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Sunflowers.... For Vincent. This is a post from the end of autumn. October time 2023 a few months ago now.
Met up with Alan at the Barras Market, had a wander round there then headed up through Glasgow Cross and the Merchant City District.
Glasgow Cross district.
Period buildings around Glasgow Cross.
Found a few murals in a back lane I'd seen online but not visited in person.
Goose.
Another Lion.
Merchant City District.
In the city centre, restaurants and bars change all the time. Last time I walked past here it was called something else from a different culture. Scottish Tennent's Lager I think.
Glasgow's Red Tourist bus. Departs from Ingram Street on a run around the city while you have afternoon tea on board or you can hire it out for a group booking. Not being a tea or coffee person I've seen it around but never been on it. Popular though. Other tourist buses run around the city but you don't get served with anything on board.
We made our way up through the university and college lands still walking slightly uphill. Livingstone Tower above. An early 1960s construction addition to the University of Strathclyde it was named after African explorer and missionary David Livingstone.
A side view. Always liked this building and the colourful frontage helps to soften the brutalist nature of grey concrete on the lower sections. Note the steep drumlin it's built on. Glasgow's main city centre shopping streets usually run west to east in the flat sections between these cucumber shaped hills with minor streets like this one running south to north up and over them.
Quite a few murals around this district and several items of modern sculpture within the campus grounds. As non students you can walk around the area freely as the University of Strathclyde, Caledonian University, and The City of Glasgow College are very close to each other, built over several of Glasgow's notorious drumlins ( small hills) which makes walking energetic but gives fantastic views over this bumpy green metropolis. 'The leafy city of one hundred hills.'
Student mural and false door.
The big surprise on this walk was an open day for the High Street allotments which I'd never been to before. During Covid lockdowns people in the suburbs had it relatively easy with sizable gardens and green spaces to escape into but the area around the High Street and Drygate districts has very few gardens... mostly tenements, tarmac, concrete, and high rise flats.
So these allotments are even more precious I'd Imagine. Cabbage white butterfly here.
A few of the Drygate high rise flats and tenements. Many more exist out of view. While Number Ten Downing Street had numerous drunken parties all the way through the various covid lockdowns without the slightest threat of a £10,000 fine... spare a thought for folk in inner city high rise flats or tenements, without gardens, stuck indoors for months on end. Mind you for ordinary folk like myself in the outlying suburban districts Covid did not make much difference at all as I still went on local solo countryside walks... as usual... with no police ever in sight to enforce anything. And my life barely changed at all. It was just what I normally do. It was mainly middle and upper class folk that were deprived of holidays abroad, second home visits, frequent nights out or visits to the theatre or other public entertainments but on the plus side many did save/make a shed load of money during covid restrictions... in one way or another....
Maybe that's why this small set of allotments were so treasured and special to the surrounding residents as I've never seen so many delights packed into such a small space.
Not only dozens of sunflowers but each bed held marrows, peas, other vegetables and a cute collection of surprises.
Free to get in as well on the open day. The highlight of the walk as it was so unexpected.
Hedgehog togetherness.
After that splurge of radiant colour we climbed still higher to Glasgow's City of the dead. The Necropolis.
Church detail on the way up.
When I first visited the Necropolis, back in the 1970s and 1980s I was usually alone apart from a few down and outs who would sleep in the open crypts for shelter from the rain. Not many tourists visited back then. It's very popular today however with tourists up here most days from around the world. The steeple of Glasgow Cathedral getting a makeover, above.
I mainly came up here for the excellent views. Barrowland Ballroom and the Gorbals District from the Necropolis. What I didn't realise then however was that it's only people that could afford a stone monument that get remembered up here and Glasgow, like any other old city has had numerous plagues, disasters, mass calamities etc over its long history where hundreds or even thousands died at one time. So unless they are all buried in mass graves somewhere else this entire hillside must be comprised of long dead corpses, piled one on top of each other. Probably why it's a sizable hill in the first place. A hill of dead people as for everyone one that could afford a stone monument about one thousand citizens could not. Something to think about when you are up here. Be careful where you step.
On the very top of the hill factory owner Charles Tennant sits. A wealthy industrialist who built one of the world's largest chemical factories at Glasgow's Sighthill. Died early to mid 1800s. So this summit was here then.
Some of the other large stone monuments.
Celtic Park Football Ground.
