Knee deep...
I’m so grateful I was back in time for this.

As D said, the Pop League (and its spin-off) was always about memories, nostalgia, and minor myths, and so it seemed fitting that it should pass into memory itself.

I’ve never known anything like it, and probably never will. What other club could take place in the clubroom of a boules and lawn tennis club, with a portrait of the Queen, lists of past champions and winners, trophies and photos of blazered suited members on the wall? S said that out of all the venues he’s seen, and they get better and better, this would be the best so far for his film’s dancing scenes. We had a nice little chat about his film, actually. It’s quite exciting.

I would need many words to do it all justice, all those years of dancing, but perhaps last night’s little zine handed out on entry holds the best tribute, written as it is by the man behind it all.

Hello, and thank you very much for coming to the Little League tonight.

One proviso when the Little League started at the RAFA in 2004 was that there would be no badges, no fanzines, no hoo-ha. Circumstances are different tonight though, so I hope you’ll indulge a bit. This isn’t the RAFA club of course, but I’m hopeful that it’ll fit.

It’s now two months since the National Pop League ended! And, on top of my vague rules of what should and shouldn’t be done, I want to avoid monthly eulogies. Over and above what happened over the course of the NPL’s lifetime I’m proud that the end was quick and sudden and with little fuss. We went out on a fantastic run, and the cut was clean. I’m glad it didn’t limp on aimlessly.

As it happens, there is now a laminate from Glasgow City Council outside the Woodside proposing plans to convert the club into flats! I knew something like that would happen. And so I’m very happy that the choice to end the club was ours.

In practical terms this all makes sense and yet it still leaves a gap for me, if no-one else. I never really wanted to let on, and it bothered me when I felt it showed, but a lot of the NPL was a selfish endeavour for me. I very much needed a routine, for one. And I desperately needed to try and make sense of all the hopeless romance and sadness I felt about Glasgow. Nothing dreadful ever happened… just moments. All the moments seemed to have a location and a song.

The Pop League gave me an opportunity to think about them carefully, to pay tribute, to write about them obliquely. But as much as I worried about repetition in the play list, I worried about repetition in the concept. You look around and people are having children and dying and you’re still at home on Saturdays, sketching out a view you remember from 15 years ago, listening to the same songs, reading the same books.

Finishing the Pop League doesn’t end that for me. I know I’m still going to do that, and I know that I’ll feel guttered at times by particular weather and light. I’ll feel I’ve betrayed people when I listen to something gentle and heartfelt and I’m not able to write it down and try and pass it on in some small way.

My God, all this is a clatter of symptoms! But the Pop League gave me the opportunity to pick through them and make something worthwhile with it. I didn’t say I was grateful for people coming just to fill the page – I was continually surprised by it, and utterly indebted.

And now this is the last Little League! I’m purposefully using such a definitive phrase because I want it to be a promise I cannot break. I thought for a while I might try and start something again fairly quickly but I don’t really know how I feel about that now. There is something very seductive about just leaving it be.

This is the line underneath it.

There are things I always think about. Milkmen, postmen, blackness. Newsagents early on weekdays in Crosshill, the lights shimmering through cold air from the top of the staircase at Kelvingrove, moss and railings, dust in the afternoon, clocks, bridges, hands, photographs, faces. Lighting up time and how it changed and looked as the season progressed. The soft September greys all around me as I write. What would I do if I couldn’t fall back on that any more? what if they just looked plain again?! These things always made my heart burst. They’re still going to do that.

Thank you for coming tonight. And, of course, thank you for coming out over the past years. I hope you enjoy this evening, and I feel so proud to have been able to share this with you.

It feels perfect like this, it feels secret.