Tag: Scotland

Categories
City Life

South Portland Street Suspension Bridge

South Portland Street Suspension Bridge across the River Clyde, Glasgow

This is the most sentimental photograph you are ever likely to see on this web site. If you were expecting a colder gaze from me, I apologize and promise not to do anything like this again.

This is a sign that stands at one end of the South Portland Street Suspension Bridge, a pedestrian walkway across the Clyde River in Glasgow. Maybe it upsets you that somebody vandalized the sign by painting a heart on it and the words: “i love you.” Personally, I regard the sign as a form of vandalism. It’s title is “Clyde Bridges.” We don’t need a sign to tell us that; it’s fucking obvious. All the sign does is get in the way. The graffiti is an improvement.

Categories
Street Photography

Nice N Sleazy on Sauchiehall Street

A man watches 3 women walk past Nice N Sleazy, a bar on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow

Nice N Sleazy is a bar on Sauchiehall Street. It’s like Brigadoon. Caught in its own special time when ideas like feminism didn’t exist.

I wonder what’s going through this guy’s head as he watches the three women pass the bar’s entrance. This is emblematic of who gets to watch whom.

It’s worth noting, however, that the women are watching something too. They’re not returning the man’s gaze. Instead, they’re watching something that lies beyond the frame.

In a way, the women are more interesting because they look to something that is unknowable. Unknowable, at least, to those of us who join the man in gazing at the women.

Categories
Street Photography

Child Running in the Rain

Child runs in the rain at the Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow, Scotland

I’m standing in the Royal Exchange Square at the back end of GOMA, the Gallery of Modern Art, experimenting with the wet pavement and the broad curving line of the steps when a child runs up the steps and races towards me. Sometimes the photography gods are kind to me. What is particularly kind in this instance is that the girl’s parents look on, smiling, apparently unconcerned that a middle-aged man is standing there with a camera.

I offer this photograph as a reminder of whose interests we serve at Cop26. Let us never forget: our children have no voice here. We will be long gone by the time the consequences of our decisions play themselves out in full. It will be our children who suffer or benefit from those consequences.

Categories
City Life

Public Toilets in Glasgow

Youth walking past public lavatories at Buchanan Street & St. Vincent Place in Glasgow

Whenever I visit another city, I find myself inevitably drawing comparisons to my hometown. Sometimes I observe things that make me glad I live where I do. In Glasgow, for example, I’m struck by the relative cultural and ethnic homogeneity of the local population. I come from a city where more than half the population identifies as a visible minority and where more than half the population was born in another country. As odd as it may seem, I find it disturbing to enter a space where most everybody looks like me. Difference is a comfort.

At the same time, Glasgow has many features to commend it, including the availability of public lavatories. This strikes me as a sensible response to a homogeneity of a different sort: we are all alike in our need to pee. Stuck right in the middle of town, near the intersection of Buchanan Street and St. Vincent Place, is a great black behemoth where people can find sweet relief. Toronto has no such public facilities. As I have documented elsewhere, Toronto is hostile to the idea of the public lavatory. City politicians fret that homeless people might sully their fine facilities so they prefer to deny them to everyone than to share them with people of all stations.

I haven’t visited Glasgow since the global pandemic gripped us, so I can’t say if that may have changed the Glaswegian approach to public facilities. I hope not. There is something heartening about a town that frankly acknowledges (and answers) a universal human need.

Public Lavatory in Glasgow
Categories
Street Photography

Beer Kegs on the Sidewalk

Man walks past beer kegs at Sauchiehall & Scott Street, Glasgow

Beer kegs on the sidewalk is pretty much the norm for Glasgow. Perhaps the most famous of the local breweries is Tennent’s located at the foot of the Glasgow Necropolis. I’ve often wondered where they source their water. Do they take it locally, filtered through the hills of the Necropolis? Does that give their beverages a special flavour?

Peering through the gates of the Wellpark Brewery
Categories
City Life

Renfield St Stephens Parish Church

Reflection of Renfield St Stephens Parish Church in glass of building across the street.

This is a photo of “serviced apartments” which I hope is a euphemism for “hotel rooms”. Maybe some of the people attending Cop26 will stay here. It’s on Bath Street and not that far from the venue. However, I did not post this photo so I could provide accommodation advice to Cop26 delegates. I posted it because, reflected in its windows is Renfield St Stephens Parish Church.

If I felt inclined to write a book about superstition, the story of this church would get a chapter all to itself. During a storm in 1998, lightning struck the tower and it collapsed into the sanctuary, pretty much destroying everything. This happened on … you guessed it … St Stephens Day. I don’t know what St Stephen had against this church, but clearly you shouldn’t mess with him; he has pull with the people who manage the weather.

While I can imagine that the local congregation was bewildered and grief-stricken, nevertheless its response is worth holding up as an exemplar of building back better. The church now has a sanctuary that serves as a multi-purpose flexible space. It also has a kitchen and café, all glass and fronting the street, making it more accessible to the local community.

