Well it’s March and spring has sprung, so I’m obviously banging on about Balgay again.
It’s well documented by now that the volcanic hill is one of my favourite places in Dundee and I’ll talk about it any chance I get.
But this time I’m not raving about red squirrels – though for anyone invested in last year’s Squirrelgate, I’ve seen my wee pal twice more since October.
This week’s walk featured a shiny new attraction – stories.
Not the metaphorical stories carried around by each person walking there, or the ones modestly marked by inscriptions on memorial benches.
Proper makey-up tales, laminated and cable tied to various spots across the park.
I spotted the first one as I made my way up the front of the hill, on the Victoria Park side.
Seeing a bright blue piece of A4 paper tied to the bench halfway up, I stopped to check what I thought was a missing pet poster.
In fact, it was something much more surprising – an excerpt from a book.
This macabre chapter featured a wee dog, Derry, who had been unjustly killed.
And it was set right here in Balgay Park.
First thing in the morning, I was still pretty dazed from sleep. But in the space of 100 words, I was hooked.
Who killed Derry? What would happen to them?
This one was labelled ‘Story 9’, meaning there had to be at least eight others kicking about somewhere.
So off I went, bouncing up the hill with a renewed vigour to look for the rest of the story.
This is what happens when I try to leave the newsroom and go on a serene nature walk.
After a short breather at the Mills Observatory where I mentally noted that I should really exercise more, I realised I hadn’t come across any more bits of blue paper.
Still, the view made up for it.
Then, as I crossed the blue bridge, I found another story tied to the railings.
This was ‘Story 6’, a seemingly unrelated but equally eerie paragraph outlining a woman’s walk across the very same stretch of hillside I had just crossed. But rather than finding an intriguing story, she’s met with a disconcerting buzzing noise.
The final line: ‘She chose to remain where she was’ actually did stop me in my tracks as I looked around the park which I now realised was completely empty. Shiver.
By this point I was cutting it fine to actually make it to work on time, so I abandoned the search, propelled by the promise of a hot cup of tea after the freezing walk.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the author, named on the sheets as George Burton.
I was imagining how he – or someone, anyway – must have printed the stories out, laminated them, and gathered materials like twine and cable ties to affix them to the park railings and benches.
I wondered if they’d done it under cover of darkness, a stealthy storytelling elf hiding tales overnight to be found by morning walkers.
Looking him up, I found out George was not an elf, but was in fact a real man.
And he’d been interviewed by The Courier ahead of his book’s release last year.
Turns out that though the stories I’d found were from his first book of fiction – the aptly-named Balgay Park – George is well known for his memoirs ‘Wee Georgie’ and ‘Georgie’, about growing up in Dundee.
Well, he’s gained a new fan today.
The nagging question for writers is usually: But who would even want to read that?
I’m thinking it now, as I envision fish suppers being wrapped in this column tomorrow.
And I’d wager that, given how long he put off writing fiction, George might have thought the same thing.
But thanks to this delightful guerrilla publishing effort, I’ll certainly be rerouting my morning walks to take in some more of his tales.
Balgay Park: 10 Dark Tales by George Burton is available now on Amazon.
This week, the news has been a world of pure imagination.
Between the Kate Middleton disappearance conspiracies and the absolute tragedy of Glasgow’s pitiful Willy Wonka Experience, it’s been a great week to have the internet.
Well, for most of us.
But for one person, it’s been a life-changing, ‘mental’ week full of savage online abuse.
And that person is Kirsty Paterson, the Glasgow actress who played a green-wigged, budget Oompa Loompa in the dodgy Willy Wonka Experience.
After rocking up to the acting job, Kirsty has said she realised things had gone sour, but she stayed to avoid disappointing her fellow actors and the kids whose families were victims of what was clearly a scam.
But that hasn’t stopped the internet from tearing into the 29-year-old, after a somewhat unflattering picture of her in the Oompa Loompa costume went viral.
She’s been compared to a ‘meth head’ and told she looks old by thousands of strangers on the internet.
I don’t think I’d be looking too pleased either if I went to work and found an empty warehouse full of rightfully angry customers.
This photo from the Willy wonka experience is single handedly the photo of the year. I know it’s only February but close the vote there’s no topping this. Please find this woman she needs to be interviewed ASAP pic.twitter.com/97wsodLLpQ
— 🇱🇹 (@agneponx) February 27, 2024
It’s one thing to take a rubbish job; it’s another to be abused for your employer’s failures.
Kirsty tried her best to perform for the kids in an absolutely farcical situation.
She may have been playing someone small, but I think that was pretty big of her.
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