A couple of days ago I posted about the library crawl I was organising for National Libraries Day via Glasgow Subway. Well, it took place yesterday and was enjoyed by all – 11 of us in total, though not all were there for the whole day.

We called it “In the Loop” because of the circular nature of the route and used the hashtag #nldshoogle on Twitter, a combination of the official #NLD12 and @GlasgowSubway’s use of #shoogle. Someone tweeted me last night to say “I still don’t know what shoogle means!” Well, there’s a great definition and cartoon here. If someone hands you a carton of juice and asks you to give it a “wee shoogle” you give it a shake. Non-Glaswegians might also like to learn the phrase “Yer jaiket’s on a shoogly nail” which roughly translates as “The peg on which your jacket is hanging is rather loose.” In other words “Your position is precarious” – not what you want to hear your boss saying!

Anyway, back to the library crawl. The Subway staff were very supportive and gave us all shoogle bags to carry our library books. Here are some of the gang posing with theirs in Buchanan Street Station:

And here they are enjoying a wee shoogle on the train:

The post’s title, by the way, derives from the T-Rex song “I love to boogie”. I’ve been trying to think of other, boogie/shoogle substitutions and came up with “Yes sir, I can shoogle” (Baccara), “Blame it on the shoogle” (Jackson 5), the film “Shoogle nights” and, of course, my all-time favourite, the incomparable Mr Leonard Cohen’s “Shoogle Street”. I then found that someone called Toronto Mike had been there before me and compiled his own boogie list. If you can think of any more to substitute, let me know in the comments!

In my next post, I will tell you about the libraries we visited.