View of Renfield St. Stephens Parish Church sanctuary
Categories
Public Art

The Harpy Celaeno

The Harpy Celaeno, marble sculpture by Mary Pownall

The Harpy Celaeno (1902) is a marble sculpture by Mary Pownall that stands in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum. You can read a full description of the work on the ArtUK web site. In mythology, harpies were half human half birds who personified storm winds. Mary Pownall served as the model for her own work.

Each time I visit, I make a point of viewing the sculpture from the second floor gallery because, in the manner of a true street photographer, I look for chance encounters. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can get a shot that looks as if the harpy is pouncing on a passerby. To date, I haven’t got a shot that satisfies me, but I’m working on it.

Marble Sculpture by Mary Pownall
Categories
Street Portrait

Morning Drink on Sauchiehall Street

Man sitting on a bench, drinking on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland

At the risk of overgeneralizing, it seems to be a thing in Scotland to start the day with a good stiff drink. I remember taking the train from Lenzie into Edinburgh for breakfast at a gloriously refurbished bank-turned-restaurant and watching a man seated alone at the next table. Dressed in a business suit, he ate a traditional bangers and mash breakfast but, instead of coffee and orange juice, he washed it down with a couple pints. With the last gulp, he stood and ambled off to work. In Toronto, thanks to our straight-laced prohibitionist heritage, such a breakfast would be impossible. Liquor licensing laws prohibit serving alcoholic beverages until 11:00 am.

I made the photo here as I was walking one morning down Sauchiehall Street. Judging by this man’s speech and by his difficulty sitting upright, this was not his first drink of the day. Interestingly, his was not the stereotypically slurred speech of a town drunk; it was the trained speech of a Shakespearean actor reciting a soliloquy. He carried three books in his pocket. The outermost was that most Scottish of Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth.

Categories
City Life

A Ride on ScotRail

The back end of Queen Street train station.

This is the back end of Glasgow’s Queen Street train station shot from Cathedral Street. I love the way the struts fan out in a peacock display (assuming the peacock is colour blind). I imagine most of the Cop26 delegates and support staff will never see the inside of this or any other train station. They’ll fly into Paisley and take limos to their hotels. Trains are for ordinary folk.

One train ride I took from this station up to Lenzie was particularly memorable. We (by we I mean my wife and I and another couple) had been at a celebration in George Square to mark the homecoming of Olympic athletes who had performed well at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. By the time we were ready to go home, it was late and the trains were packed. Mark and I found seats at one end of a car and our wives found seats at the other end of the car. Seated across from us were two thirty-something women who were modestly drunk and very chatty. They thought it would be a great idea if we came home with them for some drinks. Mark and I looked at one another and laughed, but nicely. Meanwhile, our wives were looking on from the other end of the car, also laughing, maybe not so nicely.

I thanked them for the offer but, I said, we already agreed to go home for drinks with two other women.

“Ooooh,” says one of the women, “you have an accent. Are you American?”

“No, I’m Canadian.”

“Ach! Same difference.”

Mark laughed and, setting aside his native brogue, said in his best imitation of John Wayne: “Them’s fightin’ words, sister.”

You’d think people in the throes of independence marches and referendums would be more sensitive these differences.

Categories
City Life

Return to Sender at the Kelvingrove

Return to Sender, mixed media sculpture by Sean Read

“Return to Sender” is a mixed media sculpture by Sean Read on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum. It’s cheesy, catholic, pomo. Kind of like Cop26.

Skinny legs. Fat paunch. This is late Elvis. The Elvis of drugs and bad food and self-loathing. And yet Sean Read has given him a neon halo. We want to say things like: “it shows how redemption is possible even for someone as far gone as him.” But that’s not how grace works, is it? Redemption is possible especially for someone as far gone as him.

I wonder what the janitor does at the end of the day when everyone has left and the Kelvingrove has fallen silent. Does he flip the switch to the halo and walk away like it’s nothing? Or does he pause for a second, like someone caught in a liturgical moment, and genuflect. Maybe he swishes his hips, or contort his lips. Maybe he gives thanks to the king. Tibi ago gratias.

Categories
City Life

View from the Kelvingrove

View from the southwest entrance to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland

The Kelvingrove is near Finnieston which is the district of Glasgow where the Cop26 venue is located. This photo looks out the southwest entrance onto Argyle Street and, beyond it, Regent Moray Street which leads down to the venue, or would if it were a through street. The Kelvin in Kelvingrove refers to the river that flows nearby and which also gave its name to William Thomson who became the first Lord Kelvin for his work as a physicist and mathematician.

Yeah, like you care.

More interesting to me (and probably you) is what’s inside the building, including an amazing sculpture of St. Elvis complete with a neon halo, and Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John on the Cross which was attacked by a rock-wielding nut in the 60’s and slashed in the 80’s by another nut. I guess religion will do that to you. I felt like slashing it, too, but managed to restrain myself.

