Aunt Ann, Adventure Ted and Big Ben

Friday morning and the sun was still burning in the London sky as Ka and myself made our way to Piccadilly Circus, or Pilladicky, as I mistakenly named it for some reason on more than one occasion, to head to the Royal Academy. The Royal Academy of Arts is an privately funded, independent institution, situated in Burlington House in the middle of Piccadilly, governed and led by a whole committee of painters, designers and artists from many different fields known as Academicians.
King Geogre III founded the Academy way back in 1768 with the help of the portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds and Scottish architect Sir William Chambers, who became the Academy’s first President. The membership club, known as the Friends of the Royal Academy, was set up back in 1977 to provide the museum with financial support whilst giving all it’s member unlimited access to the exhibitions housed within. My Auntie Ann is one of those friends and with her membership managed to get us some tickets for the current David Hockney exhibition, ending on the 9th April.
After arriving in Burlington House’s courtyard, Ka and myself stood in the sunshine, alongside the massive queue for tickets that had formed outside the building to await Ann’s arrival by bus.

Needless to say Adventure Ted got her photo taken outside the exhibition, again no one really batting an eyelid at the sight of a Scottish couple holding a small, colourfully dressed bear, high up into the air to get it’s photo taken alongside the large banner, which depicted Hockney hard at work on one of the colourful landscape paintings featured in his show.
Ann eventually turned up looking around quizzically under the large archway for her visiting relations after Ka almost surprised and cuddled a complete stranger who was innocently making her way up to the exhibition entrance, and who only had a passing resemblance to my Aunt. After a quick cuddle, (with Ann, not the passing resemblance), we quickly got the introductions over with, introducing Ann to Adventure Ted. Ann obligingly met Ted with a big smile before giving us our tickets for the exhibition pointing out she’d already seen it twice and was quite happy to sit in the sunny courtyard and read her book for an hour.
So Ka and myself battled our way through the crowds into Burlington House to view Hockey’s landscapes. The exhibition wasn’t what I had been expecting as Hockney is famous for being one of Britain’s first big celebrity artists, a bit of a rebel, famous for painting scenes of LA, splashes in swimming pools, portraits and creating photo collages of streets, highways, buildings and people.
With this exhibition Hockney shows a more traditional side, concentrating his painting on the landscapes of Yorkshire, collections of paintings depicting the same location over and over but in various seasons and months of the year. There are brief glances at works from different parts of the world, the giant ‘A Bigger Grand Canyon’ being the biggest, brightest, and boldest of the lot but most of the exhibition is taken up by the trees, blossoms, fields and hills of Yorkshire, some mad, brilliant, lurid, luminous and surreal and others, such as some of the smaller sketches, not quite as impressive. Not all of it worthy to be under the name of one of Britain’s most influential artists anyway.
The crowds were unbelievable. The Hockney exhibition had already been on since mid January but yet the halls were still heaving with people. A lot of rude old folk in suits and scarves made up a good portion of the crowd, seemingly believing they had a right to elbow, stop directly infront of you or ignore the few people in wheelchairs politely asking to get by from down below.
After an hour and a half we made it back out into the sunlight and after a brief stop at the local Pret a Manger made our way to Green Park for a picnic.
Looking out over the bottom half of Green Park, Buckingham Palace obscured by trees to the south, we sat in the grass, surrounded by fellow picnickers, Adventure Ted sitting in the daffodils behind.

We discussed what to do with the rest of our day. Ka and myself had planned to take Ann to a theatre show or dinner, a treat for her big birthday coming up. Ann, however, had a better idea.
“I think we should get Adventure Ted to Buckingham Palace!”
So off we went to get the kids of ELU their photograph of Adventure Ted outside the Queen’s house, passing two large colourfully decorated Easter eggs on the way through Green Park.
London is hosting an event over Easter named the Faberge Big Egg Hunt in which over 200 large easter eggs, each decorated, painted or designed by famous artists and designers have been positioned at various points over and across Central London. Following the opportunity for an eggciting (gawd!) egg hunt the eggs were to be gathered in Covent Garden where they were all to be auctioned for charity. Ann, Ka, Adventure Ted and myself came across around ten or so on our walk on Friday. If we’d known about it we could have attempted the whole 200 and got Adventure Ted’s picture taken with all of them. Fortunately, we hadn’t known about it.
After a few shots at the gate we approached a policeman guarding one of the barrier gateways. Chancing her arm, Ka started explaining Adventure Ted and her quest for the ELU. The poor guy was obviously the unlucky one on tourist duty at the time as two of his buddies pottered around behind him, further back in the palace’s front grounds.
Before Ka could finish her explanation as to why she was offering the guy a polka dot teddy bear, the policeman quickly interrupted with a quick “I ain’t holding the teddy!”

