Highland Year of Construction

I’m not long back from a fun weekend in Inverness of catching up with friends and joinees.

It was lovely to be back, and in many ways the city continues to improve and grow, and this month is the mid-way point of the Year of Highland Culture, Inverness’s compensation for apparently not being as good as Liverpool.

Sadly, though, far from it being a great celebratory festival, Highland 2007’s most visible manifestation in Inverness has been a huge pile of roadworks (sorry, streetscape improvements) at the peak of the tourist season.

And the city’s big theatre and arts venue, Eden Court, is still a building site as it undergoes an ambitious revamp that is late and over-budget. Apparently it will be done for the end of Highland 2007, but in my mind that’s rather like having an Olympic Games and promising that all the stadiums will only be ready for the closing ceremony.

Ah well, mustn’t grumble. It was good to be back, and I am looking forward to my move next month.

Here are some photos.

Canadian mullets

Plans are slowly coming together for my trip to Toronto and Montreal next month.

Despite only taking in a tiny corner of the world’s second largest country, it’s still going to involve a lot of travelling - the two cities are about 5 hours apart on the train.

I’m still know nothing about Mullet Creek near Toronto, however, apart from its precise location - near the Torontan suburb of Mississauga.  So over the last couple of days I have been dusting down my media skills and have contacted CBC Toronto’s breakfast show and the Mississauga News appealing for any help from listeners and readers.  Fingers crossed they can help.

In other news, I’m off to Inverness this weekend to catch up with friends and engage in a bit of cult-based activity.

Completing the story

Well, it’s been a week since I emailed FORK, and there’s been no response. I’m sure it’s not intentionally rude - I suspect things must be so busy at FORK Towers that my email slipped through the net. The river Kelvin must have more friends than I thought.

However, I’m not giving up. And in fact, I quite fancy giving them some help - it could be that the story is not complete because they simply don’t know what happened.

So, I’d like to get people’s suggestions for how the story finished, and I’ll email them again in a few days with some/all of the contributions. You’re more than welcome to join in. It’s very simple:

1. read the half-written story on the door.
2. think up a conclusion, perhaps no more than 30 words or so, beginning “…and subsequently…”.
3. post it here!

You know you want to.

Grand tour of Scotland

I’m back after a whistle-stop, action-packed tour of the north.

I’ve done fifteen hours’ driving between Glasgow and various points of the highlands, done far too much ceilidh dancing at a friend’s wedding, seen family (including a new addition), caught up with lots of Inverness friends (who made me feel very glad to be moving back), met lots of new people, and got very little sleep.

After eighteen months of not driving, I’d forgotten it was such an intense, energy-consuming activity. Thankfully the weather was mostly lovely, and Rannoch Moor in the Friday evening sunshine as I headed north was amazing.

While it was nice to be back behind the wheel again, and the hire car was essential for the itinerary, I’m still not convinced I actually enjoy driving all that much.

For a start, there’s very little opportunity to sit back and enjoy the views, and so despite my journeys being some of the most beautiful you can do in Scotland, I’ve taken very few photos.

Moreover, this weekend saw the major roads of the highlands (never the safest routes at the best of times) over-run with traffic. I found myself stuck behind a combination of cars, lorries, buses and caravans, and swarmed around insect-like by a seemingly incessant army of Dutch and German motorcyclists.

And while we’ve all heard of Highlands Before Pylons, I’d be quite tempted to form Highlands Against French Camper Van Convoys.

Except the acronym is rubbish.

The mystery of the Kelvin tollbridge

I went for a walk this evening along the river Kelvin, the only stretch of water in Scotland to be named after a measurement of temperature.

It was a lovely sunny evening, but I was rather intrigued when I stopped at a small building that had a story written on the door.

Read it for yourself here.

As you can see, the story cuts off halfway through. The building was dedicated to the wonderfully monikered Friends Of the River Kelvin (FORK), and so I googled them, and dropped them the following email:

Dear FORK (great acronym, by the way)

I was just passing this building this evening, which I assume counts as the gateway to FORK’s secret underground headquarters.

