More Industrial Iconography

As the art project continues, we have had a visit to the new Riverside Museum in Glasgow.  As a design, this museum is gorgeous.  It has been created so beautifully and thoughtfully.  For example, the area that is devoted to Clyde shipbuilding has a superb gyrating machine that carries models of the notable ships built in the area.  It is mesmerising and as each ship passes a plasma screen, details come up about it.  But most amazing is that as you leave the area of the museum, there is a huge picture window that gives a view of the Clyde and all the old shipbuilding warehouses and cranes. So you immediately know you are at the point of living history.  A brilliant piece of design.  Secondly, there is a fabulous reflection of the Tall Ship - Glenlee - in the glass wall of the museum.

My daughter was photographing the Pilcher Bat - an example of design that changed the world, I am told.  The Pilcher designs are known for being the original aircraft that actually flew.  A pity that he died in the process!  The one in the Riverside is a copy and is a bit incongruous as part of the exhibition as the Riverside focus is on Clyde shipbuilding and wheeled transport - so, as the only aviation exhibit, this looks lovely, but is not relevant to the rest of the museum. The original Pilcher Hawk - the best known and the first, is at the Museum of Flight in East Lothian, but is not currently on display.  The curator told me when I called that it was likely to be moved to the new Museum (see other posts!) in central Edinburgh when they open some more galleries.  We hope so because despite their obvious (death-inducing) faults, they are wonderful designs.

Bridges

It has been a weekend of bridges this week.  My daughter is collating photographs for her Higher Art and wanted some pictures of industrial objects including bridges.  So we went out to South Queensferry - a lovely out of town trip for another day with more time in it - to take pictures of the Forth Bridge.  See below.  What a wonderful piece of Victorian engineering it is!  If I am honest, however, from a design and symmetry point of view, I prefer the Road Bridge which is more majestic.

We also went to the National Museum on Chambers Street.  I have written about this before as it has recently reopened after a major refurbishment and looks fantastic with some real thought about how the collections overlap and about the design of the collections, creating shapes and images.  However, we were mainly in the Museum of Scotland section which is relatively new, but not part of the refurbishment.  This is a picture of what I consider the most interesting thing in the whole museum (apart, maybe from the Lewis Chessmen).  It is a piece of the original Tay Bridge.  Badly built and beset by troubles, the bridge collapsed into the Tay in 1879 killing everyone on board the train crossing it at the time.  This piece of bridge was found in a house in Broughty Ferry!  It is the way the end of it is ripped, as thought it were made of plasticine, that amazes me. A really fascinating close up of how even what seems to be the strongest of things is actually pliable and breakable.

Happy Birthday Mr Dickens

"I have in my employ a literary man with a wooden leg" - my favourite Dickens character is Nicodemus Boffin.  While some Dickens can be hard to read , he would have benefited from a firm editor, there are some great characters and brilliant plotlines.

The picture is nothing to do with Dickens.  I just thought this page was rather bleak without anything more picturesque on it.  This is actually a very good drawing of Elie in Fife done by a good friend.

Poetry Time

As well as coffee shops, I really enjoy poetry.  I confess that it is my choice of "loo literature" and although totally unfashionable, I just love reading it.  I know very few other people who are up for a chat about it, but read and love it nonetheless.  I also love Scotland's islands - their character, remoteness and just their gorgeousness.  An old friend, therefore, gave me the most perfect present recently - A copy of a poetry anthology called These Islands we Sing.  These are poems about the islands.  Some are better than others, it must be said!  But they all bring out the character of the remoteness and individuality.

Rather than a picture, today I am sharing a poem with you.  I particularly like this one, written by a poet and fiction/non fiction author - Andrew Greig.   He is a great writer.  Some of his novels are really worth reading (In Another Light / The Return of John McNab) and his poetry is wonderful.  Here is the one about Orkney (not sure about copyright on doing this, but I feel sure, having heard him at the Book Festival, that he would like the appreciation!):

Orkney / This Life

For Catherine and Jamie

It is big sky and its changes,
the sea all round and the waters within.
It is the way sea and sky
work off each other constantly,
like people meeting in Alfred Street,
each face coming away with a hint
of the other's face pressed in it.
It is the way a week-long gale
ends and folk emerge to hear
a single bird cry way high up.

It is the way you lean to me
and the way I lean to you, as if
we are each other's prevailing;
how we connect along our shores,
the way we are tidal islands
joined for hours then inaccessible,
I'll go for that, and smile when I
pick sand off myself in the shower.
The way I am an inland loch to you
when a clatter of white whoops and rises...

It is the way Scotland looks to the South,
the way we enter friends' houses
to leave what we came with, or flick
the kettle's switch and wait.
This is where I want to live,
close to where the heart gives out,
ruined, perfected, an empty arch against the sky
where birds fly through instead of prayers
while in Hoy Sound the fern's engines thrum
this life this life this life.

Happy New Year - here go the resolutions!

If your New Year resolution is to lose weight and get fit, this blog (see link below) will ensure you do not include Coke or Diet Coke within it!

http://runwithmark.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/coca-cola/

Here is a picture to cheer up the New Year and my rather healthy-focused posting...

Edinburgh Hogmanay

It is almost time for the annual Hogmanay party in the centre of Edinburgh.  Months of planning go into the organisation and almost 100,000 convene in a secure area in the centre of the city for loud music.  A range of stages with different music on them and a more exclusive Concert in the Gardens, mean there is something for everyone - or that is what they say!  In my view it is a younger persons' thing.  Having worked as part of the team in the past, I can definitely tell you that at 1 am on New Year's Day I should far rather be sitting by my fire with some friends (or even in bed already?!) than standing in Princes Street Gardens in the middle of someone else's party.  Although it is a sight worth seeing. I once climbed onto the TV platform that literally sticks out into the street from the gardens, and I looked down the road at the 100,000 crowd.  It was an amazing sight and one won't forget, but I shall not go again.

As part of the Christmas team, however, we do get to do good things, like going up the Scott Monument and joining in a Santa flash mob on a weekday in the middle of Princes Street.  This is a lovely picture of the Flying Carousel, or the "Chair-o-planes" as my daughter calls it...  It was taken by a fab photographer called Tony Marsh - www.tonymarshphotography.com

A Very Special View of Edinburgh

Sometimes, in my job, I am a very lucky person.  Because we work with lots of tourism providers and major events happening in Scotland, sometimes we get to do very special things.  In January I was allowed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to witness the signing of the deal to bring the pandas to Edinburgh, for instance.  This November, I was the media person in charge of the press photographers allowed up the Scott Monument in the dark to film Edinburgh's lights going on at Edinburgh's Christmas Light Night.  It was very dark up there and windy!  But the views are amazing and even just using my iphone, I got some lovely shots of the lights from a different perspective.