How come Harry never found any sites on tower blocks? he asks. Good question. But poring over my Ordnance Survey maps and the sites plotted on Google Earth, I\u2019m at a loss to answer. Sure enough, most of Harry Bell\u2019s PSAs (Prehistoric Site Alignments<\/em> \u2013 the term he coined to describe his findings) appear to be located on ancient sites. Then, didn\u2019t he follow Alfred Watkins\u2019 lead, he of The Old Straight Track<\/em>, starting out with mounds, castles and ancient churches? It\u2019s unlikely that a city council, not even one as rapacious as Glasgow, would be allowed to build on old and sacred ground. The only example of recent \u2013 i.e. 20th century \u2013 construction I could find is the site of St Enoch\u2019s Sanctuary, but I may be wrong.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s back to the Necropolis. Yesterday rain had stopped play, leaving me to shelter opposite the John Knox Street gates for a full hour before giving up. Here I watched three women standing under umbrellas while waiting for the Inner Circle bus, a remnant of the city\u2019s underground renovation during the late seventies. I thought, idly, wait a minute, since when did the underground ever run this far east? Who knows where the Outer Circle goes?<\/p>\n The following afternoon, under half-cerulean, half-concrete skies. I decide to chance it. Hauling out the kit \u2013 heavy tripod, camera jostling with a flask of tea, spare tapes and batteries \u2013 I balance my load, despairing at my lack of resource and cursing the lot of the low-budget filmmaker, a self-pitying exercise in subsidised moaning. Shut up, shouts the angel on my shoulder. I struggle over the Bridge of Sighs and, after bagging a shot of the Fa\u00e7ade that for once doesn\u2019t include an industrial lawnmower, head straight for the Jewish Section.<\/p>\n I\u2019m rewarded for my effort. The light in this otherwise dim corner is amazing, ethereal almost, the kind of light upmarket film productions pay a lot of money for. Only in that scenario, the sound guy would be pulling his hair out, since the air hums with the guttural rasp of a heavy-duty strimmer ripping the undergrowth.<\/p>\n Thankfully sound\u2019s not an issue. I get my shots, revelling in the dappled sunlight. Climbing the stone steps, I chance on two of the Land Services guys I met on my previous visit. Sure enough, they\u2019re wielding an industrial strimmer. One of the guys explains how they\u2019ve just reduced an 18 feet hedge to almost ground level to deter the junkies. Clearly the guy cares about his job, telling me how he regularly helps ex-pat tourists to locate their family\u2019s lairs, unlike the council who, charging a fee for the same service, often fail to come up with a prompt or accurate answer.<\/p>\n He poses a rhetorical question – why won\u2019t the council won\u2019t let us clear the ivy off the monuments? A lot of these are sandstone, he says, they get ruined. Why indeed, I ask. He tells me that for \u2018artistic reasons\u2019 the council encourages ivy to flourish, a kind of theme park mentality where to succeed as tourist destinations, old cemeteries must obey the clich\u00e9, in this case a Victorian Gothic clich\u00e9, of crumbling masonry, broken statuary and overgrown creepers. I mean, folk travel from the US, Canada and Australia to visit here, the man laments.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/07\/necropolis_view-1.jpg\")
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