At the end of this week I’ll be visiting Knowetop Primary School in Motherwell. It’s a big school – 500 pupils for starters. (Also available as a main course?) That’s a lot of broccoli squished into the floor after lunchtimes. Or a lot of cake in the staff room. (Must almost be that everyday is somebody’s birthday.)
I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone. But there is a degree of irony about my visit. You see, Knowetop is next to Fir Park – Motherwell FC’s ground. I’m nominally a Motherwell supporter, but I’ve never been to their ground (as I had to confess to Motherwell fan and presenter/comedian Tam Cowan when introducing him at Tidelines Book Festival). So visiting Knowetop will be the closest I’ve been to the hallowed turf.
You might well ask why I am a supposed Motherwell fan given that I was born in Edinburgh and did all of my primary schooling there before we moved west? Simple: one of my primary classmates lived next to Motherwell player Willie Pettigrew, who went on to play for Scotland, and managed to get me his autograph. That was reason enough for me. (Until then I’d been a St Johnstone fan…for the equally tenuous reason that I passed their ground – Muirton Park as it was then – once a year en route from Edinburgh to Kinguissie.)