More use of other people’s art, but Swindon, where I stayed after yesterday’s walk, seems to have quite a lot of it and much of it is pretty good. Better than covering these hoardings with advertising anyway. I have noticed in Manchester that there is a mural which is simultaneously an advert, however: corporate public art in other words…. Let us hope this trend is generally resisted.
I have no problem using other people’s art to pep up the blog and this is remarkably good. Apparently, with a pair of 3-D glasses on, it comes out even better. So effective is it that I resisted the temptation to post something from this afternoon’s football match, although Rochdale 2 Morecambe 4 was such an unexpected and pleasing result that the temptation was a strong one, I must admit.
A senior professorial colleague once said: “you’re a Reader. Do some fucking reading.” He was right. And there’s no reason why I need to prematurely leap out of bed to do it.
A stop off on the way north to Dundee. There are various routes available, things not yet seen, including the Great Tapestry, with 160 panels created collectively by over a thousand people between 2012-13. So not as old as this blog, but with more history in it, if you see what I mean. What is seen here is just the first few panels, chronologically. Having toured the country for a while it is now on permanent display in Galashiels, which makes that the 499th different place to feature on here, and number 500 should be along before the week is out, possibly tomorrow.
I have mentioned before that there are many murals adorning the walls of buildings in Toronto, and this is at least the third to feature on here, mounting up at a rate of one per trip. I do hope this isn’t my last visit to the city — though we will see — should I return, though, there are plenty more to document yet.
The first concealed round number of the day: today I am exactly 20,000 days old. When I first saw the Nick Cave documentary 20,000 Days on Earth (it’s very good and worth watching even if you have no idea who Nick Cave is) I naturally worked out when I would reach this milestone, and, well, it’s today. In my case 20,000 days works out at 54 years, 9 months and 3 days.
The second concealed round number is that this is the 100th blog pic to be taken in Scotland. This last week has seen the country overtake Norway in the all-time table to now stand third, behind only England and Australia. To mark this, let’s feature Joe, and behind him, Dundee — the juxtaposition of person and place being the principal reason that Scotland has kept up its healthy rate of appearance over the last three years (Dundee features on 24 of those 100 shots).
The diorama of Dundee was created by photographer Sohei Nishino, and is a remarkably good piece of work which gives a totally new perspective on the place and which one can lose oneself in: both characteristics of great art, if you ask me. And according to this article about it, it used 20,000 photos. Back to the first concealed round number we go. It must mean something.
A weekend spent in Windhoek to transition to this new country (the 49th different one I have ever visited, incidentally). Had I known this was possibly the world’s most low-key capital city, particularly on a weekend, I might have replanned slightly, but I’m not complaining. The best lunches in town seemed to be available at the Namibia Craft Centre on Tal Street (recommendation…) and you can also look at some decent artwork, and buy some rails, if you really want.
One thing I noticed when I was last in Toronto was that the city has some very good — and very large — murals. This one is on the corner of Jarvis and Carlton Streets. Yes, the telephone wires are a little annoying but this was my best effort at capturing it.
My first ever visit to Motherwell, in Scotland, which I can tell has been through its periods of post-war reconstruction as there’s something intrinsically 1960s about subways (I mean this in the British sense of a ‘pedestrian underpass’ rather than the American one of ‘underground railway’). There was a definite craze to build them around that time. This one’s been quite well decorated, something I probably fail to capture here.
The day had various different, good elements to it, and I couldn’t decide which of them should make the blog: so let’s go with the scene caught in passing, an Other People’s Art moment which I liked a lot. Seems to totally fit the Spanish text below.
Being 42 