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Tag Archives: Edinburgh

More Than Real Ravens

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, Loosely literary

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

aneurysm, Assisi, british realism, Edinburgh, elsies, Laura Knight, Modern Art Gallery, Painting, Stanley Spencer, The Raven

Went to the British realists exhibition at Embra’s Modern Art II today.

As a Nottnm lad, I’m obviously a fan of Laura Knight, whose Dawn so grabbed me when I first set foot in the admin office of the RA in That London.

Not that there’s more than one picture by her, a rather idiosyncratic circus scene. But it is a fascinating show with so many paintists what was new to your correspondent. It ends on Saturday, if you was thinking of going. And if you’re wondering what to buy me as a retirement pressie (as I mentioned before, last week I hit OAPdom and the Scottish NHS scanned me for abdominal aneurysm by way of celebration), the catalogue is a snip at £20, but I still can’t afford it, at least until I hear I have housing benefit and don’t have to start looking for a large cardboard box to sleep in.

It’s not all Stanley Spencer, that era (though I have always had a soft spot for his brother Gilbert, since a print of one of his landscapes hung in my paternal gran’s retirement gulag); there’s also Hilda Carline, aka Mrs Spencer Mk I: another fine brush wielder in her own right. And a large painting by her of their maid at Cookham hangs on one wall, rather too high up for a photo … in fact photos aren’t allowed, but had her head been a about the same height as my own, I would have said to hell with these ‘rule’ things, and snapped her as the most apt yet of my Elsies. That being her name.

The problem with looking at all these competent and occasionally brilliant paintings is that it makes me feel like giving up on my own, which are neither.

I’ll be an artist — nevermore, he added, referring to the fact that he’s nearly learnt the whole of Poe’s pome ready for Saturday night’s soiree. Maybe a video will follow.

But the Assisi effort is coming on. Held up not only by chasing benefits and pension, laziness and feelings of inadequacy, but also the fact that one or more paint tubes had oozed linseed oil into the paintboxes (cheap, inadequately-blended shit) since I last did any oil painting and dried-on oil is sticky and nasty and hard to shift. Thank heaven for meths.

 

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Harping On

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by grievenotlake in Bloggy basics, humour, Music

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Tags

Edinburgh, Gracie Fields, harp, harp festival

It’s been a busy week here at Grieve-not Lake, what with logging hundreds of last minute entries to a short story competiton what I administer. It was not helped by the payment site we use crashing over twelve of the final 24 hours, which led to an extended deadline and even more entries.

But I did find time Monday, while the dust was lingering just above ground, if not exactly clearing, to go the Edinburgh Harp Festival out at Colinton, at the Merchiston Castle School for the sons of rich bastards.

A visit to this gig once a year is an enjoyable experience, even though I don’t play. Harpists seem to be very nice folk. The lovely Bethan was inveigled into taking a picture of me pretending I do.

I remember my dear owd Mam often quoting (probably for allegorical purposes) the title of the Gracie Fields song, I Took My Harp to a Party, to which I have related maungily my whole life,

But I took me harp to a party, nobody asked me to play
The others were jolly and ‘earty but I wasn’t feelin’ so gay
I felt so ashamed at not strikin’ a note
That I tried to hide the thing under me coat

and which I have brought up to date for you here…

I took me ‘arp to a party but nobody asked me to play
I’ve always been quite arty-farty, so imagine my utter dismay
That the music were all One Direction and stuff
And they all played guitars and they played ’em reet rough;
I took my harp to a party but nobody asked me to play
So I took the damn thing away

They asked Morag from Stronsay to sing some Beyoncé
And somebody else sang Adele,
And the whole bloody crowd murdered poor Girls Aloud,
Until I was left feeling unwell.
At the end of the session, Bert’s Tom Jones impression
Collected a fair pile of knickers
Including the pants of me Sisters and Aunts
And more than one pair of the vicar’s

But I took me ‘arp to the party and nobody asked me to play
I’ve always been quite arty-farty, but I found to my utter dismay
That it wasn’t my scene, I were like a sore thumb,
So I sat like Jack Horner and feelin’ reet glum;
I took my harp to a party but nobody asked me to play
So I chucked the damn thing away

Toodlepip!

