Is it June already?

Time flies when you're pre-producing an album.

We've been working away, rehearsing up the new record, Richard Hawley was supposed to produce it for us this month, but unfortuneately he was stolen by REM as their tour support, so our search continues for a producer. Its looking good though, and the new tracks for the album are sounding great.

Anyway, i thought it was time to actually start posting here....

People often say to me, Gav, they say, why are you the king of partick? (i am, its true)
and funnily enough, there is a little story as to how this came about. So i thought i would tell it here.

A long time ago, in an area of Glasgow not that far away.....I was hanging out with friends near my house, probably 89/90/91, thereabouts. There was a school across the road from my house in Broomhill (an area in Glasgow's leafy west end, just next to Partick - see environs thereof) (this was in fact the primary school i had attended as a small youth) and in the evenings, it was traditional to congregate in the playground for a game of football, or just to sit about and chat, hanging out.

This one night, a couple of neds (glasgow term for shellsuit wearing scum that tend to enjoy fighting and petty crime rather than more noble pursuits) wandered into the playground. One of them turned out to be a Bam, rather than just a ned. (a Bam being a specific kind of ned that not only tends to prefer fighting/petty crime to more noble pursuits, but also happens to be a psycopath, intent on damaging people/things). He decided that he wanted to fight me, which was at best a worry, since i am not cognisent in the ways of pugilism, and am quite frankly, a coward, and have no wish to be on the wrong end of a good shoeing.

He spent about an hour following me around and attempting to get me to fight him. His attempts really didn't make sense (in those days i was tall, but also considerably broader than i am now) and he kept telling me that if we had a fight, i would batter him, but then he'd get his brother up to kill me. Not the most convincing way to get me interested in a situation that i was already completely petrified of. This went on for some time, and he continued to try and persuade me to fight him, in spite of the fact that his acquaintance had been at my school and kept telling him to leave me alone cause i was 'alright'. He really couldn't understand why i wasn't interested in fighting him, he found it completely incomprehensible that someone wouldn't actually be interested in fighting people.

After a considerable amount of time, he eventually got bored and sat down and said, "f**k's sake mate, see me, see if i was you, a f**king big man, i'd be out there every night battering folk. No one could f**king batter you man. If i was you, i'd f**king rule partick man!!"

I was just relieved that i wasn't going to get a kicking, and found what he said to be rather funny.Many years later, when the Belle and Sebastian auction was occuring, Stuart listed me as Gav, King of Partick, having heard the story from someone and finding it funny, and since then it has become my interweb persona, and i figured, if someone has to rule partick, it might as well be me, since i'm not going to go around battering people. So these days, i am the King of Partick and environs thereof (Broomhill, Hyndland, Scotstoun, Whiteinch, Dowanhill, Hillhead, even Thornwood). Its fairly hands off, i don't have to do much, things just get on with themselves, but i do get first dibs on decent stuff in the charity shops there (i got a cracking organ once, so it has its advantages). And now you know...