Former Bridgegate Chambers, built 1934. Seems to be now known as the Bridge Church. From this end I couldn’t get it all in one shot. Note lozenges in the brickwork above the windows:-

Reverse view. Nice rounded corner:-

The windows on this one look like Critall ones:-

The ones below are hard to see for the trees but seem to have some deco about them:-

The Smokehouse, Alloway Place. Curved windows with rule of three, white rendering, flat roof. The upper windows may be original Critall ones. (Or perhaps not, what with their black surround.):-

The windows in the one below are Deco, as are the rooftop projections. The middle portion has an eastern feel though. Overall it’s an odd one. It’s situated on the A 719 where it merges with Main Street.

Frontage:-

Canongate, 2022, 334 p.

I was inspired to read this book by a very complimentary review it received in The Guardian several months ago. Having now done so I can only concur with that assessment. Campbell writes very well. There are no undue frills to her prose – perhaps as a result of her history as an author of crime novels – but she communicates effectively and insightfully.

The protagonist is Kelly, a woman very down on her luck and with an acute alcohol dependency problem. She is stumbled on in George Square, Glasgow, by an inebriated hen party (in my young day that sort of enterprise was known as a bottlin’ – not a word I ever expected to write in a review.) The bride-to-be takes pity on Kelly and hands her the bag of pound coins she had collected in return for granting a kiss to each man the party had encountered that night. The future bride also inadvertently leaves behind her engagement ring, which Kelly picks up along with the information the bride is from Gatehouse (of Fleet,) a location Kelly knows well as she was brought up in (relatively) nearby Kircudbright. A bag of money not being the thing to donate to an alcoholic, Kelly of course buys drink with it.

The next day Kelly witnesses a gruesome bus accident in Royal Exchange Square where several people are injured. She uses her coat – manky though it was – to try to stanch the bleeding of a man who had all but ignored her on the steps of the Gallery of Modern Art, quitting the scene before the authorities arrive.

At the drop-in centre which he runs Kelly relates her experiences to Dexy, who has a soft spot for her, before she decides to leave Glasgow at least for a while, accepting a lift south from lorry-driver Craig, and maybe try to return the engagement ring. On the journey, Kelly’s thoughtfulness is revealed through her conversation with Craig. But she is still skittish and does not want to rely on others, alighting at Portpatrick where she spends the night in a disused lighthouse with Critall windows. An encounter with a group of US religious types plying her with leaflets gives her the idea of following the Pilgrim Trail through Galloway. The locations she passes through – Glenluce Abbey, St Ninian’s Cave, the Isle of Whithorn, Wigtown – were all made more redolent for me by the fact I have visited them. (As indeed I have Gatehouse and Kircudbright.) On the way she rescues from a barn a mistreated puppy she calls Collie(-flower) which becomes her bosom companion.

In her absence Kelly has become a minor heroine in Glasgow due to journalist Jennifer Patience publishing her act of compassion, identifying her from a photo taken after the accident when Kelly was coming to the man’s aid. This leads to her occasionally being recognised by minor characters whose interest in her she believes is occasioned by her taking Collie from its owner.

The book is not quite entirely seen from Kelly’s angle. Jennifer, Craig and Dexy all have a few passages related from their viewpoints. However, this is Kelly’s story, the salient points of Kelly’s life recalled by her in italicised passages relating her childhood closeness to her sister Amanda, her journey into alcoholism (with few sober interludes) and the trigger for her descent, a drunken mistake which led to her imprisonment for two years. The travails of being part of the benefits system, the series of Catches-22 which she endured, the all-but impossibility of getting out of the traps of joblessness and homelessness are starkly laid out by Campbell.

This might have been a bleak novel but Campbell’s insight into Kelly’s situation, her illumination of Kelly’s humanity, lift it out of thoughts of despair. The cruelties of her world are also lessened by Kelly’s fortitude (despite her lapses,) her caring for Collie, her determination to return the ring and the frequent kindness of strangers.

If the book has a weakness it is perhaps the dénouement, where reconciliation and redemption are possibly achieved a little too easily. As an account of a life on the margins, though, it is excellent.

