A moment of clarity (HB TCH XX edition)
Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2025 9:53 pm
Twenty years ago today, I was in Norwich, playing records right about now. Me and a pal did a night where we played pretty much nothing but Boards out for four hours...we'd only bought Campfire the day before, on release day, so that was the reason for a wee celebration of all things BoC. It had been a whopping three years since Geogaddi, after all. I played some Old Tunes & Maxima from CDRs, but otherwise everything else was vinyl.
Also knocked up an A3 poster at work, which I put up around the Playhouse Bar a couple of weeks before, one of the classic XLR8R shots. I made it B&W, from the OG colour version, cos cheap on the printing costs eh.
Fast forward sixteen years and six weeks and I'm getting drunk with my pal at his leaving do, as he departs our Museum (he is also a massive BoC fan). I made him some cool gifts, not least a lathe cut 7" of a rap we made about the London Fatberg, as well as a T shirt I thought he'd love...
[Disclaimer - the HI T-shirt was not my idea, but I made it better. The kerning of the original was a mess and the thickness of the North Face arches was wrong too.]
Fast forward another three years and three months and it's February 2025. The same pal above fails to get tickets for the Beta Band's reunion gigs, but I scored four so now he's now coming to Scotland in September to see them at Barrowlands with me.
Two months later my planned move back to Scotland happens after almost a quarter of a century in Norwich and That London. It's been a blast but hame beckons, all that stunning East Coast scenery and melancholy will be mine once more.
Prior to the gig my pal asks if, when he's up, we can a) go look at some art in Edinburgh and b) visit some things with a BoC connection, maybe? I start having a look and art isnae a problem. BoC things on the other hand, well...there's only really the Pentland Hills to go on, or that beach at Redpoint.
I thought little more of it and then the week of the gig had a look at a couple of outdoors snaps of BoC. It'd be a wee bit of a schlep to just go and wander around a fraction of the Pentlands and I couldnae be arsed with that, to be honest. I'm 55, I need proper reasons to do shit these days...
And, then...a moment of clarity.
Something about one snap just clicked, oddly, and I thought to myself..."that's got to be the edge of a...", and searched for that very thing. Pretty much on the first go I zoomed in on the map, and it looked like a structure from above...but that wasn't crystal clear enough for me...so I had a nosey on Google Earth and there had been a snap taken nearby...it just had to be?
I relayed this discovery south and we agreed we'd go there, cos why the fuck not.
The day after the Beta Band gig we went to see some art. Then it started to rain as we set off in my car. When we got there, it was a long walk there in that rain, about twenty minutes or so...especially when the wind picked up.
We were about five minutes from our destination and I got a text from my wife - also our photographer - which just said "Nope". She was several minutes behind us, with my son, and had had enough of the awful weather and was heading back to the car.
My friend and I questioned our sanity above the noise of the howling wind but were literally too far down the path to turn back now. And so on we went and we turned the corner. About twenty or so metres and we were there. The weather was really shit and we looked at the structure and agreed, "yeah, that's right".
Took a lot of snaps very quickly, as it was pishing doon and our photographer had abandoned us at this point. We had to make do by positioning ourselves with one phone and documenting that with the other, but it was worth the trek. Maybe.
ps nobody was home
Also knocked up an A3 poster at work, which I put up around the Playhouse Bar a couple of weeks before, one of the classic XLR8R shots. I made it B&W, from the OG colour version, cos cheap on the printing costs eh.
Fast forward sixteen years and six weeks and I'm getting drunk with my pal at his leaving do, as he departs our Museum (he is also a massive BoC fan). I made him some cool gifts, not least a lathe cut 7" of a rap we made about the London Fatberg, as well as a T shirt I thought he'd love...
[Disclaimer - the HI T-shirt was not my idea, but I made it better. The kerning of the original was a mess and the thickness of the North Face arches was wrong too.]
Fast forward another three years and three months and it's February 2025. The same pal above fails to get tickets for the Beta Band's reunion gigs, but I scored four so now he's now coming to Scotland in September to see them at Barrowlands with me.
Two months later my planned move back to Scotland happens after almost a quarter of a century in Norwich and That London. It's been a blast but hame beckons, all that stunning East Coast scenery and melancholy will be mine once more.
Prior to the gig my pal asks if, when he's up, we can a) go look at some art in Edinburgh and b) visit some things with a BoC connection, maybe? I start having a look and art isnae a problem. BoC things on the other hand, well...there's only really the Pentland Hills to go on, or that beach at Redpoint.
I thought little more of it and then the week of the gig had a look at a couple of outdoors snaps of BoC. It'd be a wee bit of a schlep to just go and wander around a fraction of the Pentlands and I couldnae be arsed with that, to be honest. I'm 55, I need proper reasons to do shit these days...
And, then...a moment of clarity.
Something about one snap just clicked, oddly, and I thought to myself..."that's got to be the edge of a...", and searched for that very thing. Pretty much on the first go I zoomed in on the map, and it looked like a structure from above...but that wasn't crystal clear enough for me...so I had a nosey on Google Earth and there had been a snap taken nearby...it just had to be?
I relayed this discovery south and we agreed we'd go there, cos why the fuck not.
The day after the Beta Band gig we went to see some art. Then it started to rain as we set off in my car. When we got there, it was a long walk there in that rain, about twenty minutes or so...especially when the wind picked up.
We were about five minutes from our destination and I got a text from my wife - also our photographer - which just said "Nope". She was several minutes behind us, with my son, and had had enough of the awful weather and was heading back to the car.
My friend and I questioned our sanity above the noise of the howling wind but were literally too far down the path to turn back now. And so on we went and we turned the corner. About twenty or so metres and we were there. The weather was really shit and we looked at the structure and agreed, "yeah, that's right".
Took a lot of snaps very quickly, as it was pishing doon and our photographer had abandoned us at this point. We had to make do by positioning ourselves with one phone and documenting that with the other, but it was worth the trek. Maybe.
ps nobody was home