We Walk in the City

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, humour, Loosely literary, Reviews

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Tags

Edinburgh, Fringe, Gladys Weems, humour, J B Priestley, ridiculous, spayne, spigwell, walking tour

[Another entry from our friends at the Spayne and Spigwell Advertiser, whose reporter, Gladys Weems, is still posting occasional notes from her visit to the Edinburgh Festivals in August…]

We Walk in the City

As a fan of the theatre, but unfamiliar with the author in question, I was fascinated to see a daytime event billed as They Walk in the City: A J B Priestley Walking Tour of Edinburgh.  I had no idea there was any connection between Priestley and the city of Edinburgh, though I’ve no doubt he went there at some point in his life.  That we started on Picardy Place, by a statue of Sherlock Holmes and the birthplace of his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, only added to the intrigue.  I knew the two men’s lives overlapped by some three decades, but was there some specific connection?

j-b-priestley

Well, if there was we weren’t told about it, as our guide, a charming Yorkshire lass who introduced herself as Jenny Villiers, didn’t let us linger long enough to ask. She led us straight to the crossing opposite the tram terminus.  Warning us to take care as this was a dangerous corner, she led us across and onto Queen Street.

“Although we’re in Edinburgh, Scotland”, she said, “I want to take you on a very English journey, and I hope by the end, we’ll all be good companions. If you follow me to the right and down the hill, we’ll come to the Linden Tree pub at the end of Eden Lane.”

And so it began.  After this cheery start, she seemed more keen to lead us on and encourage us to talk amongst ourselves, than explain anything.  Any attempt to ask about what Priestley had to do with the streets, views and locations visited or passed was met with some waffle, seemingly unconnected, or a question to another member of the party.  As well as that, she kept getting calls on her mobile phone, apparently from her boyfriend, who, she said, was a bit miffed that she was leading a walk on his birthday.  She kept telling him that she’d make it up to him, “when we are married,” which was supposed to be happening very soon.  A few of us speculated that it would be a surprise if it happened at all.

We turned back towards town up Dublin Street, and one or two of our number were beginning to get a bit fractious, demanding to be told exactly what any of these locations had to do with the Yorkshire playwright.  But Ms Villiers merely asked, with some agitation, what the time was.  This amused some of us, since we were actually standing outside Conway’s Timepiece Emporium, which had a number of clocks in the window, all agreeing that it was three thirty in the afternoon.  When this was pointed out, Jenny insisted we had to get a move on, or else we wouldn’t be finished before the thirty first of June, which seemed an amusingly random exaggeration.

By now the party was giving up trying to understand what was going on and talking increasingly among themselves, which became more interesting than anything Ms Villiers was describing, even the oldest buildings in the New Town — the second time we passed them.  When one of the party pointed this out, Jenny merely laughed and said, “Oh yes. I have been here before, haven’t I?”

At that moment a uniformed figure called out, “Are you lost, miss?” from over the road.

“No, no, inspector,” our guide answered, “just taking these good people on a tour; it’s a Fringe event.”

Well, things became no clearer as we went via St Andrew’s Square and along Rose Street. She pointed out strange but irrelevant things, like our reflections in the long mirror in Jenners’ window and three men in new suits who passed us as we crossed Hanover Street.  In response to persistent questions about Priestley’s connections, if any, with Scotland, she merely said, “It’s an old country.”

I think we were all relieved when the thing finally came to an end at the Rose and Crown pub, where she said we should all go in and have a drink or six.  As we got to the bar, there was a discussion as to whether we should buy her a drink — or even ask for our money back.

Then a lady from Farbridge (wherever that is) pointed out that we hadn’t actually paid yet, and, being British, we all felt guilty and turned to our guide to see when she was going to take our cash.  But there was nothing to be seen of her.

