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2 days ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | John MacLeod
I recently enjoyed some holiday with my mother in her new Glasgow pad, barely half an hour’s walk from where we lived through the Seventies. And, walking hither and yon, I visited many old haunts. Schools. The Jordanhill woods. Victoria Park and – just in time, as it sadly proved – the Renfrew ferry. Which often saw me stumping along Anniesland Road. Even the name sets me a little on edge, for I remember my parents’ horror back in 1973. Solemn warnings. Talk of kerb-drill and the Green Cross Code.
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1 week ago | 
msn.com | John MacLeod
Continue reading More for You Continue reading More for You
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1 week ago | 
msn.com | John MacLeod
Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
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1 week ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | John MacLeod
It’s a muggy day in August 1979 and, atop a bicycle slightly too big for him, a mop-haired 13 year-old heads determinedly through western Glasgow by Anniesland Road, Kingsway and the main drag to Dumbarton. He’s a bit lonely, very bookish and, worst of all, thirteen. But he likes ferries. They suggest change, transition, deliverance.
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2 weeks ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | John MacLeod
In May 2000 I had a memorable break in Raasay, a lush and fascinating island sandwiched roughly between Portree and Applecross. And found myself one afternoon, briefly at the tiller, helming a sailboat in the kindly sou’easter of a summer breeze, of a design that would have been immediately familiar to my four great-grandfathers, all of whom were fishermen.
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3 weeks ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | John MacLeod
When word came on Tuesday that the Scottish parliament had voted – and by an unexpectedly large margin – to legalise ‘assisted dying’, my reaction was not one of bewilderment or shock. Rather, a cold wriggle in my guts, and of fear. I am in my sixtieth year. I live alone. I am childless. So far I enjoy a vigorous life, a clear mind and robust good health. But, two or three decades down the pike, how might matters stand then, in a Scotland where a decisive moral line has now been crossed?
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3 weeks ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | John MacLeod
I am meant to be in Glasgow next Thursday evening for some glitzy function – all starched shirtfronts and varnished hors d’oeuvres – but between the mainland and I are miles of roiling Hebridean sea. And, as so often these days in the Western Isles, few plans of action survive contact with Caledonian MacBrayne. The lad at their Stornoway booking-office on Monday could not have been nicer.
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1 month ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | John MacLeod
In the late summer of 1988 – I had just graduated – I spent several pleasant weeks with my widowed grandmother, who lived in Laxdale, just outside Stornoway. Laxdale has a salmon-river, a primary school, a Free Church meeting house and a stately single-track Victorian stone bridge. But, in 1988, it still boasted additionally a post office and a bakery. If that business had an official name, I am afraid I cannot remember it. We just called it Craggan’s.
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1 month ago | 
thisismoney.co.uk | John MacLeod
In the late summer of 1988 – I had just graduated – I spent several pleasant weeks with my widowed grandmother, who lived in Laxdale, just outside Stornoway. Laxdale has a salmon-river, a primary school, a Free Church meeting house and a stately single-track Victorian stone bridge. But, in 1988, it still boasted additionally a post office and a bakery. If that business had an official name, I am afraid I cannot remember it. We just called it Craggan’s.
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1 month ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | John MacLeod
In March 1982, our school magazine emerged with a tongue-in-cheek questionnaire of our senior management team. What, went one query, had been their childhood ambition? ‘Artist,’ improbably declared one. ‘Engine driver,’ said the deputy head. But Douglas Burke – AHT, fortysomething; great mop of snowy hair – put it most succinctly.
