and "Dignity" by Deacon Blue and what Madchen said about the light (she forgot to mention me pointing out that the scenery stopped just south of Gretna) and hills and heather and the pool halls upstairs from the Scotia and the Woodside, and also the Woodside itself, especially its jukebox, and picnics in Kelvingrove Park and the view from the top of the hill at Daviot down to Inverness and the Black Isle and placenames like Acharacle and Ballachulish and single track roads with bemused sheep on them and the way the deer come down off the hills in the Highlands at dusk and the Trash Can Sinatras and the Old Man of Hoy and Christopher Brookmyre and the salmon leap at the Falls of Shin.

And some other stuff too.

I forgot that most of all I love Gregory's Girl and Belle and Sebastian.

2. Eat a buttery
A traditional Doric delicacy, the Aberdeen buttery rowie is a gloriously Atkins-unfriendly combination of flour, yeast, salt and fat. Don’t be put off by the rock hard specimens they serve in Halls – get yourself to a local bakery for the real deal. Eaten with a nice bowl of homemade soup, there’s nothing better to fortify you against the North-East winter.

Absolutely and Still Game. The book Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Ivor Cutler and the Incredible String Band. Some of the ned slang/retorts. "Away an run up ma ribs" etc. Irn Bru and anything Tunnocks. Oh and Altered Images. Scotch broth, Abroath Smokeys.