Categories
City Life

View from the Glasgow Necropolis

View from the Glasgow Necropolis of Church Lane bridge passing over Wishart Street.

I was standing somewhere on the Glasgow Necropolis when I made this shot of the Church Lane with its bridge spanning Wishart Street and continuing on up to the St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art. The museum was, for a short time, home to one of my favourite paintings, Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross. It has moved to the Kelvingrove but I personally prefer the more intimate and brighter setting at St. Mungo’s.

Not far from where I was standing is one of my favourite graves. Yes, I have favourite graves. It is the resting place of a renowned Scottish industrialist named Charles Tennant, inventor of bleach. Owing to the caustic nature of the ingredients in his bleach recipe, the people who worked in his factory tended to lose their faces. Literally. The workers inhaled the stuff and it ate away the nose cartilage so their faces collapsed. Ironically, acid rain has worked its magic on the statue of Charles Tennant, so it has suffered the same fate as Tennant himself inflicted upon his workers. Not quite karma, but close.

Categories
City Life

Piper in Nelson Mandela Square

Piper marches through Nelson Mandela Square in Glasgow during an All Under One Banner (AUOB) protest.

When we see the bagpipes, our minds immediately think of Scotland. When we hear the bagpipes, our minds immediately think of cats tied to the back of cars and dragged through city streets. No one would listen to the bagpipes for the mere pleasure of it. Would they? Then again, this is a people who thinks sheep’s offal stuffed with oatmeal into its stomach is a delicacy and washes it down with liquefied dirt (Laphraoig). Why then would it surprise us that they have such taste in music?

I caught this piper at a Scottish independence march: All Under One Banner (AUOB), passing through Nelson Mandela Square in the centre of Glasgow. It seems the vaguely racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric wafting up from the Tory government south of the border has galvanized many Scots. That and the economic fallout from Brexit. As a Canuck, I sympathize. We’ve had to put up with the stink of vaguely racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric wafting from south of our border too.

Categories
City Life

Services at Glasgow Cathedral

Rev. Mark Johnstone prepares for a service in the vestry of Glasgow Cathedral

Rev. Mark Johnstone, minister of Glasgow Cathedral, has been posting notices on social media promoting special services at the Cathedral during Cop26. Of the 30,000 delegates and support staff descending on the city, presumably some of them will want a quiet place to centre themselves. Here’s a photo of Mark chatting with my wife, Tamiko, in the vestry.

In the early days of the pandemic, Mark broadcast a service in which he included the story of how his friend, Dave, from Canada, once made a complete arse of himself during a service at the Cathedral. The story goes something like this:

A few years ago, before Mark had been called to the Cathedral, he and I went to a vespers service there. Because I was travelling with a small suitcase, I had only one jacket with me, the same jacket I wear when I’m hiking in Northern Ontario, waterproof, all purpose, red (so hunters don’t shoot me), and loaded with handy Velcro straps. During the service, the minister at the time, Laurence Whitley, invited everyone to bow their heads in prayer. I was jet-lagged and happy to fold my arms and slouch low in the pew. But when the prayer was done, I found that the Velcro on my jacket sleeves had stuck to the Velcro on opposite pockets, so I was constrained like a patient in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I was stuck and didn’t know what to do.

The problem is that the Cathedral’s acoustics are extraordinarily “live”. You’ve probably heard the expression: you could hear a pin drop. It applies quite literally to the space where I was seated, what is formally called the choir. Mark saw my situation and started to laugh, quietly of course. I decided there was no choice but to tear away the Velcro straps all at once, like ripping off a band-aid. The noise echoed down the nave. Rev. Whitley lost his train of thought. Mark laughed. And I was free.

In April, 2020, Mark decided the story would make a good sermon illustration. He was trying to get at that feeling of breaking free that we all have craved after our long periods of self-isolation and masking and social distancing. The BBC also broadcast his service so now half the UK knows about his idiot friend named Dave from Canada.

The Choir of Glasgow Cathedral
Categories
Street Photography

Policing at Cop26

Police monitor protests at a Scottish Independence (AUOB) march.

A Guardian article indicates that activists are concerned about the way police will be deployed during Cop26. My personal experience during Toronto’s G20 summit in 2010 suggests their concerns may be justified. The policing effort, which will see 10,000 personnel drawn from all over the UK descend upon Glasgow, is called Operation Urrem. Urrem is the Scots word for respect.

As I understand it, the concern has to do with differing attitudes towards policing. The Scottish approach tends to be more hands off and conciliatory whereas English policing tends to be more heavy-handed.

Shown above is a photo I shot in George Square where police placed themselves between Scottish Independence marchers and those waving Union Jacks who came to protest the protesters. As you might gather from the photo, the police didn’t really do anything except create a space for both sides to have their say.

I hope the same approach holds for Cop26.