LIGHT A CANDLE FOR THE DARKNESS

It's a night for sitting in front of the fire. In fact we've had a few nights like this lately as the weather is now turning distinctly colder.  We've had several nights of frost this past week.

I'm reading Alexander McCall Smith's book "Sunshine on Scotland Street" which is the perfect fireside read with a glass of wine and my feet up.

We enjoyed a bottle of wine several weeks ago to help send off friends who were heading off for a 3 week cruise to Antarctica. This bottle of French wine "Latitude 45" was given to us by French friends who visited us in August.  The candle holders are 2 little glass boats that hold tea-lights.  I bought them in Helensburgh a few years ago.

Our fireplace is a wood burning Aga brand which sits on a plinth Iain erected and covered with  Caithness slabs left over from the garden "sit-ootery" that he and Duncan created.

It's getting dark now earlier and earlier.  What does one do with candles found languishing in the cupboard but light them and place them in the window?

The black wooden candlesticks are ones Iain brought back from Malawii in the 1970s and the brass ones are my  mother's.  She gave them to me some years ago stating "Here ... you have these as you polish things; I don't!"  The lighthouse is a wooden ornament that sits on my bedroom window ledge.  I just like it.

A cup of tea is so much better if it can be kept hot ... and where better?  We recently replaced 6 of our everyday mugs (china ... I insist on this) with new ones all having a bird theme.  Here is the pheasant one.  (Replacing them was A Good Move ... must tackle a few more things that are looking distinctly past their sell-by-date, so to speak.)

This mug is on the coffee table alongside a gift from a Swedish friend, Christine.  It is the Orrefors glass candle holder which she gave us some years ago when she and Inger and Helga were visiting from Stockholm.

Yesterday I bought this candle at the Norwegian Society's Julebazar or Christmas fare in which Inger assists in the sale of crafts and Norwegian food.  It was hand made by Ragne who also knitted the lovely mitts I purchased last year (shown here.)

ARCADIA STRING QUARTET - ARTWORK NEEDS TO BE REDESIGNED

Playing in Cairns Church at the Milngavie Music Club, Milngavie (Glasgow) last night were a wonderful quartet from Romania. They are currently on tour in the UK.  Their website is here.

I bought their CD at the end of their quite wonderful concert of chamber music: Beethoven, Janáček and Debussy. (This is my scan of it.)

It was like hearing music played from another era where graciousness and elegance were evident in the chambers and salons of the patrons of the arts.  They played beautifully (winners of recent competitions so it stands to reason), and looked beautiful as they smiled, and established eye contact for starts and pauses. Being a young group they brought verve and pizzazz to their playing while being polished and restrained at the same time. They come from a culture that values music and it shows... e.g. all school children learn about their country's music from an early age.

The first violinist, Ana Törö, wore a garnet red gown which highlighted her figure, skin tones, hair colouring and instrument in the soft light of the church.  The men wore black with garnet red bow ties.  As a group they were a joy both to the eye and the ear.

Flowers were at the front and candles were lit at the side of the church which is carpeted in red with red chairs (the pews having been taken out to make the space more versitile.)

So why am I going on about them in this way?  Because I feel they are being very badly served by their marketing people. Their website shows photos taken of them in some grungy location on a wet day.  In all of the photoshoots these 4 talented people are wearing .... it does them no justice.  Is this supposed to be art? Sophisticiation?

To help things along I have taken the liberty of doctoring the CD cover image.    

I have used a photo of flowers that were in the church (about a month ago) which were on on display in the same  location as they played last night.  At least this latest CD cover  has something other than a disused factory, thankfully, but it's only a slight improvement in that they look totally washed out ... which they certainly are not!

 

Photoshop to the rescue!  

 I rest my case...

GLASGOW KULTURE: 51 SHADES OF MAGGIE

A night out in Glasgow is never dull!  And last night was no exception.  Mairi and I went to the Pavilion Theatre for, as they advertised, "the perfect girly night out", namely a one woman  comedy show called "51 Shades of Maggie".  They warned "Prepare for the funniest, sexiest (and maybe dirtiest) show of 2013."  It's basically a spoof on "50 Shades of Grey".

