I remember Dookits from my childhood very vividly. They always seemed to loom large in the eastend of Glasgow’s landscape when I visited my grandparents and seemed like wartime fortifications on embankments and desolate pieces of spare ground. I knew they were used by bird-fanciers but I didn’t want to think too much about what went on inside them since the owners seemed distrustful of youngsters getting close. In recent years they have disappeared from many eastend communities and the weather has taken its toll on these pre-fabricated towers of metal and scrap wood. The doomen who still fly their birds remain proud of these structures and their birds but they seem resigned to their sport slowly dying out. I wish the Kelvingrove Museum would employ the doomen to create a massive dookit from scratch so children in years to come can learn how the Glasgwegian landscape used to look with these green and black towers on the horizon. Stephen McLaren.
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