The rather bemused but cheerful bobby did agree to pose with Adventure Ted though, obviously used to similar requests, and smiled for the camera.
After the pics at the gates Ka talked me into climbing up one of the statues surrounding the Victoria Monument for a picture. A task I accepted with a shrug until half way around the groping of the bronze lion on the Statue of Justice, I nearly slipped back into the fountain of water four feet below my behind which I had thought to be pavement not dissimilar to the side I had started climbing from. I felt like Doc Brown shuffling along the front of the clock tower.
After Ka took the snap and I made it back on to paved ground in a rather undignified landing, Ann insisted that Adventure Ted see Big Ben next. Ka and myself looked at one another wondering who was the more excited about this whole trip. Adventure Ted or Ann?
So I led the way through St James’ Park, through the willow and blossom trees up into Westminster, avoiding some brawling ducks and scary looking geese, and passing more Faberge eggs, which were attracting mild interest from similar tourists passing through the park. The only difference with other tourists was that they didn’t excitedly produce a polka dot clad teddy bear to get it’s picture taken next to the giant oval.

After a few pictures in and around the red telephone boxes on our approach to Westminster square (Ted waving from inside whilst on the phone. Perhaps to the male Adventure Ted? There is a bloke version too, he just wasn’t lucky enough to get to go to London. He was probably in the pub, enjoying himself while the Mrs was away) and a few shots of Adventure Ted with Big Ben we crossed Westminster Bridge, heading for the South bank where we would grab a coffee under the shade of the London Eye before heading back over to hit Westminster Abbey as Ann suspected that Adventure Ted would really like to see where William and Kate got hitched.
Back over the bridge we went, stopping briefly outside the gates of the Houses of Parliament where a couple of coppers were guarding the barrier in a small, sparse huddle of Japanese tourists. Ka reached in to get Adventure Ted back out for another pic but stopped when the two coppers gave some rather blunt, bored and almost angry responses to some little Japanese ladies requesting photos alongside them with Big Ben in the background. These coppers obviously were not as tourist friendly at the Buckingham Palace lot. The Parliament coppers simply shook their heads gruffly and grumbled “We’re busy”.
So, leaving the Parliament coppers milling around at the gate twiddling their thumbs, Ann led us onwards to Westminster Abbey, our final stop before we jumped on a busy tube back to Fulham where we made a pit stop at Ann’s place to see a rather grumpy Bandit the dog and discover how red and burnt my balding head was. Within an hour we were walking again, now along to Putney and Ann’s favourite Tapas restaurant.
Our last and best stop of the day. Well, before Ka, Adventure Ted and myself headed back to Paddington, of course. And no, I don’t mean the bear.

Brick by brick

Some of the admin women in the work have just discovered my website and are now offering their services as life models. This was before they knew that life models get a pretty decent wage - or at least so I was led to believe back in Art school. Not that I was ever offered the chance of baring my body for the easels I might add. The admin women were also offering themselves up as photographic models after the arrival of my new camera yesterday.
My brand new DSLR camera arrived at the office yesterday and I have been toying with it ever since. The operator's manual has the dimensions of a reasonably sized paperback and being the slight perfectionist that I am I have decided to read at least a good quarter of it before I have any reasonable attempts at photography even though I know I'd probably work it all out easily enough. I've never really understood why people charge into the building and working of things without even glancing at the instructions. Men, for some reason, have a bit of a reputation for doing this. As a man I don't really see anything incredibly unmannly about reading some instructions myself. Our living room came together enjoyably quickly because of the instruction manuals (thank you Ikea!). When our living room furnishings arrived four and a half years ago from the giant furniture store I swept Ka to the side with a - "Don't worry my dear, I'll deal with this!". Ka was happy to continue cleaning as I pulled the various instruction manuals from each of the boxes and knuckled down to some hard labour. If I had not used the instruction manuals you can be assured that I'd have finished building it all with at least one table leg and twenty screws leftover and wondering why the hell Ikea would supply me with so many spare parts. As I put my tea down I'd frown confusedly as the table tipped over and collapsed into pieces behind me. The Ikea instructions are especially easy to follow not unlike the instruction books you used to get with your Lego buildings and pirate ships as a kid. Both companies are Scandanavian, of course, and both now multi million pound companies and it's all probably down to their instruction books. An Ikea pirate ship? Go even further - an Ikea Space shuttle?! Imagine the possibilities! Apparently that third bloke from Top Gear, James May (the one that is not Clarkson or Hammond), was making a house out of Lego for a series he is working on at the moment. He intends to live in it for a short time once it's finished. The Lego house would probably be far stronger than any piece of housing Ikea could come up with. I wonder if he's using an instruction book? I'd say it's a safe bet that he is, considering he hopes to have a flushing lavatory in it along with other various lego built applianes.
Talking of property, Heather from Your Move was round yesterday looking over the flat making sure it was marketable. She left leaving me optimistic for a quick sale when the time comes. Ka and myself have plans of upgrading in the property market. I wonder how much James May is selling that Lego house for? That's a model I'd like to take a picture of and, I dare say, a property that would be great in for Ka and myself to build our lives together.

