Layout and Location - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 123

schemes which visiting commentators called “frontiers of hope-
lessness” and the inhabitants called “deserts wi' windaes.” To
build a megalith in Nitshill with public money would have been
such an insult that one would be inclined to help the vandals tear
it down again. That glimpse of urban deprivation brought home the
extent to which job creation and temporary employment schemes,
whatever results they achieve and however valuable they are to
the individuals employed, can only be viewed as window dressing
at government level. The entire budget of the Astronomy Project
would scarcely have renovated one of those buildings, and there
were streets of them.
Even there the skylines might have had possibilities; I didn't
stop to find out because it might have been difficult to give an
adequate account of myself. At each of the other sites something
could be done, although in some cases only a single alignment
might be good enough to use. I also had to think about how the
structure would look in relation to its surroundings, e.g., on
Cathkin Braes and in Bellahouston Park. In Tollcross Park the
football ground was functional rather than beautiful, and a stone
circle would not be much of an ornament; the people directly
across the road might not like having one planked right in front
of them, presumably by heavy machinery. At Knowetap Street,
which in other ways was quite good as its name implies, the road
was so narrow that the structure would be almost in the gardens
of the people opposite.
Finding Broomhill Park, as it was marked on my map, and
finding a way in, gave the driver some trouble initially, for nei-
ther he nor anyone he asked had ever heard of it. It was plainly
marked on the map beside the M8 motorway, almost due north of
the city center, but the only Broomhill anyone had heard of was
out in the West End. It turned out that the park wasn't built yet
and the site was still waste ground. After cruising the area the
driver decided the only way in was up a steep track from Pink-
ston Road; however this became impassable not far uphill, and I
had to go on foot. Although this was the first site visited in the
afternoon, I was still so wet that it hardly mattered. Taking the
Miner's Dial seemed pointless, so I laid my master diagram over
it in the car and took even rougher bearings on the Sighthill flats
nearby before I set off.