Life & style

Glasgow - Merchant City

Independent Shopping Guide

16 Apr 2009

From the polished windows and grand granite buildings on Ingram Street to the lo-fi galleries that line Parnie Street, the Merchant City is a tale of two shoppers: as one strolls in and out of top boutiques, paper bags flapping in the wind and metal…

5 of the best - Online accessories

Independent Shopping Guide

16 Apr 2009

The internet has proved a boon for young, talented Scottish designers who can't afford to rent premises. Here are some of our favourites.

Site Specifics: The Glasgow Necropolis

2 Apr 2009

What is it? A Victorian Gothic fantasy of what a cemetery should look like. At least 50,000 Glaswegians have been buried there, in 3,500 tombs and mausoleums. You want us to go to a graveyard? It’s not just a graveyard. It’s a fascinating look…

Women-only roller derby: Glasgow Roller Girls

19 Feb 2009

Mistress Malicious meets me, as arranged, in the foyer of the sports centre. She’s easy to spot: she’s tall and elegant, with tattoos and bright scarlet hair. Oh, and she’s on rollerskates. I’m here to train with the Glasgow Rollergirls and learn…

Taste Test - Hot chocolate

19 Feb 2009

Beanscene Hot Chocolate, Chocolate Soup Hot Chocolate, Green and Black’s Organic Hot Chocolate Drink, Coco Hot Chocolate, Starbucks Classic Hot Chocolate, Options Belgian Choc

Fuzzy Felt Folk & Country Crafting

19 Feb 2009

The award for homeist, cutesy-ist event of the fortnight goes to this new monthly craft session where you can learn cross stitch or to knit your own beard (we didn’t make that up, either – it actually says that right here). All set to a hand picked…

Couchsurfing

22 Jan 2009

What if I said you could travel anywhere in the world and not pay for accommodation; that you could leave your Lonely Planet at home and be given a personalised itinerary of everything to see and do? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, no…

Shivago Thai Clinic

8 Jan 2009

Mental note to self: stop channelling Gwyneth. As a glass cup is set alight, blown out then placed on my back, things at the Shivago Thai Clinic, off Edinburgh's High Street, are feeling decidedly un-Hollywood. Indeed, as the foreign contraption comes…

Taste Test - Instant porridge

27 Nov 2008

Ready Brek Original • Various stockists including Tesco, Morrisons and Asda. £1.89 for 750g. Tasting like mushy Weetabix and looking a lot like Polyfilla, this soggy and bland excuse for porridge is awful. Its one redeeming feature, a smooth and…

The Bollywood Lounge & Indian Restaurant

Movie smoothie

30 Oct 2008

The gaudy glamour of the Indian film industry seems a parallel universe away as you button up on a dreich Glasgow night and stride past Sauchiehall Street's greasy takeaways and booze-addled hordes down by Charing Cross. Yet, just on the other side of…

Taste test - Halloween vegetables

16 Oct 2008

Pumpkin Maybe it’s the colour or maybe it’s the size but pumpkins are becoming demonised as the embodiment of America’s crass commercialisation of Halloween. It’s not even that they’re imported: most of those in the shops are British grown. Makes for…

Norway

31 Jul 2008

Given that Norway is one of the few places in Europe more expensive, and with worse weather than Scotland, it’s not one of the most obvious destinations for a summer holiday. But for those who appreciate quirky historic towns, dramatic scenery and a…

Cafézique

19 Jun 2008

If a deli is trying to tempt you to spend a bit more than you might at a supermarket on the basis that their food is better selected, in better condition and better quality, then you’d fully expect a partner café alongside to be operating under similar…

Taste Test - Smoothies

5 Jun 2008

Innocent Mango and Passion Fruit Smoothie ••• RS McColl, St James Centre, Edinburgh, £1.89 for 250ml Mango overload! A tangy, tropical taste is left in your mouth which could be quite refreshing on a hot day. It may be pure but you should expect a…

Food For Thought: Jonathan Wilkes

22 May 2008

My eating routine when I’m working is shocking. When I’m on tour, I grab what I can when I can. For breakfast I’ll have a bacon sandwich, followed by a club sandwich for lunch, so it’s bread after bread after bread. As much as I love my bread there’s…

Taste Test - Chicken sandwiches

22 May 2008

Fresssh 51–53 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, £2.80 •• Sweet chilli sauce gives this sandwich a bit of oomph – something it probably needed given the bland cubed chicken and plain bread. The fire in the chilli is under control, which is probably sensible…

Barcelona

10 Apr 2008

Everywhere you look in Barcelona, you see Ronaldinho. Reproductions of the FC Barca hero fill the shelves of each tourist tat-peddling stall and storefront, even in the shadow of Antoni Gaudi’s mighty Sagrada Familia cathedral, which emphasises the…

Hairdressers

10 Apr 2008

Family of hair Claire Fleming set up Claire Frances in Glasgow in 1997 ‘We’re a family business – our mother has been in the industry for over 40 years, and that’s a lot of hair cuts! I’ve been doing this for 20 years now and I really love my job…

Belfast

27 Mar 2008

St George’s Market on a Saturday morning. High, tented ceilings filling up with barbeque smoke; cheerful art graduates selling hand-printed T-shirts side by side with grumpy, knowledgeable fishmongers and cheese merchants; stalls offering gourmet olive…

The Style Issue - Trendspotting

13 Mar 2008

Dieny Itoe Clothes Not yet out of college, 23-year-old model and design student Dieny Itoe is hotly tipped for fashion fame. Her sophisticated interpretation of form and fabric earned her the coveted Glasgow 1999 Design Medal last year, and while…

Peter’s Yard

13 Mar 2008

Across Britain there are around 3000 craft bakeries. In France, with a similar sized population but a rather different attitude to bread, there are 35,000 craft or artisan bakers. French, German and Eastern European traditions have exerted the strongest…

Shopping in London

13 Mar 2008

Something cool For a one-stop shop of new designers Sunday Upmarket (Liverpool Street, sundayupmarket.co.uk) has 140 stalls of accessories, fashion and interiors. Keep an eye out for Maria Helena Spector’s jewellery made from silver, lava and…

Eating out on Valentine's Day

31 Jan 2008

St Valentine’s Day is anticipated with equal amounts of optimism and dread in the restaurant trade. No different from the rest of us, then, though for different reasons. As buoyed as owners are by a full restaurant and healthy champagne sales, staff…

Travel - Stavanger

17 Jan 2008

If Disney had designed the streets outside Duncan Robertson’s studio, you’d say it was too Mickey Mouse to be true. Like the view of the sunlit mountains that skirt the edge of the city, the wooden houses of Stavanger’s old town are chocolate box cute.

Eating in Inverness

15 Nov 2007

I’d never really thought about Inverness as a holiday destination. To be perfectly, shamefacedly honest, I hadn’t really ever thought much about Inverness. In an age of £20 flights to Europe, the idea of the weekend city break has come to mean something…