Photo update

Finally finished putting together and uploading some new photo pages for Reidnet. The new pages include a collection of photos from the Wedding kindly contributed by Uncle Tommy, Aunt Trish, Aunt Ann, Chris, Martin and last, but certainly not least, the wonderful Jillian. Thanks very much to all of them for supplying me with a good amount of photos - especially since I did not take any. The most important day of my life and I barely clicked a camera button!
The other new pages include photos from our holiday in Rome and Venice. Both of these collections having been heavily filtered as I think I went kinda camera crazy after taking none on the Wedding day. Hopefully both collections show, to some extent, how beautiful Rome and Venice are and what a great time Ka and myself had walking around the Italian streets.

Blue lagoons and Bolognese day

A pretty relaxed weekend there except from various painful gymnastic manoeuvres before dinner last night.
After a quick meeting with the Wedding photographer on Saturday morning Ka was out and about again hitting the shops with Beth leaving me to my own devices. My device on this occasion being my iMac with which I was adding more photos to reidnet. Unfortunately I did not get everything finished as various meetings, dinners and movies interfered. Saturday evening we met up with my Mum and Dad as they delivered a bottle of champagne with a wedding gift before they flew off to sunny Turkey. Oludeniz to be precise.
Ka and myself went to Oludeniz for the day when we went to Turkey two years ago. A great little resort on the south coast with beautiful beaches, a fantastic blue lagoon and the whole resort bordered by giant hills and cliffs including the Babadag mountain, popular for cliff jumping opportunities. By that I mean, paragliders of course and not people that want to end it all. The blue lagoon was particularly impressive. A large pool of deep blue circled by the Turkish hills, the nature reserve and the weaving paths through the palm trees running through it. In the Lagoon you could swim a good distance out into the water and still see your feet kicking below you. Far more relaxing than ocean swimming. Especially if, like me, your one of those paranoid swimmers that still grows uneasy after swimming out into the middle of the ocean and realise there's nothing below your feet but the dark, unfathomable ocean life. Your former relaxed self disappearing as you look around urgently for shark fins and blobby jelly fish rising out of the ocean. Images of that severed leg in Jaws drifting down to the rocky sea bed flitting through your mind.
On Sunday we were treated to Dougie's Bolognese special after Morgan put us through some gymnastics in the living room whilst Angela tried on a bridesmaids' dress with Ka upstairs. I certainly would not go to any fitness class run by Morgan after that. Even after a trip to the gym in the morning I was knackered by her maneuvers. Ka's Dad then treated us all to one of his culinary specialities. Bolognese has always been a favourite of mine anyway although my Mum's recipe is better than Dougie's but maybe I'm just biased. Dougie's was great but Mum's is better. Perhaps something to do with her secret ingredient - a glass of red wine (not so secret anymore!). Anyway, I always look forward to a bit of Bolognese. I woke up on the Sunday morning like one of those puppets that advertise pasta sauce on daytime telly:
"It's bolognese day!" I grin as I awake on Sunday.
"It's bolognese day?!" Ka frowns as she opens her eyes.
In Uddingston Dougie shouts excitedly "It's bolognese day!" as he leaps from bed and pulls the bottom tomato from the cupboard of stacked tomatoes.
Grace, in her stookie, shakes her head with a smile as the tomatoes tumble down over Dougie from the cupboard, "Papa always get so excited on Bolognese day!"