So your correspondent can’t say the experience was a total waste of money, but nor can she work out what on earth any of it had to do with John Boynton Priestley. Life, eh?

I Bid Two Clubs

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, humour, Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

arts clubs, Chelsea Arts Club, Edinburgh, Garrick Club, Scottish Arts Club, social life

Occasionally it might be a good idea to use this blog to lay before an uninterested world, stories or thoughts or any general waffle what once got writted but never ‘published’ .. or even some things that did and want another airing.  What I’m saying is that I can use old material to fill new gaps.  So here’s an updated musing from five years back …

I Bid Two Clubs

These opening lines are being written [on the 16th August 2011] in the Morning Room of the Garrick Club, beneath a bust of Charles Kemble and just to the right of a large Bombay Sapphire and tonic. With two dozen actors and musicians of yore staring down from the walls, including David G himself over the ornate fireplace, eternally and silently playing Richard III for all he’s worth, the setting is as opulent and sedate as the Chelsea Arts Club Billiard Room can get bohemian and raucous.

In the Tuesday-lunchtime Dining Room below, smart lounge suits and club ties are the norm, and conventionally, though not legally, the central table of this gentlemen-only club is still kept free of ladies. In SW3, by contrast, dress tends to be more casual, and, though ‘ladies’ are now welcome as members and active in all areas, there are probably a good few who would object to the nomenclature almost as emphatically as they would to being told where they could and couldn’t eat.

Now, there can be little doubt that drink flows as freely, and conversation gets as ribald and stimulating in either establishment when the stars are propitious, or that both sets of guest rooms have seen their share of comings and goings in the night. Indeed, the observant visitor will take note of the Garrick’s glass-encased statuettes, rather cheeky in more ways than one. But it seems more than likely that the contrast between the formal portraits on the walls in Covent Garden and the raunchy cartoons that grace the Chelsea staircase is a fair metaphor for that between the venues in general.

p1020863

It’s equally plain that my erstwhile Auld Reekie home [the Scottish Arts Club, for the website of which this was intended] sits somewhere between these two stools. But where it sits well below them is in membership, and particularly in attendance. Were there to be any improvement, this writer would prefer its nature to tend to the boho end of the scale, but of course there are plenty of spaces in the Club and hours in the week to accommodate a variety of atmospheres, just as we currently enjoy a variety of events, from formal to burlesque.

wine-label

Either way, it must first be acknowledged that our Club suffers from two major disadvantages. All the major London clubs have four-figure memberships and well-populated waiting lists; but then they do have, within a twenty-mile radius, a population about twice the heid-count of this whole proud Nation.

Then there is the question of accommodation. Leaving aside niggling questions of reciprocation, and even though we do offer members, their guests and our affiliates excellent deals at two city hotels, it cannot be denied that there is an added appeal to being able to get lightly blootered in a convivial bar and then simply lurch up the wooden hill to Bedrule (with or without the option of shenanigans … this is Edinburgh, after all … in the legendary words of the Morningside brothel madam, You’ll have had your sex).

So what can be done, despite these handicaps, to enlarge and perhaps slightly shift the demographic for the dear auld SAC? We are, after all, situated in a city with more than its share of intellectual and artistic-leaning folk, of all ages, and Scots bow to no other nation in their fondness for a blether and a dram.

Perhaps the first step is to get some of the existing members to use the place more regularly or in slightly different, more ‘casual’ ways. For, while the expanding range of special events never fails to scintillate, it would be good if some of us could sin till half past ten at least. Folks working in the King’s Road area regularly call into Old Church Street for a snifter on the way home and a few of those do actually go home after it. So it’s no use arguing that a private members club is only of interest to retired folks and layabouts like your correspondent, with too many daylight hours on their gnarled old hands. That such venerable (or feckless) members could still use the place for a quiet afternoon read or a natter would remain unchanged and no doubt quite a few would stay on to join the later revels and show the youngsters a thing or two about merrymaking.