John Knox protestant firebrand also commands a summit view from the highest mound of unknown, unremarkable, unremembered bodies beneath. He who made Mary Queen of Scots short life all the harder, being a Catholic Queen in a largely Protestant court/country. Or it was back then among the elite of the Scottish lowlands where the main base of castles, power and influence existed.
Life everlasting...?
I like this one the best though. As the truly innocent.... 'they sleep, play, fly, dance and sing with angels.' This I've always known.... from my own birth to death.
12 comments:
The way I see the 'lockdown parties scandal' is this: if you were having to physically go to work during the lockdowns (which I and many others had to), there's no reason why you couldn't have an office party as you were already having to meet all day as it was. So it was as simple as that really...
I remember the Tennents lager cans with ladies' pictures on them from when I was in the Army. The lads would ask for whichever lady it was they liked best rather than for 'a can of Tennents please'. Some of them were quite pretty (the ladies, not the squaddies) ;-)
There’s a new project to honour those in unmarked graves in the Necropolis in an area (I think) near the Ladywell entrance where there are 8000 forgotten souls. A bulb field has been planted for the spring, to be followed by a wildflower meadow in the summer. If it would just stop raining I would go and look!
Hi Carol,
You obviously did not see the Partygate documentary as you might not have a TV. If they were doing nothing wrong why did they smuggle in suitcases full of booze and various cleaners found packets of white powder afterwards. Not containing salt. Also if members of the public got fined £10,000 pounds for an outdoor gathering. (A snowball fight outdoors)... why didn't they for the same thing?
Yes it's been very wet Anabel. Flooded roads today although it has also been mild so I,m not complaining. Grim weather for the wildlife though.
Probably they smuggled the booze etc. in as you're not supposed to be drinking at work. But you can't get fined for having a get-together after work if you're already all meeting at work anyway and, presumably, they were. Partygate is just people being grumpy because they were off work and locked down and some others who weren't also had fun as well as working! Just sour grapes really...
We will agree to disagree on that. There are supposed to be setting a good example for the nation by doing what their own lockdown rules said and what they expected the rest of the country to follow... otherwise a hefty fine might occur. Luckily my own parents had already died by that time, in nursing homes, otherwise I might feel more strongly about it if I could not visit them in their last days during that time. When people ask the nation to stick to a certain set of rules then they repeatedly break them themselves I do have a problem with that... and they were fined repeatedly... just piddling amounts though compared to members of the general public caught doing the exact same thing.
We had a party in the shop after closing time during the Christmas lockdown - we couldn't eat out anywhere so, after work, we all just got a takeaway and sat with drinks having a wee Christmas party. I didn't see we were breaking any rules as we were already there all day and mixing with each other anyway!
You obviously did not see Partygate. It was a lot more than just a few friends. More like 40 dancing, kissing, mingling, a few allegedly having sex etc. I presume you did not do that at your Christmas party?
well only 4 people worked in our shop - otherwise it would have been everyone! I'd certainly given up touching, hand-shaking, hugging and kissing people by the time Covid hit Britain though... and I'm not going to be starting it up again either!
It's a very interesting tour. I was only in Glasgow once, about fifty years ago, and I remember it as a grimy, sombre place that didn't inspire affection, but I know a fellow who visited there recently and he says that an amazing transformation has occurred and it has become an appealing, vibrant urban centre. Your pictures and narrative seem to confirm his impression.
Thank you David.
Yes, years ago it was a fairly dark industrial heavy industry city with mostly black buildings covered in 100 year old soot and grime but stone cleaning in the 1980s brought out the red, pink and white sandstone colours of the Victorian era buildings and back then it was the biggest shopping square mile in the UK outside of London. The shops are still there but with online shopping and out of town retail parks there's not the same broad range of shops there used to be. Either high end stores or the usual vape shops, charity shops, nail bars or discount outlets. With a population of one million plus in its industrial heyday though it does have many places of interest from botanic gardens to world class art galleries and museums. Like any large city it does have the modern problems of smart phone shopping, homeless people ( Edinburgh is worse with more tourists for the beggars) and low level crime. But you could have a long weekend here no problem with a 5 star lifestyle of posh hotels and shops or a more cultural one of museums, art schools, Victorian architecture,public parks and colourful murals and in that respect Glasgow is far cheaper than Edinburgh where almost every attraction is £20 to £30 pounds a visit for each. Many of Glasgow's best attractions are either free or voluntary donations.
I found the site of the new flower memorial at the Neropolis today. It’s quite a big area so will look lovely when the bulbs come up. (Totally agree with you about partygate btw.)
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