Thank you for coming to our show tonight!

Last week we played for the first time in exactly sixteen months - we had to brush ourselves down, and we had to introduce Robert and Fraser into the band as gently as we could. It seemed to go well! I heard the strings keening behind me and I felt comfortable closing my eyes.

Originally, we had hoped to put together a month of bowling club shows. Queens Park was to be our jewel. We didn't quite manage to put everything together in time because all requests were handwritten and each committee had to be appealed to. But I do hope we'll come back to it. I really want to. I looked at the Hyndland clubhouse last week and it was like the Second World War house in the Imperial War Museum, cabbages and strawberries in the garden. These expanses of grass seem to sharpen the air. It is a little easier to suspend belief.

I've paced out the distance from my house to this club - 1,026 steps. The last three hundred or so follow the bend of the railings along the edge of Queens Park on Langside Road. You get a good dose of Queens Drive too, with those streetlights and the purple doors. Closer to the park you can smell the earth, churned by the tree roots. The roots buckle the railings in places. Before the last bend in the road, before the Victoria opens up, the trees nearly meet and you're almost enclosed. It's like being in the woods. It is a little easier to suspend belief.

I typed out an essay for you to read! It's a 1959 account of Glasgow dancehalls, pubs and drinking. It made me think of those old buildings in the Merchant City, the ones with the trees growing out of the top windows. The air there is stale, like old books. The dust has settled.

It reminded me of what our band is, and why we exist. This is such a beautiful city. I love the soot and the dust. I know reality can cleave this in two but as I write I can hear the birds coming back for Spring and I can see the sun creeping over the building opposite.

We'll play our show tonight beneath a glitter ball and it seems easy to suspend belief.

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