Close Quarters by Angus McAllister

I saw this book in Waterstones the other week and I was intrigued.  I decided to check it out on my Kindle and I'm glad I did.  I got through the book in a couple of days and I very much enjoyed it.

I lived in the west end of Glasgow on and off between 1995 and 2008.   I did the university thing and the young professional thing and the overpriced rent for slums thing.  I also spent time renting elsewhere in the UK and interacting with factors.  I would not repeat any interactions with landlords or factors for fun.

McAllister is a retired solicitor who was a law professor.  He published books on Scottish property law.  He knows the hell of flats in the west end and psychopathic neighbours.  I recognised the geography of the book, the pubs and the characters.

Some of the reviewers online found the mid-section of the book a bit slow but I really appreciated the detail which added emotional weight to the story and fully filled out the details of the hell that Walter Bain subjects his neighbours to.

This book is funny and true to life.  Worth a read.

Kiss at the Glasgow Hydro

It's taken me about a week to get round to writing about this show.  I saw Kiss in 1996 at Donington which was their first gig with the original line-up in many years.  This time I think Kiss were playing Glasgow for the last time.  I don't remember much of the 1996 show (although I can find the setlist online and a video of the whole show on youtube).

I didn't like kiss when I was younger.  I only really got into them after hearing Nirvana cover 'Do you love me?' and Anthrax talking about them.  I remember picking up cassette copies of Destroyer and some of the other early albums (probably Alive!) in Lost in Music in the mid nineties.  Great stupid rock although I've never been a massive fan of the later eighties stuff.

Tonight the show was amazing, from the opening fireworks through the lights, balloons, zip slides, mid crowd stage and cherry pickers.  It looked great and kept me entertained.  The sound was decent and the set list was fairly good.

I realise that a couple of the original members weren't there but the band were tight enough.  I'm glad I made the effort to go.

Sadly I probably won't get to see them again.

Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert

I stumbled across this book as an Amazon Kindle 99p deal of the day.  I liked the title and fancied reading something a bit different.  Michael Gilbert was a crime writer and a lawyer who published books from the 1940s until just after the turn of the century and Smallbone Deceased is his masterpiece.

The crime, the death of the eponymous Smallbone, is discovered in a law firm in the famous Lincoln's Inn, one of the more prestigious addresses in legal London.  I'm not a lawyer but the setting is well drawn with characters that resonate well today, even though the book is 70 years old.  I've only ever spent a couple of months living in London but I could still feel the city in the words of the book.

A bit of internet research taught me that Gilbert published many crime novels, often with recurring characters (some of whom appear in Smallbone Deceased), but sadly few of them are available electronically.  Hundreds of thousands of books have been published in English over the past few centuries and only a small fraction are available electronically.  Hopefully more of Gilbert's work will appear on the Kindle in the future.

Worth a read.