A gallery of Paisley's wonderful murals taken over the course of a year. Autumn Flowers in the town.
Gerry Rafferty. Paisley singer/songwriter. Part of a lane of murals in the town.
Jimi Hendrix. Simply star struck to be in beautiful Renfrewshire in the 2000s. This lane leads to The Bungalow Bar, Paisley's live music venue (which has had a change of location over the years within the town) featuring up and coming new acts but also a place that has booked loads of well known bands and artists in their early starting out period.
Not too sure about Jimi or John Lennon ever appearing here though but the murals are great.
Singer Paolo Nutini, like Gerry Rafferty another home grown Paisley talent that rapidly gained international success. The actor Gerard Butler being another Paisley celebrity.....and Dr Who's David Tennant (born in Bathgate but grew up in Paisley)... and dozens more...a town punching well above fame percentage levels for population size. Was John Lennon a secret 'buddy' also, I wonder?'
Unusual and distinctive mural in a particular style which could well be another John Lennon mural in 1960s Yellow Submarine cartoon disguise at a guess, hence my very own conspiracy theory. The former Beatle was well known for spending holidays in Scotland visiting family up north in Durness. Did he father a secret child here as well perhaps when gallivanting about Paisley? It could be true! A wee Paisley boy or girl growing up unsuspected. The hidden clues in these ancient murals never lie.
Another unusual mural- this one very close to a Paisley tattoo parlour. So look out for a person wandering around the town with 'Lennon wiz ma Da' engraved on a bare arm or bum. Another blatant clue.
The 'Kingfisher' mural. No shortage of suitable spots in the town for this colourful little bird to rest with a river flowing through its heart.
The waterfalls beside the old mill, once a source of power for industry.
Which this woman would know all about. Ellen Farmer.MBE. A former mill worker and town historian. This mural is also found in Brown's Lane near the town centre. Paisley has really taken murals to its heart over the last few years and this is just a small selection with projects still ongoing- many painted by well known Scottish street artists fast gaining a world wide reputation.
Paisley has always had beautiful listed buildings though... as seen here on the Russell Institute.
For its size, a large former cotton and textile town, it boasts an impressive range of architecture and sculptures which makes a visit here a worthwhile experience although it narrowly missed out on it's recent City of Culture bid... which in the end went to Hull.
A local smoothie and along with Buckfast Tonic Wine one of your five a day healthy options. Paisley does have the usual post industrial social economic problems blighting many outlying urban areas throughout the UK where former wealth was more evenly spread across the entire nation in times past instead of being concentrated into one super city/ region- London and the South East, but it also has a fantastic legacy and industrial heritage.
The recently restored fountain in a local Paisley park.
And back lit water jets sparkling against the sun.
The magnificent 'fountain of the oceans.' Not many towns can boast an elaborate gem like this one.
An empty High Street shop front tells its own story but a colourful temporary solution to a common problem in this instance. I read an article today about a colony of albatross in the middle of the ocean on a tiny island being wiped out from swallowing plastic parts and feeding them to their chicks as food. I also read an intelligent and well informed comment attached to it. (Hooray! a very rare event indeed for Yahoo News- the worrying future of information delivery service awaiting the masses once real paper investigative journalism is dead and gone) along the lines of..... 'No one cares about that- ...ordinary people too obsessed with consumerism, excessive worldwide profit margins via deliberate downward social engineering, increasing levels of self interest in individuals before common good, celebrity endorsements over sense, rampant greed and personal comfort placed above everything else... to worry about the future of the planet' which is very true in my book. A few do care but not enough to make a difference. Looking around the world today I do think the human race may be doomed, mainly through its own stupidity and lack of awareness or self denial of any problems until the last minute... and I'm not particularly smart... thick even...average grades in an average comprehensive school. Never set foot inside a university.... So if I think we're completely stuffed, just by studying the observable evidence available over a casual 60 years lifespan and short personal history on earth, looking back in a purely non academic manner at the last five decades and moving it forwards in a logical progression of habitat loss... well.... it's not a good sign. It could be fixed but it's probably too bitter and painful a pill for humanity or governments to ever swallow, involving complex and almost certainly deeply unpopular solutions which would only be taken as a last resort. This in a world where eight or nine individuals have more money and power than
the poorest 50 percent of the population put together, a modern trend
that's increasing. Rather than sit back and enjoy it though that
combination of money and influence more often than not in the past has been used to change
day to day reality for the rest of us and not always for the better.