And we should attract not just homeward-looking angels, but revellers bound for plays, movies or concerts — or even, if we can drag in a younger crowd, the bars and clubs. Not only are the Hall of the House of Usher, three theatres and two art-house cinemas in easy reach but so are all the sordid dives of Fear and Lothian Road, and what better way to start an evening than by foregathering in the well-stocked and reasonably-priced bar of the Scottish Arts Club?

But it has already been noted that, at lunchtimes and in the early evening, members have appeared, seen no one around, and moved on, only to be followed by another member doing likewise ten minutes later and perhaps one or two others at similar intervals: had they all arrived at once, a jolly coterie would no doubt soon have collected. As it is, few are happy to sit around just on spec, and who can blame them?

Now, after some insubstantial research, it can be stated that it is actually against the law of the land to hold people in the building against their will, much less nail their feet to the floor, even as a temporary and well-intentioned measure — so that idea has had to be abandoned.

The present writer has suggested that a few persons might be used to ‘seed’ the bar at crucial times. Indeed he did offer to sit at a table on otherwise quiet lunch times, behind a placard bearing the legend ‘will chat for food’. Some, who know him only too well, have suggested that a more effective strategy might be to reword it ‘will shut up for food’. Either way the basic principle of seeding might apply, even if said correspondent lacks the elusive spondulicks to purchase any food for himself on such occasions. And this can apply even moreso in the bar of an evening, when the starving artist can sit with a glass of sky wine and pretend it is the aforementioned juice of the juniper.

Perhaps, to save any such attempt at increased cordiality being a hit-and-miss affair which rapidly fizzles out, we should take our cue from the technological age. From ‘flashmobs’ and silent discos to the odd spot of rioting (not that we do that here, in the People’s Republic of Salmondia — which is a pity, as a new laptop would have come in very handy), those tools of the interweb ironically known as ‘social media’ might make a good starting point. Increasingly, members are online and at least a little techno-savvy. Some of us are even on that Facebook they have now, and it wouldn’t take long for other interested parties to register. Your humble and geeky correspondent would no doubt not be the only maven willing to assist the more technophobic in taking the necessary plunges.

The reason that such a site as Facebook might be preferred to e-mail is that one can sign on there without necessarily exposing one’s e-address or e-anything else one prefers not to expose to public gaze. And, rather than being bothered by regular ‘who’s-up-for-drinkies?’ mails, one can take a peek at the appropriate ‘page’ only when one feels inclined to see if anything is going on — or indeed to instigate goings-on. If one does want bothering, Facebook (other equally tiresome sites are available) can be set up to send one an email whenever another member posts on the Club page.

Indeed, many options present themselves with this wonderful and confusing tool. Rather than just ‘post’ one’s suggestion one can even ‘create an event’. Click the relevant button and say anything from ‘lunchtime chat’ to ‘late night sybaritic orgy’, specify date and time and Mr Zuckerberg’s little cash cow will send a mail to every member of the group (use this power wisely and sparingly, mes enfants!) and it will even count the positive rsvps for you. Clever cove, Johnny Yankee.

Well, an impulsive executive decision was made, mere weeks after this article was started (not to mention in a much humbler Dalry setting), and the initial steps taken. All an existing member of the Book of Faces had to do was enter Scottish Arts Club in the Search box at the top, and the page would leap into view. Rather cleverly, none of the items already posted by members on the main page would be visible until one was admitted into the ranks of the elect, which required, and still requires, the intervention of Yours Truly (probably one simply clicks the ‘join’ button and the system asks those of us in charge for approval — ah, the power, the power!). It is not even necessary to add such a panjandrum (or indeed any fellow member) as what is over-optimistically termed a ‘Facebook friend’, though all would be more than welcome to do so.

So, I said at the time, if you like the idea, why not give it a whirl? Once we have, say, 20 or 30 members in the group, we might see people extending invites right left and centre. And this is not an exclusively computerised idea of course. For, if it has the desired effect, word should get round even to the technophobic member or the more impromptu socialite that there is a much improved chance of finding jovial company and general good cheer at number 24. And not long after that, when word gets round the rest of Edinburgh’s havering classes, there will be a queue half way down Princes Street of literati and glitterati, begging to join the Scottish Arts.

