Tag: kirkintilloch

I’ve never been to BC before …

Can’t say that any more. I was struck by how much one of the mountains looked like Dumgoyne, which we used to see out the kitchen window in Kirkintilloch. The one here’s probably a bit bigger …

otnay osay ightbray: Shop manager broke into own store

Shop manager broke into own store
“A supermarket manager has been remanded in custody after admitting carrying out a £50,000 break-in at his own store.”

This would be unremarkable, except that we used to shop there when we lived in Kirkintilloch. It used to be a branch of The Co-op.

Bet he wouldn’t have done it had it still been the Co’; he’d have been stealing from himself!

Scots, wahey!

We’re in Scotland. I’d forgotten how green it is at this time of year. We’re getting sun and very occasional snow, so it’s feeling vaguely Canadian.

Some things have changed in Glasgow. “The Unique”, the famous chip shop in Govanhill has gone. It seems that the brothers who ran it retired. They had the best chicken and chip dinner ever. CF Nash has gone too. You could get any kind of stationery product in Nash’s. They had the Christmas sale every June.

Kirkintilloch is looking not bad. We walked along the canal, then made sure that the Indian Cottage’s curry is still as good as it ever was (it is). There was also pie, beans & chips and a yum yum in there somewhere. It’s all a blur.

a great place to be *from* …

[Bit of background here. I’m Scottish, but I live in Toronto. Canada is big, Scotland isn’t.]

There’s this thing I like to call The East Dunbartonshire Conspiracy. I used to live in Kirkintilloch in East Dunbartonshire. It’s a small central Scotland town, rapidly becoming another suburb of Glasgow.

Since coming to Canada, most of the expat Scots I have met are from East Dunbartonshire:

  • The LCBO guy in Toronto Union Station is from Kirkintilloch, about 100m from where we used to live.
  • Another LCBO guy on the Danforth is from Bishopbriggs, where I used to work.
  • The GO Train customer relations person who called me about the new proposed train station at the end of our street (yay!) grew up in Bishopbriggs, and has relatives I think I worked with when I was at Collins, the publishers.

So what’s this all about? Why are so many people leaving East Dunbartonshire for Toronto? Is it the horror of living at 56°N, with dark, windy wet winters? Who can say?