Despite a huge investment in universities and endless studying from birth to death just to get a decent job and keep us occupied, many folk in general actually seem to be getting less intelligent by the day/minute/hour/ decade... or willingly turning themselves into cyborgs via "indispensable" gadgets. Why would you put spy gadgets in your home for instance I wonder? Or buy expensive cars that are less secure than older models (according to some news reports.)That doesn't make much sense but it's happening and increasingly popular inventions apparently. ( I'm on here every week so I'm equally addicted as well to some things but I do remember a computer free past life before Pandora's Box took me over completely. It takes an addict to spot an addict.) Any qualms about the future are easily lulled with that current popular buzzword 'sustainability' when there's nothing remotely sustainable about any of it due to ever-increasing population demands on limited resources and no appetite by governments to curtail it in any significant way as the entire world economy is based around buying new products and a short life concept of throw away equipment and goods. Thanks to the internet and the five second attention span that goes with it... reading a longer paragraph, (like these two here... put in deliberately just to piss you off if you didn't skip them entirely :o) can be a struggle these days- finishing a proper old fashioned book... a herculean effort for many. Spelling all the words correctly in any given sentence online an almost impossible task these days seemingly even with a spell checker. Even if it's only three words long. ( read Yahoo News and related comments or almost any other internet provider message board to see what I mean. Probably text typed at work... in the dark.... from a tiny hidden smart phone held under a desk I'm now thinking,....hopefully :)
Although its supposed to be the 'age of the nerds' and an era of groundbreaking scientific discoveries we really celebrate stupidity as well side by side..in far greater measure.. in so many different ways.
More folk than ever seemingly believe we never made it to the moon... the Earth is flat, like a pancake... and so is the moon itself presumably... aliens have taken over the planet in positions of power... and we are all living in a highly advanced computer simulation... ( that last one may well be the real deal, validating the others- we can only hope that is the case for our sake and the planet's recovery. Much easier to reboot from scratch than repair any damage done to the old model. Especially if it ain't really real- ... flat or otherwise.
300 years ago they regularly churned out thousand page books in gloomy rooms which became best sellers and established many of the classics we know today and also composed book length poems where every verse and line was studied and analyzed. Starved of any education many miners, ordinary workers and field hands taught themselves to think and wonder by flickering candlelight in draughty hovels, reading after work and on Sundays, page by steady page gaining hard won knowledge about the world around them beyond the next valley. Now, ironically, with a universe of knowledge and information at the click of a button its mental overload time and the vast majority default into trivial pursuits, increasingly conditioned to live a life indoors, as that's also a part of human nature. Even if you have everything... it's never enough.... or far too much in this case.
St Mirin. The patron saint of Paisley.
St Mirren football team, a mural depicting winning the Scottish Cup. Note the different spelling.
The well known decorated lions of Paisley.
As well as the murals you can look out for these ceramic animals dotted around the town.
A much older lion in Paisley museum. Paisley folk are often called 'buddies.' This is 'Buddy' the circus lion. He's stuffed as well. Supposedly, the origin of 'buddies' came from local slang pronouncing 'bodies' as in "OMG! nae-bodies in the pub" . i.e. its empty. Nae buddies in the pub.
Robert Burns statue. Fountain Gardens park. Where the fountain resides.
Back to back queens here. Victoria and her unruly subjects. A typical Paisley lass in traditional attire for working in the mills. Clothes get stuck in the machines you know, very dangerous... so far safer to work away bare breasted.... like they did until the 1970s and safety guards came in. Millennials today would never believe the working conditions in previous decades :o).
Gable end mural next to students social club.
And a happy rooster. Although a fair collection more murals keep turning up so a good day out can be had exploring this town. The Museum and Art Gallery, Paisley Abbey and Town Hall, Coats Memorial Church, The old Cotton Mills, and the cobbled streets of the Hilltop Heritage Trail are all interesting highlights worth exploring.
And a beautiful visual wonderland to go with it. If this band and song had existed in 1960s swinging London instead of 1990s UK coastal resort Great Yarmouth they might well be much better known as this song and fan made video is up there with the best classics from any period of music. Often it's 'location location' as The Beatles, Oasis, Mr John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix et all would be proud to call this free flowing liquid guitar delight their own work. A genuine album highlight for any songwriter worthy of the name and not the only classic from this underrated band. Check out 'Heal' ( wildlife vid) and 'I Want To Touch You' (LP version) for further sonic guitar gems on You Tube. Fan made compilation art like this created with love, dedication and genuine feeling or understanding of the subject matter and lyrics is the definition of modern art for me. You can keep your paint dribbles or a blank canvas with a few pastel lines on it that need expert explanations of what you are actually looking at no matter how high the prices soar. This is real treasure... for me at least and a song that grows on the listener as it progresses with the flowing beauty of an ocean wave. A timeless classic is only a classic if enough people know about it and this fully deserves to be up there on any music or radio playlist.
ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.
Part two of my walk across Edinburgh from city to sea. Still in the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Different coloured daffodils.
More magnolia.
A glimpse of the glasshouses.
Even outside in people's gardens I still had plenty of colour to look at. Lovely two tone rose here.
On the edge of the Botanic Gardens looking towards the spire of Fettes College, an upmarket boarding/ day school for the elite, the great, and the good, providing the UK's politicians, lawyers, judges, rugby stars etc. Probably, most famously, Tony Blair attended here. It is a stunning example of elaborate architecture with loads of little windows climbing dramatically up the sides of the spire.
A view from the main entrance gates at the Botanics looking towards Edinburgh Castle on its hill top volcanic basalt plug of rock.