Hell freezing over

Well, the whole of Britain woke up yesterday to snow. England panicked. Scotland sort of... shrugged. We all knew it was coming. The weathermen had forecast it. But still England seemed to panic. A whole three or four inches had fallen during the night in England, and around two in Scotland and by watching the English news you'd think another Ice Age had descended upon us. lf three or four inches of snow had hit us in Scotland overnight, we'd all have got up as usual and struggled into work, barely making the headlines. But when England gets it all hell breaks loose... or freezes over. There were news reporters standing on the banks of the Thames in yesterdays news telling us with serious, grim faces how this particular wall had over five inches of snow on top of it. Headlines, newspapers, the internet bulletins, all yelling about disasterous weather conditions, idiot drivers unable to cope, buses, trains and planes all ceasing transportation, electricity and gas supplies abruptly stopping, Boris Johnson pleading for more grit lorries like a very boring Bob Geldoff, schools and companies closing down, the shops of Oxford Street deserted and football transfers not being able to go ahead... in person. Unbelievable. The English get a wee bit of snow and suddenly think it's The Day After Tomorrow. Staying at home with the curtains drawn, the lights off, gripping their children tightly to their chest and praying for a miracle, thanking their lord for the great life they had led until those moments. My Aunt Ann, who live down in London sent me some pics via email of the wondorously uncommon snowfall in her area of Fulham. She was more excited than anything else. Anything to enable her to stay out of the office, I suspect. On getting out of work early, I also went out and took some pictures. Some of the women in the office were a bit panicky, of course. Let's face it, we all know what women drivers are like at the best of times (joke!).
On returning home I decided to park our car at the top of our hill, as we live on a steep street, and leave it in a safer place for the night, and a place that would be easy to manoeuvre out of in the morning if there had been more snowfall. Moments after parking, as I sauntered over the snow covered grass to our street, I heard a sudden squeal. Spinning round I froze, (not literally), as a BMW came down the hill, directly in front of my safely parked car. The BMW then started to drive at an alarmingly strange angle, it's rear heading straight for my freshly parked car's headlights. With a scrunch of ice and snow and a strange deathly silence the large car spun over the road in a 180 degree angle, nudging itself over the pavement infront of the Toyota but thankfully grinding to a rather unstable halt. Not being outwitted by some feeble snow, the BMW driver then decided to reverse determinedly half way down the street, as if to prove something to himself, the snow and any onlookers. After a few moments of pretending to be in complete control the driver hesitantly slowed to another, this time semi controlled, halt and performed a nice, sensible three point turn. (The only time you'll see 'nice' and 'sensible' in the same line as 'BMW driver' probably). If that BMW had slid any further, that would have been absolutely typical.
The snow is now gone, though, and we can all relax again. We did not get the predicted further foot of it during the night as forecast. A lot of scaremongering weathermen, if you ask me. Bring back Michael Fish, he used to tell you when things were definately not going to happen, but actually would. It's far more exciting that way. These new guys tell us whats going to happen, and it doesn't. Mr Fish would never have done that. He would have just came on and denied everything and then it would all have been a pleasant surprise in the morning for us all to wake up to.
"Oh, look everyone, it's been snowing... and there's a , er, BMW encased in my car bonnet... Quick call Jackie Bird!"

Photo update

At last. I've just finished another photo album update on REIDNET. I've been meaning to get some new photos up for ages but as always with these things, you lose track of time. Like calling the friend or auntie that your always meaning to call and never quite getting round to it for particularly rubbish reasons, which you always know will never wash.
Ring ring!
You pick up the phone.
"Oh, I was just about to phone you!" you say. Thinking: "Sh*t, you've bet me to it. I was getting round to it!"
"Oh, were you?" comes the reply. Thinking: "Sure you were"
My poor website often gets neglected. Keeping it up to date was a New Years resolution though, so it's a good start for 2009. Anyway, included are some shots taken in Autumn of last year (yes, Autumn, I know...), Roisin Murphy's gig in the Glasgow ABC and a small selection from the Christmas period. Most of the Roisin Murphy shots are a little shakey, of course, but some of the colours are brilliant. Feel free to check them out!