Well, having enjoyed Calendar Girls some years ago I was up for a night out with a Glasgow audience (always guaranteed to be memorable in some way or other).

I wasn't wrong ... it was quite a night! As someone who only ever attends concerts or the ballet this evening's entertainment was right at the other end of the Spectacle Spectrum.  No it wasn't dire but it certainly was all the R's (actually that is a bit of a pun what with the evening's colourful vocabularly): raw, rauchous, raunchy and ribald.  It's bascially about a really rough sexy mamma who gives as good as she gets. The comedienne, Leah MacRae, had the Glasgow patter going non-stop for 2 hours solid and only one intermission. 

The audience - all women, naturally - was equally the best feature of the night.  You may not like Glasgow audiences but my goodness they are (a) up for it ... whatever "it" is ... and (b) are there for the craic (fun, entertainment, chat) and repartee.  I am here to say this comedienne got full marks for every minute of her fizzy, gyrating performance and that included dealing with idiots in the Gods who were (presumably) drunk and disorderly.  They were 5 seats along from us and it took awhile to get the problem sorted.

For the whole evening she had a theatrefull of women laughing literally non-stop.  Unbelievable! (I confess I missed a lot of it as it was going so fast and being up in the Gods the sound was lost at the end of the punchlines.)

This very professional actress/comedienne had to deal with the whole audience chanting at the beginning of the second half, "Out ... out ...out" when the miscreants along from us made no move to exit themselves.  (The poor theatre male attendants did their best!)  She got a standing ovation at the end of the evening ... definitely well deserved.

Before the theatre filled up I took this photo of the hall and its ornate plasterwork. (I noticed that I have new software on my iPhone. This is the Panorama function .... Wow! It works!)

This show seems to be on lots of places around the country.  I guess each area has its own take on it.   Go and see it?  Not if your a man, frankly.  It is pretty "gross" [rude, offensive in a Billy Connolly sort of way] but to sit in that type of audience (not knowing if things were going to turn nasty - a bit like "mob behaviour") was ... well ... certainly showed a slice of life which had both the elements of theatre one associates with that image of the Shakespearean face masks, namely comedy and tragedy.  On our particular evening it had both, i.e. humour and the ugliness of a potentially volatile and dangerous situation.

Reading the comments of folk who have been:  they loved it e.g. "it was knicker elastic fantastic"!

GLASGOW DUKE OF WELLINGTON TO KEEP HIS CROWN

Many people in Glasgow are very het up at the moment.  It is to do with the news that the City Fathers want to raise the height of the plinth of the Duke of Wellington's statue in the city centre so that miscreants cannot climb up and place a traffic cone on his worthy head. "It's disrespectfull!"

That is true ... but over and above that, it is so very Glasgow!  It is just another manifestation of how people in Glasgow are very quick to see through pretension... whether in private conversation or in public places.  Does that make this statue, which is a very fine example of ART, pretentious?

Well, they say Art should engage people and, my goodness, this horse and his rider certainly do. This photo above I took several years ago.  It made me laugh!

So I go back occasionally and have a look when I am in city centre. For example,  I took this shot last month.  I thought, "Ah yes... all is right with the world; the Chooky's still got his Hat on!" In fact, now that I look at it, there are actually 2 cones.  I guess it is like Ladies of the West End ... they wear hats (or used to) to functions. As I recall, one lady had a plastic fold-out rain hat tied over her colourful felt hat she was wearing.

On the plinth the bas-relief on one side of the base had an additional feature which one doesn't normally see.

These 2 shots were taken recently.  It shows the statue looking outwards (east) along Ingram Street  Queen Street Station is on the left.

In the name of progress, here is the Duke watching the demolition of the building opposite him on his left hand side (taken in September, I think).

Some of the newspaper headlines are really funny.  A Glasgow expression often heard is to do with one person asking another (say a wife saying to her husband who has moved the beach towel up the beach) "Ya Gonny No Do That?"!!   So one headline is (by the newspaper targeting the City Fathers), "Ya Coney No Do That?"! 

And ... in the end ... I see in the papers today:  they have withdrawn their plan.