FEATURE WRITING
BUENOS AIRES
She'd never even met him, but when Jean Rafferty arrived in Buenos Aires, she was accompanied by the ghost of her uncle Andy who came here as a merchant seaman in the golden age of the tango.
First Published in The Guardian - 11/9/99
In the old days these docks were jumping. There were clubs and cantinas, drinking dens and waterfront dives. Here sailors drank and hookers hooked and the locals took a hot dance from Africa and turned it into the beautiful, romantic, melancholy art form that is the Argentine tango. This is where my uncle Andy would have come when his ship docked. This was where all the sailors came to party when their ships came to Buenos Aires, or Bonas Aires, as he called it. I'd never met him, and it was strange to come half way across the world and be thinking about him.
GLASGOW PROSTITUTE MURDERS
An article on sex and death. The murder of seven Glasgow prostitutes. Edited Version.
First Published in The Guardian Weekend Magazine - 14/3/99
Friday night and it was freezing, one of the coldest nights of the winter. But it was warm inside Base 75, the prostitutes' drop-in centre in Glasgow. Margo Lafferty lingered there for a while, trying on a new suit she'd bought. It was pale blue lace, a wee skirt and top to match, nice, though one of the other girls teased her about putting on weight.
Then Margo went out to work. At some point in the early hours of Saturday, 28th February, she went to one of the lanes that run off Glasgow's major shopping and business streets. There are security lights up on the buildings, so you'd think there'd be nowhere to hide there, but look in most of the doorways and you'll find a used condom. In a dark car park in one of the lanes, 27 year old Margo was found dead, viciously battered and strangled and lying in a swamp of mud and blood. She was left naked, a detail which made the other working girls pause. Margo would never have undressed for a client.
This page now also includes a follow up story on Margo's mother and how she is coping.
GHOST DANCE
Indian Trail. Following the spirit of Crazy Horse from Glasgow to South Dakota.
First Published in The Guardian Travel Section - 29/01/00
The journey began in November, the Moon When the Wolves Run Together, in my home city of Glasgow. It was to take me across the ocean and half a continent away to South Dakota, on the trail of the American Indian.
In 1892 Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show came to Glasgow and created a sensation, as it did throughout Europe. The people of my city were wild for it, especially for the Indians and their fantastic costumes.
A member of the troupe gave a Lakota Sioux ghost dance shirt to Kelvingrove art gallery and museum. I remember seeing it there as a child, along with a model of an Indian Plains family, all dressed in buckskin and beading. But in 1999 Glasgow recognised the shirt as an important piece of Sioux history and returned it to the tribe. It had belonged to someone who fought in the battle of Wounded Knee and was sacred to the Lakota people.
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