Ben Arthur

The pictures from my Ben Arthur climb are now in the Reidnet photo album. Harry and myself are seen here poised on one of the rocks infront of the Cobbler's 'needle'. I was ineptly sliding down the slope of the rock as the photo was being taken and Harry stands relaxed over the 150ft drop behind him. Some of the shots are pretty good considering the weather conditions. Unfortunately the mist at the peak of the mountain completely obscured the supposedly wonderful views you usually get from the highest, middle peak at 'the needle'. However, the mist did help make some of the shots quite eerie and would not look out of place on some old, british horror movie. An American Werewolf in Arrochar perhaps. There's also a few nice shots of Loch Long. The Faslane Naval Base have a depot on the Loch, up at the village of Coulport, and use the Loch's depths to practice sailing their submarines. Faslane is the home of the UK's armed nuclear submarine force, or nuclear deterrent, as they'd probably prefer it to be known. In fact, I'm sure Sharon used to go the Peace rallies there to wave her boards about. Strange to think of a place of such tranquility and beauty housing nuclear warfare.
Anyway, Click here to go straight to the Ben Arthur photos.

The long way up

My legs are a little achey today as yesterday Harry and myself climbed Ben Arthur, or the Cobbler, as it's most popularly known. A good walk, 884m (2946 ft) in height and and 5.5 miles in all, though it seems longer. Harry is the expert when it comes to the hillwalking having completed all the Munros south of Fort William, as well as walks in New Zealand and Sri Lanka to name a few. Unfortunately I am a mere amateur. The last time I was on the hills was around three years ago on Ben Vorlich. Harry led us into Arrochar in the morning, the small town that sits on Loch Long, and from the small car park at the foot of the hill we set off. Unfortunately for us it was a very grey, misty day and the clouds hung low over the peaks around Loch Long but the rain held off and the temperature remained pretty warm, with only a slight smir of rain in the air, making it a pleasant climb up the front side of the hill.

We took the harder route up over the rocks and burn descending on its southern side. The mist held fast though and the views and skyline were still completely cloaked at the top of the mountain. The rocks were also quite slippy so, once at the top, we had to opt out of 'threading the needle' which is involves crawling through a hole in the summit rock formation from the north side and climbing up on to the very highest peak, a metre length rock standing over a 100 ft drop. The rocks were just too slippy for any foolhardy attempts.

We rested at the foot of the needle and had our lunch talking with some fellow walkers, who were taking a break from Fir Park. After our short break, Harry led the way down the northern side of the mountain, not hitting the proper path until around a quarter of the way down. We passed many a walker on the way down, all following the walkers code of pleasantly greeting one another as we stomped along on our various routes to and fro. I was even surprised to meet someone I knew from back in the Auldhouse days when I worked behind the bar. Alastair was sitting rolling a cigarette, having a break with his son, his camera tripod sitting at his side. He was going up the hill to try and get some photos. On the trek I managed to get a few shots on the hillside myself but it was just unfortunate the views from the peak were mere cloud. I'll probably revisit it at some point in the near future and try and get a decent view next time (I'll be putting the rest of the photos I did take on reidnet's photo album shortly). As we descended it looked as if the mist was clearing a one point only for it to quickly drift over again and submerge the top half of the hill once more. Even though the views from the top were poor there's nothing quite like a good walk in the hills. It's strange to think that these hills, and fantastic landscapes, sit just an hour outside the chaotic city scenes of Glasgow and home.
In the evening Ka and myself headed to the Shawfield Stadium, for the first time, to the dog racing, and to meet up with Claire and Martin and the rest of the mad squad to celebrate Claire turning the big 3 - 0 . There was also the hope of maybe winning some money at the same time. Claire's brother, William, had hired her a wee surprise. After we arrived and hooked up with Cheryl, Roslyn and Aaron inside, Claire, Martin and some of the others turned up after a few glasses of champagne on the Scooby Doo Bus! All drinking champagne except the birthday girl, herself, of course, who is preggers. Scooby snacks have certainly changed since I last watched the cartoon. Needless to say some fun was had, but alas, Ka and myself were unlucky with all our bets and didn't win anything. Claire's Dad managed to win over fifty quid, Jane managed to win a good thirty pounds but our dogs were pipped at the post (or finishing line in this case) everytime. Can't win 'em all. We all had a good time though and enjoyed the night.

Photo update

New photos on REIDNET.
Have now updated the photos pages with stuff from April through to present, including KA and my birthdays, our trip to Dublin and Gran's 80th birthday bash. As I didn't take a massive amount of pics on the day Uncle Tommy has contributed his pics to the album. Thanks for that Tommy!
Have also updated the gallery pages with my latest paintings.
Back to work now.
Come on Lee! That's what I'm talking about!