{"id":554710,"date":"2025-11-07T08:17:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T08:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/554710\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T08:17:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T08:17:19","slug":"you-get-a-good-class-of-conversation-in-the-back-of-a-glasgow-taxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/554710\/","title":{"rendered":"You get a good class of conversation in the back of a Glasgow taxi"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am awoken by my friend Josie\u2019s children. Fortunately, despite the hour being unearthly, they are highly entertaining, so the dust in my eyes does not irritate and the conversations around the Cheerios are both absurd and informative. Tonight, I am at the Community Bookshop<\/a> in Edinburgh, a\u00a0venture that makes money<\/a> for a different charity each month.<\/p>\n

On my way, I stop at Elvis Shakespeare, a regular haunt for vinyl and books about outsider art. In Argonaut Books, a little further down, I ask if they\u2019d like me to sign the copy of my book they have in stock and comment on the pile of books at the counter by Camilla Grudova.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is such a brilliant writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t you tell her, she\u2019s sat over there having a coffee?\u201d And so I do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then to Aberdeen. The sun has now bowed out \u2013 why not? It was a splendid final appearance \u2013 and I walk through more drizzle to a new independent bookshop, Somerville Books where I\u00a0recite a poem about my childhood dreams of being a vampire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

Mark Steel<\/a> calls me. \u201cWhat do you want? I\u2019m in Aberdeen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSO AM I! We\u2019re playing the same venue.\u201d Mark had wondered why his sales were down. It turns out Aberdeen has an embarrassment of riches (equally shared in a Marxist manner) of left-wing comedians to watch tonight. I\u00a0know most of Mark\u2019s audience and he knows most of mine. We aim to come together at the end of his show.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Dave Ball from Soft Cell has died<\/a> so we rehearse \u201cSay Hello, Wave Goodbye\u201d in Mark\u2019s dressing room. Sadly, my show overruns and I miss my chance, but it was a hell of a rehearsal. We go drinking with audience members, face last orders twice, and are the last to leave a pub twice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Friday is spent standing all the way from Aberdeen to Manchester. I don\u2019t mind. I have the vestibule to myself and I look out of the window at meadows and almost-mountains and build up a photo diary of pylons and sheep. I\u2019m off to the final QEDcon<\/a>. It is a conference of compassionate scepticism. Not wise-guy academics mocking, but dealing with real issues that arise from misinformation, disinformation and failures in education.<\/p>\n

I watch talks on myths spread about rape by Lucia Osborne Crowley, author of The Lasting Harm; the historical arrogance of western science by Subhadra Das; and then see Dr Abby Philips win The Ockham award for sceptical campaigning. He is a doctor in India who is fighting against pseudomedicine that is severely injuring and killing people. His campaigning has cost him greatly.<\/p>\n

Throughout the week, I have seen kindness and activism and love. It\u2019s been a good week.<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

I feel more armed for the next one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robin Ince is a comedian, poet and broadcaster.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ice Cream for a Broken Tooth: Poems about life, death, and the odd bits in between<\/strong><\/a> by Robin Ince is out now (Flapjack Press, \u00a312).<\/strong> <\/p>\n

You can buy it from the\u00a0<\/strong>Big Issue shop<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Change a vendor\u2019s life this Christmas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week \u2013 or support online with a\u00a0vendor support kit<\/a>\u00a0or a\u00a0subscription<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and help people work their way out of poverty with dignity.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am awoken by my friend Josie\u2019s children. Fortunately, despite the hour being unearthly, they are highly entertaining,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[3444,748,7056,918,4884,391,31103,29937,52184,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-554710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-from-the-magazine","11":"tag-glasgow","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-opinion","14":"tag-poetry","15":"tag-rail-travel","16":"tag-robin-ince","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}