I bid two clubs. Anyone care to raise?

At least, that was the idea.  Ah, those best laid schemes and all that rot. Some of the members used the page and still do for contacts, notices, etc, but the quietness of a Friday night is only of use to the unsociable.  Successive brochures still give the impression of an old folks’ home, however jolly, as it is very hard to show how many of those white-haired members have led lives of sybaritic and artistic excess, without, say, claiming that none of them is over 35.  And now that the increasingly popular Chelsea has cut its affiliate ties with Scottish and Irish clubs, even that appeal is weaker.  Indeed the  Chelsea now has a splinter club, founded by Molly Parkin’s daughter, which is itself oversubscribed.  Further thoughts may follow, comparing and contrasting other Edinburgh arty spaces, like the busy bar at Summerhall.  But for now, some of us have novels to write …

 

The Labours Left Unfinished [2]

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by grievenotlake in Bloggy basics, Loosely literary

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Tags

beckett, blogging, chess set, drama, Duchamp, Edinburgh, Ernst, films, Fritz Haber, godot, Harry Worth, motivation, plays, Poland, washing lines

it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation wastes and pines wastes and pines …

And in spite of the tennis, not to mention the skull in Connemara, I digress. I return.

If you’re new to this blog, or have severe memory issues, perhaps due to advancing years, a blow to the head or habitual substance abuse, you might be wondering why the number two in brackets in the title of this instalment.  If so, you have two solutions — well, three if you include leaving the page right now.
{You didn’t: how sweet of you!}

Okay, one option is to go back to the episode before last and have a read.  I wouldn’t recommend bothering. Option two is to read the following brief summary.  Sure you don’t want to leave?

 

I’m a dilettante, a waster; a thinker, not a doer; a starter and hardly ever a fini

heath

In files and folders and notebooks, star-scattered throughout the Abode of Stones and indeed the whole Universe, are all those ideas I’ve jotted down or made a start on, but neither got on with nor totally given up on (new ideas always impinge along with the indolence).  So here I am, collating, decanting and presenting most of them on this here blog.  Mainly to remind myself of them, partly to have them all in one handy place in case motivation returns, and hardly for the entertainment or edification of some passing reader.

In Part 1 were listed the ideas of a prosaic or poetic literary expression.  Now we move on to dramatic and filmic works, followed by excursions into the plastic or even noisy arts. Yes, all this stems from being a frustrated musician, thwarted by a mysterious inability to master the most elementary sounds and rhythms on any instrument, and a harshly unmelodious singing voice.  If ‘all art aspires to the condition of music’, all my ‘art’ is a poor substitute for music, a mixture of an attempt to capture a shadow of its beauty by second-rate means, and the howl of rage of a Caliban unable even to see the mirror.

