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No one could ever accuse my job of lacking variety. Having ended the week, on the red carpet amid luvvies at the Edinburgh Film Festival, I started this week in a lockup in Maryhill, downwind of a large flatulent horse.

Mention the artist Andy Scott and it might all begin to make sense. Andy's back catalogue includes a few horses - not least the M8 Heavy Horse, something of a landmark for motorists - but his latest horse project will overshadow everything he's ever done.

will sit between the M9 and the canal near Falkirk. As big as the Falkirk Wheel and every bit as functional, rocking back and forth, they'll lift the boats between the upper and lower levels of the canal.

After two years of planning, pitching and eventually securing funding, it's fair to say the plan is now off the drawing board - but the versions in Andy's Maryhill Studio are still only a tenth of the size of the planned Kelpies. And it's vital at this stage, that he gets the detail right.

Hence the need for Baron and Duke, two towering Clydesdale Horses from Pollok Park. They're regularly taken out to meet schoolchildren, and illustrate local history talks about Scotland's industrial past.

It is, as far as the council knows, the first time they've enjoyed a modelling session but no one would have known - at least as far as Baron was concerned.

Clip-clopping

Cheerfully snorting as Andy Scott took a closer look at his muscles and markings, and carefully jotted the changes down onto his own model.

The detail is vital as the next stage of the project will move onto full scale, and the biggest problem will be finding a workshop big enough.

"The full scale ones wouldn't fit, not even in my new workshop here," said Scott.

"They're going to be fabricated, hopefully in a shipyard - it's a major civil engineering project.

"With the kind of skills Glasgow is well known for, I'd love to think it could be done in the west of Scotland but the key thing is to find the right fabricator, someone who understands it's an artwork as well as an engineering feat."

Tenders for the project will go out shortly. Meanwhile Duke and Baron, clip-clopped back into their wagon for the short trip back to Pollok Park, immortalised not just in the morning papers but in the Kelpies, which if all goes to plan will be transported - perhaps by canal - to Falkirk some time in 2010.