I was intrigued by the story of the flood, but sadly it seems like the writer didn’t finish it. What happened subsequent to the toll bridge washing away in the flood? Is there an explanation?

Or, in a fit of irony, did the second half of the story get washed away by a flood?

Yours on tenterhooks

Simon

I await a response. As always, dear readers, you’ll be the first to hear if I get one.

Different church

It was quiet in church this morning - almost disconcertingly so.

Many people were away, some on holiday and seemingly everyone and his dog at CLAN, and the church was somewhat threadbare as a result. Low attendance, music consisting only of a piano, and awkward silences at the start of the service.  I can’t help thinking it was probably the closest St Silas has ever come to being a proper episcopal church.

Things could have been even more different this morning, however, had someone not pointed out to me while I was on welcome duty that there were some Jehovah’s Witness material on one of the shelves where we keep the prayer books. It was quite alarming to find what was clearly the result of some cheeky evangelism by some JWs, and it makes you think how much “propaganda” might be lurking in amongst our publications and material in church. Who knows, maybe our Old Testament could be nothing but Jewish scriptures…

Anyway, I quickly removed the material and alerted the church staff. One St Silasite who shall remain unnamed suggested we could burn it at our next Deeper service.

I think they were joking.

Back north

Secrecy over - I have a new job and I am moving back to Inverness.

My new job is with sparqs and involves working with institutions throughout the north of Scotland on student involvement issues.  It will be based in Inverness but will involve a great deal of travel.  It’s a one year post initially, and as long as I eat my greens and promise not to run with scissors there’s a possibility it will be extended.

I start in mid-August, and move north a couple of weeks later.  It will be great to be back in the highlands, although I will be sad to leave Glasgow, particularly St Silas.

More on the details and my thoughts later.  But for now, it’s been a time of much confusion and indecision of late, and I have felt very supported by so many people thinking of me and praying for me in the last few weeks.

So thank you to all.

24 hours

I still don’t feel I am in a position to divulge the reason for yesterday’s day off.

Many friends who read this blog know the reason but it would be inappropriate of me to explain it here just now.

But suffice to say, I now have a serious choice to make, and have gained myself twenty-four hours to do so. I feel like Jack Bauer.

Your prayers would be welcome, and all will be revealed in 24 hours. Tick, tock…

Glasgow quayside

I had the day off work today, and so spent the afternoon doing something I’ve meant to do for ages - explore the quayside with my camera.

It wasn’t the clearest of days, so the colours weren’t as rich and crisp as they could have been, but it was still interesting to see the area.

It’s an area that’s undergone a great deal of regeneration in recent years, and the modern architecture emerging along the river is intriguing - bold, brutal, but not necessarily beautiful.

This part of the Clyde doesn’t have the genteel charm of the river Ness or the character of the successfully regenerated Tyne, but it does make for interesting photographs - check out the ones I took here.

And I’ll tell you later why I had the day off work…

Published photo

It’s funny how people have different interpretations of what looks good.

I was browsing through my Flickr photos the other day, wondering why some photos get favourited and receive complementary comments, but not necessarily the ones I am most proud of.

I was surprised, therefore, to receive an email today from Bentley Institute Press, a publishing house for the American architecture, engineering and construction industry. They asked for my permission to use this photo of Durham Cathedral in a forthcoming book on architectural geometry.

Now I can barely spell “architectural geometry”, let alone understand the concept. That said, I do appreciate dramatic architecture, and my building shots are among some of my better ones. In my view, anyway.

And I know the photo would have been selected for purely technical or geometric reasons, but for what it’s worth I don’t even reckon it’s my best shot of the cathedral, and would instead refer you here, here or here.

So anyway. Potentially my first published photo. I don’t think I can give up the day job just yet, but it’s still nice to think I may soon be able to describe myself as an internationally published photographer.