Interesting Pic

I came across this picture after previously dismissing it. On a second look though I liked the colours and it has an intensity from somewhere. To break the mystery of it (?!), it's a shot I took at sunrise at the start of February from my bedroom window. My flash went off unintentionally which explains the glare at top right (and probably means it won't win too many competitions).
It is the new harbour development, as shown from further away in the shots from previous post just above the helicopter.
On a totally different note, it was good to see the new Australian Prime Minister apologising to the 'lost generation' where aboriginal children (but of mixed race) were forcibly separated from their families and comunities since the very first days of the European occupation. Something similar happened in Canada too. It annoys me how self-righteous we are in the west when it comes to human rights, especially when it comes to countries that have oil wells in them. We should campaign vigourously for countries from China to Afghanastan and elsewhere to improve the rights of the indivudual but we need to have a more humble attitude too, and consider the gross abuses that continued to take place in our own countries. Its interesting that US has about 2000 people that will never be released from prison for crimes committed when they were under 18. Briatin has in total about 35 people in total who are in for their entire lives. Its only in the last decade that people with learning difficulties have been allowed to live in normal society in Scotland rather than being locked away out of sight.

Glasgow Waterfront

I had a leisurely bike ride home by the Clyde on Saturday. Warm and sunny for a mid-February day.

A barge crane was beside the new but broken 'squinty' bridge. There was a high proportion of foreign languages being spoken by tourists out for a stroll from the hotel and SECC.

Here are two shots looking west down the Clyde taken 6 years apart. I had hoped that the loss of the old Granary building and the new development in its place would be more obvious - if you look at the cranes in the distance and what is opposite you can get a little of the effect - my bedroom window view is taken up entirely by that space.

Botanic Gardens

No new posts for a while as I've been a bit under the weather, which as it happens isn't too far from being appropriate with the wind and rain and snow that's been the story of most of January.

I had a job last week in a great flat but looking out the window was this view.

I thought I would put up a picture of some of my work from the same house.

I started with a small recess and a door. Now there is space to store ladders, a vacum cleaner and a bit of shelving. I expect that it will be there for many years to come. It would be interesting to come back in 50 years time and see!

Quite a satisfying job.

India in Contrast

I saw bits of two programmes on telly tonight both filmed in India.

They were both beautiful but in very different ways.

The first one was Unreported World about the gruesome murder of members of the lower caste system by those in 'higher' castes like the warriors as they rebel against the caste system that regards them as untouchables. OK depressing? No. It wasn't done that way, the child of the lower caste being interviewed about being shut in a dark toilet cubicle for daring to ask to go to the toilet, wasn't depressing. And when they were accused of being rat-eaters as a put down by teachers in class it was followed by a rat-hunter digging out rats and his children cooking and eating them on a makeshift fire, horrible as that was to see it also wasn't put forth in that way. They came across in a very dignified, peaceful and determined manner which was amazing to see.

The other was in Natural World showing tigers in the most splendid surroundings. I'd heard the story about why animals are striped because it breaks up their outline - which it probably does - but as the tigers were moving through the grasses it was like a strobe effect which just looked like the grasses moving in the wind - becoming harder to see. Anyway there has only ever been one filmed tiger kill, and they finally managed to get a second on film in the programme. They are incredibly rare for all the usual reasons like loss of habitat, poachers etc. The environment seems different to Africa, less harsh and more sensual.

So in hugely different ways they were both about living life in a beautiful way in India

Tats

This may come as a wee bit of a shock to those of you who know me a wee bit. I am really drawn to tatoos. I don't have any, and to be honest the idea of getting something that you are stuck with for life is a bit of a stupid thing to do. I had a friend who got a big massive one that as far as I can recall was a copy of an obscure 80's metal band Tigertailz album artwork. One part of me thinks what a really dumb thing to do, when he is 60 what will he say to his grandkids. There is another part of me that isn't so full of condemnation.
I saw a girl totally covered in tats at QM Union in Glasgow, and thought, I like that!
Apparantly the name comes from the old way of applying them with an ivory thing - it made a 'tatoo' sound when you hit it, the first hit was tat, the oo was it hitting skin.
There is a bit of a spiritual element to them I think. Possibly less so when it is Tigertailz or the grim reaper. I do like the Maori ones, the part of me that is really drawn to indigenous peoples likes it. I think tats are an extension of drawing as a child.
So that's me got that off my chest!! (which if it was a tatoo wouldn't have been so easy). I've no intention of getting one.

Assortment of entombments

My favourite walk from Glasgow is in the Kilpartick hills to the north of Glasgow. After a few fields in the Cochno Estate owned by Glasgow University (where if you are in luck you can see the cows with plugs in their sides the vets use to sample their stomach contents) some steep open moorland takes you up to the wilds of Jaw Reservoir. It used to be stocked with trout but that no longer seems to be the case with no fishermen ever there these days.

I've started to begin my walk in a narrow strip of woodland and have in the past followed its crooked shape for quite a long way round the fields, which though the ground is relatively clear the best path isn't always obvious. I could hardly believe my eyes today when I came across a small graveyard. with only 3 burials in it in the woods on a slightly elevated point. It must have been built in the time when Glasgow was no more than a village and other places long since swallowed up by the urban expansion like Rutherglen were distinct burghs. I took some pictures and gleaned this information (but I missed photographing the first wife's details, oops).