As my leg was getting sore I cheated here slightly and got a number 8 bus on Inverleith Row towards Granton and Pilton for several stops, getting dropped off near the harbour. A descending flight of steps at the start of Boswell Road led me down to Granton Harbour on the Firth of Forth, or more precisely- Granton's Eastern Breakwater.
Built in the mid 1800s from sizable blocks of stone, some weighting close to a ton if not more, it surely qualifies as a mega structure in its own right and the reason I decided to end my walk here. Jutting one full km out to sea this breakwater is one long curving crab's claw with the Western Breakwater also curving round to meet it from the other side, providing shelter inside the pincers for hundreds of boats, if necessary.
Before the nearby Leith docks expanded to the size they are today industrial feeling Granton took on the challenge of being the city's main workhorse, deep-water port and harbour with a large fishing fleet, dozens of cargo boats, timber and coal jetties, passenger steamers etc... docking, departing and unloading here. Throughout the 1800s and right up until the Second World War/ 1970s it was still a busy place.
Nowadays it's much quieter with little sea traffic use except pleasure boats and as a platform for new apartment buildings with a view out to sea.
Granton itself is a strange mix of older traditional cottages, seen here, fine Victorian seaside mansions and new build apartment flats. While Glasgow is steadily demolishing most of its high rise housing stock, older council tenements, high rise flats, deck access towers etc.... Edinburgh appears to be embracing these ideas with gusto- provided they are built for sale to young professional types I presume. It's always interesting to note the contrasts between the various Scottish cities in history, planning, ideology and ambition. Edinburgh does seems to go in for modern circular towers a lot and tenements five, nine, or eleven floors high- Glasgow hardly ever does that. Two, three, or four floors there at the most..or hi rise blocks...nothing in-between. Traditional. Solid. Dependable. Fingers badly burned after Glasgow's ill fated 1960s/ 1970s love affair with Le Corbusier and the utopian "cities in the sky" dream for housing the masses which often turned into hi rise ghettos of crime, abandonment, and isolation instead. So nothing too quirky nowadays. And no odd numbers or curve balls in architecture for the time being in Glasgow.
So we have Glasgow Harbour on the River Clyde- a cluster of rectangular shaped vertical apartments, mostly the same traditional height and general block style; all straight lines--- simple architecture.. up and down.... and Edinburgh has this...Platinum Point. A jumble of all different colours and levels with a few curves thrown in for good measure. And this is very conventional by Edinburgh building standards. They do like to go in for the unusual approach here.
The former Donaldson's School in Edinburgh also built in the mid 1800s for deaf pupils but now undergoing conversion into luxury apartments I learned recently. I'm fairly well travelled around Scotland but all I ever see nowadays is either large scale student apartments being built ( throughout central Glasgow near the various universities) or luxury accommodation. Where do ordinary folk live in cities these days I wonder? Are there any left out there at all as I never see houses going up for them on my various trips? I am being serious here as it puzzles me greatly.
Anyway, back to the Eastern Breakwater and Granton harbour. Fine views can be had from this structure but it does feel remote and abandoned any time I've been on it and a long way distance wise from the comparative safety of the city with no escape routes. Halfway out to the end point two concrete huts lie abandoned offering a good hiding place for sundry bad rascals or assorted females of slippy disposition to spend some time in judging by the inner contents so it does have a certain wild west edge to it out here. Which is why I like it! Wild West meets East on the Sunshine Coast.
I also like the patterns of lichen on the stone blocks. Natural artwork.
A close up view of the blocks and how they fit together. If you piled them up high they would make an impressively substantial pyramid of great height. Cleopatra or Arsinoe would feel right at home here, I'm sure. It would remind them of Egyptian stone masons no doubt, glistening bodies toiling away in the hot sun.
So as a tribute to them here's a small infinity pool created by me. A sunken depression in the stonework surrounded by yellow lichen which would fill with water after rainfall. I have added my own Alexandrian royal blue tint to the mix plus an island continent in the shape of a reclining ancient female/crone (i.e. a witch- it is J.K Rowling territory after all hereabouts) with red dots indicating city populations/harbours/ all seeing eyes. Better than most of the modern artwork I've observed recently anyway and too heavy a block to toss in a skip.
In fact the whole structure is an artwork. Rusted docking hook here.
The yellow edge of the breakwater.
Norwegian plane passing over Granton.
An island out on the Firth of Forth.
Sea lane traffic off Granton Docks.
Another form of art. St Anne's elaborately carved church doorway. Edinburgh. Included for another Anne of course. A modern queen.
Hygieia's Temple. St Bernard's Well. Water of Leith. Another ancient goddess and where we get the word hygiene from presumably.
Leaving Edinburgh behind and descending down into Dean Village Gorge on the sylvan Water of Leith walkway. A cracker of a day outing. Bus number 16 from seafront road back to Princes Street/ bus station/ city centre from Granton/ Ocean Terminal area. Around 4 to 6 hours total walk/ exploration city to sea. A five star classic route.
