The Glasgow Mission of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence were invited to the “Sing and Fight” night at the Deep End artist’s space in Govanhill in the south of Glasgow. As most of us weren’t Southsiders, we hadn’t been to this place before.

When we- myself (As Novice Wye Dangle), Novice Ausome Lee Dish Evilled, Novice Sauchie Ball Street, and Novice Brother Lee Love- arrived yesterday evening, it turned out to be just along the road from Category is Books, down a side lane, and part of the Govanhill Baths complex. Literally under the pool, a whole complex of art spaces and rooms, accessible by a sloping lane entrance round the back. (Not that accessible, as it turns out- it’s a typical uneven back lane, which is not so great for wheelchair access.)

It’s amazing the amount of arts spaces that are hidden away in Glasgow. This space has it’s own small hall which can double as a cinema room. Elsewhere there are large rooms for classes, one of which we used to do a high-speed Manifestation.

At the start of the event, we helped bless the event and venue. Usually, this involves reading out the blessing, and then blowing around some glitter, but we couldn’t use glitter here, so in this case we used “imaginary glitter”, which seemed to work just as well. The actual night, hosted by Edinburgh Artists’ Moving Image Festival in collaboration with HIV Scotland and Pollyanna queer cabaret, was a double bill of films by John Greyson, followed by a live online Q&A with Greyson himself via video link. The night ended with Miss Annabel Sings leading us all in a sing-a-long of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, which might sound cheesy, but was actually more emotional than you might think. As people left, we helped HIV Scotland with the collection boxes at the doors.

However, that was not the end of the night. We also appeared at the opening night of a new venue on the LGBTQ+ scene in Glasgow, and we even blessed it. However, the contrast between coming from an arts scene place straight into a commercial scene venue was quite a wrench, and so we left after a lttle bit, and chilled out amongst ourselves.