Anne Henrietta Bruce (infant daughter of Anne) died 22/10/1876

Claud Hamilton Hamilton (St Barns, Cochna and Dunmore) 10/04/1823 - 20/08/1900

Henrieta Anne Bruce 28/06/1850 - 27/01/1911 (married to Claud)

Interesting that Claud married Anne, 27 years his younger, though she was only a widow for about ten years. I wonder if he anticipated a large family?

I think it is quite unusual to find a private graveyard. I'd be interested to know what the law has been on it. The only other remotely located grave I've seen is a mausoleum on the uninhabited, wild and isolated western side of the island of Rum.

There were a few trees down from the recent storms. The Rhododendrons had suffered too. One pine tree near the graves had seeded over bedrock so its roots were just below the surface. Its amazing that it had grown to a really mature size without previously succumbing to a gale.

A pair of buzzards are always up in the air calling out over the fields when I am there - one of them flew low down and perched on a distant branch - I could see it through my binoculars on a bough, making its large size obvious and impressive. I tried to get a bit nearer but it was off before I could get near.

I make an effort (small one usually!) when out walking to take any litter away. One time someone left a big white Marks and Spencer's towel lying on the ground. Its a bit beyond me how anyone out appreciating the hills can leave litter and consider themselves sane. One time on TV the danger to wildlife of leaving bottles was explained; that small things crawl in and can't get back out the slippery sides, then predators try to get in to scavenge and get trapped themselves. I've never actually seen this but in one of the cans I picked up there was a small shrew, dead of course. An added danger with the ring pulls is the bit left in the can, can let an animal squeeze past on the way in but not on the way out. I was glad to have liberated the shrew from its metal entombment, glad too at it being extra worthwhile taking away bottles/cans. Angry at whoever had left the can there. They are tiny creatures shrews, to fit through a ring-pull.

I was only out for a stroll since I had to drive nearby for an estimate. Plus it being my first day of feeling better after being fluey. I passed three ladies aged about 50-ish dressed up to the 9's for a hill walk. Gore-tex 9's that is. They could have coped with a minus 30 windchill!

Once up at Jaw Reservoir it felt literally like I was recharging my batteries. As if energy was flowing into me. Feeling like that will always make me wonder about why I don't live nearer the country. One day soon I might just have to buy a house in Aviemore to get away to. But this walk for example is only 7 miles drive from Partick.

The car park I use is not the best place to leave my van. I saw the police last time I was there. Today at the start a lone car with a lady in it was sitting talking on her phone, leaving soon after I got there. On my return a similar thing happened with a young guy in a BMW, left as soon as I got there.

I'm writing this now a few days later - I googled Claud Hamilton Hamilton and got a website called thePeerage.com it says of him:

Claud Hamilton Hamilton, 12th of Barns1
M, #23028, d. 30 August 1900Last Edited=24 May 2007
Claud Hamilton Hamilton, 12th of Barns married, secondly, Hon. Henrietta Anne Bruce, daughter of Robert Bruce and Jane Dalrymple Hamilton Fergusson, on 26 November 1874.1 He died on 30 August 1900.1 Claud Hamilton Hamilton, 12th of Barns lived at Dunmore Park, Stirling, Stirlingshire, Scotland.1 He lived at Cochno, Dunbartonshire, Scotland.1 He was also known as 12th of Barns. He lived at Barns, Dunbartonshire, Scotland. He held the office of Justice of the Peace (J.P.).1 He held the office of Deputy Lieutenant (D.L.).1

Which confirms the loss of his first wife (and child). There is a slight discrepancy in the exact day of his death but it could just be a typing error with 20 becoming 30.

Down In The Valley DVD

Edward Norton plays Harlan, a would-be cowboy in this art-house film from 2004 where he has a passionate encounter with the underage girl Tobe (short for October!). There are a lot of different strands woven together through what is a relatively simple story. I glimpsed a few reviews suggesting it is about the passing of the wild west or the western film genre and particularly the heroes of those times. Sure enough when Harlan is on the run, he stumbles across filming of a wild west town scene with the cameras out of view - he can't believe his luck at finding a place where he instantly feels welcome and at home in.

Set in concrete urban Los Angeles, repeatedly the commercial jungle sprawl is given the full cinematography treatment which is painful to watch. It reminds me of Bono in live concert footage from the album Rattle and Hum campaigning against apartheid in South Africa when he drives home his point in an all too direct and uncomfortable way to a gloating and captive audience 'I'm not bugging you am I? I don't mean to bug ya'. Freeways that lace the landscape, lane after lane constantly moving like blood in some mechanical artery are given the full panoramic treatment past the point of being a necessary evil to set the scene. Perhaps the director wants us to feel the way that Harlan is feeling.

If it is a lament to the golden age of the wild west it is also an even greater lament to the legacy of that age still present in modern day America, the gun and its proliferation. And it is a lament as minor innocuous conflicts are intermingled with various armaments and even the purest relationship is insanely destroyed by a bullet.

It's also a film about alienation, principally Harlans. Despite having been given a good foster family when in his early teens (?) he seems somehow stuck in his past or previous life, probably in a more rural setting. We are sure he has a good heart but like every good cowboy he is obstinate in following it. In his wild west romanticism it was normal for girls to marry older men but sparks inevitably fly as he is blind to the modern day boundaries - he becomes completely possessive of his new love and her younger brother as things turn sour.

Harlan dislikes cars and loves horses. Contrasts between the two are liberally highlighted. My favourite being a beautiful horse trapped in a garage kicking with its rear legs in a sound remeniscient of gunshots.

Its a well thought out film and watchable a second time. Recommended!