I loved Japan with all of its traditional festivals but I missed the Glasgow festivals something rotten. Unlike THE Edinburgh Festival, which is a month long cultural punch in the face, Glasgow spreads its festivals across the calendar. The lovely thing about this is, for locals it’s a lot easier to budget and spread events out rather than spending 100 pounds in one day and reeling from the visual and aural ideas. My favourites include Celtic Connections, the film festival, c

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t too enamoured with Scotland growing up. There were a lot of neds in Dumbarton, it rained a lot, beggars follow you down the street, international bands rarely came up and once I found out we could have emigrated to Australia or America I was a tad annoyed. Patriotism at football and rugby games confused me (as do most sports) and the only time I genuinely felt patriotic was at the Last Night of the Scottish Proms, listening to “Highland Cathedral” on

A  member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers’ Circle , Mark Harding recently edited an anthology called Music For Another World. I’m looking forward to getting a copy when I return to Scotland as it contains the work of some great writers I admire such as Neil Williamson and Jim Steel. The basis of the anthology was strange fiction with a musical theme. I did submit a story but it unfortunately didn’t make the cut. I love the concept though, when music is something so dif