Pedant’s corner:- “A skein of oncoming motorbikes blare past” (a skein … blares past.) Midgies (Midges,) “staining the glass with colour though it is clear” (implies coloured glass isn’t clear. If you can see through it, the it is clear – whatever colour it is,) Darren Carruthers’ (Carruthers’s.) “‘It’s a wee big snug’” (a wee bit snug,) “the Ettrick Shepherd” (usually the Shepherd bit is capitalised too,) “a row of small cups and saucers line a shelf” (a row … lines a shelf,) “a slab of cod, crisp and golden” (cod? In a Scottish chippie? Haddock is the usual fare,) “she has no clue where, or what time, or where” ( don’t know why where is repeated,) a missing end quote mark when a piece of dialogue is interrupted by description (x 1,) crenulations (crennellations.)

A lot of the buildings used during the Second World War in Britain had elements of deco style. Not surprisingly, the era had not really passed when the war began.

So it wasn’t entirely unexpected that when I rolled up at the car park at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, home of the WW2 British code-breaking effort, last September, the first buildings I saw were in that flat-roofed, Critall-windowed mode.

Buildings by car park. These are the sorts of things you see at former WW2 airfields:-

This submarine model beside the road from the car park to Bletchley Park presumably commemorates the code-breakers’ role in winning the Atlantic war:-

This is a more modern building in that wartime style but I don’t think it’s part of Bletchley Park:-

These modernised ones were all inside the Bletchley Park museum site:-

One of the internal exhibits was this photograph of the impeccably Art Deco Hollerith Factory where the calculating machines known as Bombes, which tried out the variations of the intercepted Enigma messages to get a code match were manufactured:-

Hollerith building and interior:-

Rhyl is only a few miles from Prestatyn so we popped along the coast a bit. It’s a seaside town so naturally there’s some Art Deco.

Former Burton’s. Typical Burton’s Deco style:-

Art Deco style clock tower on East Parade. Nice bridge behind:-

Then there was this building still with its original Critall windows:-

The Premier Inn on East Parade has something of the look, horizontals, verticals but no rule of three:-

While up in Inverness last year I spotted this Art Deco house, complete with Critall windows, blue banding and flat roof:-

Its gates also had the quintessentially deco sunburst motif:-

Not far away was this moderne style house, possibly 1930s, more likely a bit later. The windows are certainly later but will be replacements. Strong horizontals and verticals though. And note canopy – all implying deco:-

Another view. Strong horizontals and verticals. Flat roof. Corner windows:-

Also its chimney is typically deco:-

And so, on the morning after the semi-final we motored towards Powis Castle on the A483 between Oswestry and Welshpool.

Just on the English side of the border I spotted this house in the village of Pant. I had to stop for a photo or three:-

Closer View:-

Frontage. The windows were surely once Critall but at least some (most) have been replaced:-

From right:-

This is now a B&M Bargains but may once have been a Woolworths. It has that look:-

Eden Rural Power:-

Reverse view. Art Deco rule of three in upper front and lower side windows:-

Doors on the Alhambra Cinema:-

Seen in an antique shop/yard. An old advert for Critall Windows, which were the height of Art Deco style. (The link contains all my mentions of Critall Windows):-

Gatehouse of Fleet is a village in the region of Dumfries and Galloway in southwest Scotland. It is situated near the mouth of the Water of Fleet accessed by a small detour from the main A 75 road.

Heading north up the main street you come to the War Memorial which is in the form of a Celtic Cross surmounting a plinth.

The inscription reads, “In honour of the men from Anwoth and Girthon who fell in the Great War,” with “lest we forget” below the names:-

Names on plaque on reverse – all for the Great War:-

The World War 2 plaque is on the side of the Memorial:-

Reverse view:-

Carrying on via the B 727 you pass this Art Deco style house which still seems to have the original windows. They look like Critall ones to me, anyway:-

Further on still is this quaint turreted house:-

On a detour through Prestonpans I spotted this building and of course had to stop to photograph it.

Now derelict, it used to be the premises of Lothian Coated Fabrics.

It has the typical flat roof and rectangular towers. There are good long thin windows on the far tower portion and nice banding near the roofline.

It looks like the original (Critall?) windows were never replaced. Also note the two flagpoles. It’s in a sad state now, though.