On Sunday 26 April 2026 I will be taking part in The Kiltwalk Big Stroll. I’ll be walking with my family to raise funds for The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow, Scotland.
We’ll be raising funds on behalf of my mother-in-law, who passed away at the hospice in October 2025.
Every year, the hospice needs £9m to provide palliative care to the people of Glasgow. It receives £2m from Government funding and the shortfall comes from fundraisers.
If you’re able to donate, here are links to our fundraising page, and to the hospice’s own site.
If nothing else, we’re going to look great. The new away kit is superb. So much so that I bought it the day it was released, the first time I’ve done that with any kit in probably 30 years.
Ryan Christie models the new Scotland away kit
Beyond that? Well, the USA seems to be having a moment, and with the costs of attending rising daily, I really wouldn’t thank you for a ticket to any of Scotland’s games. With the exception of a visit to New York City in September 2001, I cannot think of a worse time to be a tourist in the USA.
All that said, I did ask Claude about traveling to the World Cup as a Scotland fan, and it confidently informed me that Scotland hadn’t qualified. So maybe I should stop worrying.
A: “First, worth noting that Scotland didn’t qualify for 2026 — they were eliminated in the UEFA qualifying play-offs. So this is more of a hypothetical, or perhaps you’re going as a neutral football fan to soak up the tournament!”
Anyway, 50 days until the World Cup starts, and 52 before Scotland’s first match against Haiti in Boston - presuming that goes ahead.
After that, we’ll play Morocco and Brazil, before returning home with our tail between our legs.
Simon Phipps’ Brutal Scotland is another in his series looking at brutalist architecture in the UK. See also Brutal London, Brutal North, Brutal Wales etc. Man likes his concrete.
The work featured is currently being exhibited for free in Glasgow’s Street Level Photoworks gallery.
If that’s your thing, you should also check out Nebo Peklo’s work. I have this print on my wall at home.
He has more information towards the end of the video but, it seems, with the proposed regeneration of this area, the legal walls may not be there beyond the next year or two.
Starting on Friday 24 April, and with daily lessons at 3PM UTC, the folks at badwebsiteclub.com are offering to teach you how to build a website.
Bad Website Club has been running free and online developer education programs since 2020. It’s run by a small volunteer team (Jessica Rose, Carmen Huidobro, and Eda Eren – also thank you to wonderful Kiri who made all the art!).
Seems like a cool way to get involved in a growing community and working through the hundreds of lessons on Free Code Camp.
RAMS is a graffiti artist from New Zealand, probably most famous for the creating murals on each of the 4 sides of the abandoned 45 Park Place, NYC a few years ago.
RAMS is one of the best graffiti writers in the world right now—every time I see RAMS do something, I’m always like ‘what’s he going to do next?’ And it’s always something bigger and more ambitious, daring, and stylistic. Roger Gastman
More recently, RAMS has been out in the Middle East rappelling down buildings near the Pyramids to produce a kind of work that’s not often seen in the area.
Right now I’m focused on the Middle East. The risk is high, but so is the potential. Every country is different, but many haven’t had much exposure to this Western art movement. Graffiti has appeared there before, often politically — especially during the Arab Spring in 2010, which makes things dangerous.
These fires are … the consequences of a system that lacks the teeth to protect buildings before fire, decay or neglect take their toll.
[It] is not misfortune, it is the absence of meaningful accountability for owners who allow listed buildings to remain unoccupied and deteriorate. It’s the absence of adequate policy that compels action before catastrophe strikes.
The entire article is worth a read, and I can find very little to disagree with. He mentions the failings of local Government and their lack of a plan for the city as a whole, which definitely rings true to me.
We don’t have a cohesive vision of what Glasgow is. Without a clear direction, much of our built heritage has fallen into ownership of absent organisations and individuals, often without the skills, awareness of their perilous condition, or funds to renew them.
The Golden Z project is mentioned, scathingly. A project for three streets in the city. Not mentioned is the Avenues project. In fairness, this has made parts of the city easier to navigate by bicycle, but those bits are islands to and from which cyclists must navigate through the ever-present motorised traffic. And to what end? To which of the many closing pubs and restuarants are these people headed?
It’s a beautiful stadium, appearing to emerge from the granite cliff-face by its side. Although my favourite detail might be how the roof is angled to collect and reuse the rainwater on the grass.
The Tobacco Merchant’s House in Glasgow’s Merchant City is 250-year old building, owned and maintained by the Scottish Civic Trust, who work from the building. They are currently running a Just Giving page to help raise £250,000 for its upkeep.
The building at 42 Miller Street is the last of the Georgian villas known as the Virginia Tobacco Merchants’ houses to remain standing in Merchant City of Glasgow.
This area of the city was once the playground of the Glasgow “Tobacco Lords”, a group of slavers whose names still adorn many of the streets and buildings in the area.
