travels with my trolley

Our short film - Seanchaidh which charts our adventures around Scotland with an air-hostess trolley full of wine - is showing as part of the "Going Places" exhibition at the Riverhouse Barn, Manor Road, Walton from the 30th of May until the 24 June. To find out more visit www.riverhousebarn.co.uk

Cars are bad

Transport in Glasgow and Scotland as a whole is a bit of a mess. Our neighbours across in mainland Eurpoe seem to have it so much better sorted. Not only do many of these countries have clean, efficent, reliable and cheap transport systems many are also intergrated and you can by a single ticket that will cover your travel on any mode of public transport within a city for the whole day. Glasgow on the other hand has a quite bewildering range of different companies fighting for your attention and your pennies. This could however be about to change as Glasgow City Council has just advertised a job for someone to work with the various companies and develop some kind of smart card system.

The above is all sounding good but there is also worrying news that the largest bus company has raised their ticket prices again and an all day ticket which not long ago was £1.80 will now be £3. Pretty steep rise to use a slightly smelly and opften not brilliant service when the company in question posted profits last year of £210million.

See my previous car rant here.

Last summer

Last Summer (2007)
clay, cement, wire [45cm x 10cm] Inspired by a poster for the band the Wrens.

Went to see a talk by Demos yesterday about their project "Glasgow 2020" it was very interesting and the discussion about positive change and action in Glasgow was quite enheartening, but I am unsure exactly what action or direction their results suggest. They did hand a out free copies of the report in book format so I shall look forward to reading this and finding out about their conclusions.

From the talk last night what it seems to boil down to, is that they do not believe that the current plans for Glasgow regeneration are working and may actually be harmful in the long term. To find out more about them and the project and make up your own mind visit www.demos.co.uk

religous enlightenment

viking

Viking (2007)
Clay, cement, wire [45cm x 10cm]

I remembered a story the other day about the time a few years ago when I was asked to go to a big corporate pub quiz event as the representitive of our office. I was the guest of this engineering company we worked with and they picked me up to drive to the hotel where the event was on.

Now, I'm not the best passenger in the world, I tend to get car sick quite quickly even on this most gentle of rides. There were four of us in the car, me and some guy I didn't know in the back and two people in the front. The driver wasn't the best, and did quite a lot of weaving in the road and did a lot of accelerating and then hard braking. Within a few minutes of getting on the road, I started to feel quesy. The car was roasting as they had the heating on full blast so I tried to put down the windows only to discover that thay didn't work. I sat there feeling worse and worse, either too embarrassed or just feeling too ill to think properly and ask them to stop. I think the later cloudyness of the brain due to illness was pretty high as I started to search the back of the car for something to be sick into. But the car was spotless inside and I didn't have a bag or anything with me. For some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to take my shoe off and use this. I am not sure of the logic behind this decision. I am not sure if I thought it would be less embarrasing to be sick into a shoe rather than ask them to stop. So there I am, in a car with four people I don't really know, speeding through the Scottish Countryside with a shoe in my hands and watching the other back seat passenger out the corner of my eye to make sure he hasn't noticed the shoe. He didn't.

Luckily the knowledge of having the shoe ready, just in case, was enough of a placebo and I managed to survive the evening unscathed. Just as well as I have no idea what I would have done with the shoe once we arrived?

red bird

Lemon tree

My lemon tree has bloomed again which gave the room a lovely just cleaned smell. The lemons from last years bloom are now a bright yellow and are quite swollen and look ready for picking. Just in time for some fresh lemonade on the roof this summer. yum.

Neighbours

I had a very enjoyable weekend at a screen printing class - where I screen printed a nice image of some numbers and shapes. Turned out reasonably well - slight problem with the outline seperation but that was just due to the quality of the original print.

I also found out that my sculpture "pirate wood" has made it into the RSA show in Edinburgh. The opening was last Friday, but I found out to late and missed it. Never mind its on until the 20th of June.