So now you know.  Maybe it does lead to some inspired ideas though …

drama

  • I have actually writted one version of a play called New Life / Nowe Zycie, a fifty minute version for Edinburgh Fringe performance.  In it a young woman from a small town in one country (Marzena from ‘Miastecko’ in Poland in this text) moves to a small town in another (‘Weeton’ in Scotland) to get away from the stultifying family life and attitudes of a community in which she no longer feels she belongs, since her studies in the big city gave her a degree and ambitions.  But two by two all her friends and family come to visit and decide to stay.  Two actors play all of these parts, each character they play being replaced by a cardboard cutout as the story progresses.  By the end the whole village has moves to Weeton and renamed it Miastecko; Marzena complains this is not the new life she wanted and picks up her case to leave and try again somewhere else.  Her best friend (the first to arrive) sees her going and follows, calling, ‘Wait for me!’  You can’t go home again?  Sometimes it’s the getting away that’s impossible.
  • A more complex proposition, The Haber Process takes its name from Fritz Haber, who came up with a method for extracting nitrogen from the air to make ammonia and thus fertilizers — and explosives.  The play is to interweave scenes from points in Haber’s life, his marriage and career. His belief that a scientist’s duty was to mankind in times of peace, but his or her nation in times of war, led to his work on poison gases (which he thought would shorten the war and thus save lives).  This in turn led to conflict with his chemist, pacifist and feminist wife, Clara, leading to her suicide in 1915. And in the Second World War his patriotism made him offer his services to a nation that labelled him ‘the Jew, Haber’; and when mobile warfare made gases all but useless, his laboratories’ cyanide derivative, Zyklon B, ended up being used in the death camps.  So many ironies and fundamental conflicts, a kaleidoscopic treatment seems a good way to bring them out.  No, it’s not remotely funny; I do do serious, you know.
  • Capability Green (or Root Stock and Two Smoking Laurels), however is a comic romp, probably for the telly.  Ted Green specialises in casing the homes of the wealthy for the firm.  He and his team hang out, hiding in plain site, in a rich area, posing as  tradesmen of some sort that no one takes much notice of.  This time he’s a landscape gardener.  Which is fine until some passing old dear asks for advice on some plant or other.  To allay suspicion, he uses the internet to get an answer for her. But she has one question after another, and eventually he gets into gardening, finds he has a talent for it, and some sort of redemption story seems to be on the cards.  Ted recommends  delaying operations in the area now he’s known, but a smalltime but ambitious crook in the organisation jumps the gun; confusion and hilarity ensue, ending with the downfall of Smalltime and Mr Big, and a householder trying to pull an insurance scam, while the closing scenes show Ted as a respected (and somehow wealthy) horticulturalist in some tropical paradise.  Ha, and again I say, ha.
  • I have assorted cryptic notes lying around, sometimes no more than titles (I love a good title me, it’s more fun writing something for a title than finding a title for a fully-formed idea).  I know that Disassembly Rooms was some sort of postmod, deconstructed version of an Edinburgh Fringe venue, distorting that at the old Assembly Rooms on George St.  And that Driven to an Olive Grove was something to do with the murder of Federico Garcia Lorca.  I’m not sure if The Old Men in the Bastille was anything to do with the seven confused and reluctantly rescued guys who were the sole occupants of that jail when the revolutionaries ‘stormed’ it; I think it was a more symbolic title, linked to the idea of helping old ladies to cross roads when they don’t actually want to.  And Five Day Week was an office-based tv drama with some really cool graphic effects — at least for 1977, when it was conceived, and even for 1978 when it was abandoned.
  • Then there are the short films.
    • Washing Lines, a series of films in each of which a load of washing is seen in a machine, followed by things being hung on a line, each done in the style of a different director.  There’s Ingmar Bergperson’s Tvättlina, Woody Allen’s Dirty Linen and Luis Buñuel’s surreal Limpiadora, to name but three.
    • Deconstructing Harry Worth is based on the  opening sequence of that Yorkshire comic’s 60s tv series, in which he raises an arm and a leg reflected in a shop window, to give the illusion of levitation. worth To the same music, I would do the same move but against a number of non-reflecting surfaces.  I don’t know why, but there it is.
    • Fool’s Mate.  I made a chess set* once.  Based on one Max Ernst made for Marcel Duchamp in the 40s.
      set1 And I want to make a film in which I, dressed in white, meet a Russian me, dressed in black, at Edinburgh Airport, and then play a very short game of chess with it, each move being played in a different location between there and Leith docks.  It’s probably surreal or situationist or something.
    • And there need to be more performances of pomes filmed. There’s a youtube channel with some on already, but (especially if I ever master the ukulele) more need filming, possibly even ‘singing’.

 

Sod it, that’ll do for now.  See next week’s blog for the other, more visual stuff.

 

*warning: there’s a picture of me, naked, playing chess at that link; not for the faint-hearted.

 

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  • How Sweet to be a Bloggerer … nibbles from my antisocial media week
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  • Swings and Roundabouts
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Recent Comments

Ceramics & Paint… on More Than Real Ravens
Sarah on Writer’s Block
grievenotlake on GSOH by Zelda McLeich
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