I caught the programme whose title was the same as this post on BBC4 on Monday night. It was about the cultural revolution of the 1920s and 30s and focused on Art Deco/Modernism. As a result many of the buildings I have mentioned in passing – the De La Warr Pavilion, the Hoover Building – or shown myself – the Midland Hotel – were highlighted, along with others such as Saltdean Lido and the New Victoria Cinema (not, I think, the one in Edinburgh but more probably this) and a whole host of 20s and 30s buildings from the 1925 Paris Exposition Des Arts Decoratifs (where the term originated) onwards.

The impact of Hollywood on the dissemination of Art Deco style was said to be crucial as was the impression of speed, streamlining being the original “go faster” stripes.

Where I took issue a bit was when it suggested that the perfection and optimism embodied in the form was intended to be extended to humans. Some people at the time did expound eugenics, for example, but that was surely more a distortion of social Darwinism than a consequence or expression of Art Deco.

Apart from the movies the most Deco thing about the era was, of course, the posters, whether of railways or holiday destinations or ships. Some of these are just fantastic. More than a few were displayed in the programme which is on the iPlayer if you want to take a look.

There’s a new series of programmes on Art Deco Icons starting tonight (Wed 22/10/09) on BBC4. The first features Claridge’s.

I was in Edinburgh last week and took a walk by the Water Of Leith. Just before Stockbridge I came across this heron in the river. It was stock still for ages, almost as if it was a statue.

Unfortunately it was a new camera and I’m not used to the zoom so the focus is a bit off.

On the walk back there was another heron. This was the other side of Dean Village and Dene Bridge. I think the focus is better on this one.

I took several photos in Perth last week. The first two are of the Playhouse Cinema.

The street seems to double as a bus station so there’s a bus in this first one.
The bus had moved on by the time I took the second.

Typical Deco styling here, lots of vertical/horizontal interplay. It’s a strange mixture, though, of brickwork and white rendering. Both the Chester cinemas I featured a while back have features in common with this.

Here’s a picture of The Playhouse on flickr. And another.

This is just down from Perth Museum And Art Gallery (which is worth a visit by the way.) It was probably originally a mill building. It runs along Mill Street, anyway. This side is clearly Deco.

As is this side as far as the third windows along. Note the flagpole.

No idea what this last one, on South Street, used to be. It’s a Co-operative Travel shop now, obviously.

Recreation Park, 17/10/09

Wow! Up three places. And, amazingly, above someone on goal difference. Joint sixth if you want to look at it that way and only three points off a play-off place. (Or one point the other way if you like.)

That’s four away games in a row won on the bounce – if you count the Stirlingshire Cup final. Dare we begin to hope?

This was my first visit to the revamped Recreation Park. It looks tidy but the “terracing” is now all flat – except, as before, behind the goals – and so doesn’t give as good a view. The temporary stand is OK but looks a bit like horizontal scaffolding, with seats. The pitch still slopes but not as much. Being artificial the bounce is still sometimes weird but the ball runs truly enough.

I thought we thoroughly deserved the win. We had the better of the first half till we scored (nice outside of the foot finish by Andy Geggan, though Chaplain should have scored the one-on-one which led to it.) Alloa huffed and puffed but not much more till Vojáček punched a ball straight up in the air and the ensuing muddle (where Chris Smith* seemed to have control of the situation) somehow led to an Alloa player smashing the ball in. Looked like 1-1 at half time but up popped Alan Cook at the far post to slide the ball home.

Second half Alloa had a lot of the play but didn’t really do much. A great move set up by a fine pass from Ben Gordon led to a cross from which Chaplain flicked the ball in via the keeper and a defender. Dreamland. It’s the first time I’ve been hugged at a goal by a total stranger. (He apologised a few moments later, claiming emotion had got the better of him.)

From then on we looked threatening every time we went up the park. Sub Kieran Brannan skinned his defender and was brought down when he only had the keeper between him and the goal but the defender only got a yellow card. Ryan McStay was booked after clearly pulling out of a challenge, but the guy fell down anyway. Where do refs get some of their decisions from?

The home form needs to improve now.

Edited to add:- We played in the third strip. It looks brilliant. The black, gold and black stripes make it just so much classier than the blue shorts second strip.

*Further edited after watching SonsTV. Chris Smith was in there somewhere but Alan Cook was the one who could have booted the ball out. He had a good game first half, though.)

From the East of Scotland League:-
Civil Service Strollers, Craigroyston*, Lothian Thistle*, Spartans and Tynecastle* are all based in Edinburgh, as are the two University teams of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt*.
Whitehill Welfare (Rosewell, Midlothian) – named after a colliery.
Preston Athletic (Prestonpans.)
Gala Fairydean (Galashiels.)
Vale Of Leithen (Innerleithen.)

Hawick Royal Albert I mentioned in the first of these posts. They have now been involved in a suspect betting allegation!

The South of Scotland League:-
Abbey Vale* (New Abbey.)
Crichton* (Dumfries.)
Fleet Star* (Gatehouse Of Fleet.)
Heston Rovers* (Glencaple.)
Mid-Annandale* (Lockerbie.)
Nithsdale Wanderers* (Sanquhar.)
Threave Rovers (Castle Douglas.)
Lastly, St Cuthbert Wanderers (Kirkcudbright) – another Saint! – are named after Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.

Once again http://nonleaguescotland.co.uk/index.htm has pictures of the exotic grounds these clubs play on.

Not all East Of Scotland and South Of Scotland League clubs satisfy the conditions to play in the Scottish Cup. Teams I have marked with a * (along with others whose names are geographic) can only qualify by winning their respective top Divisions. Three amateur teams not in either of these two league systems but who do compete in the Cup are Girvan, Glasgow University and Burntisland Shipyard.

The three most recent entrants to the Highland League (Strathspey Thistle, Formartine Utd and Turriff Utd) did not compete in this season’s Scottish Cup tournament and may be subject to the same restriction*.

John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers. Edited, decorated by Alasdair Gray
Bloomsbury, 2007, 312p

Lanark’s publication in 1981 marked not only Alasdair’s Gray’s arrival as a major Scottish novelist but also of his distinctive style. Ever since it has been impossible when sampling his work to escape the fact that you are reading a Gray book.

Old Men In Love is no exception. The usual Gray appurtenances are present; illustrations, marginal notes, typographical excursions. The Bloomsbury edition also comes with a nice internal bookmark.

The book is presented as the literary papers of John Tunnock, a retired primary school teacher, and includes extracts from Tunnock’s diary and from the various writing projects he had started, abandoned, and perhaps restarted. As a result, a couple of (short) chapters of Old Men In Love are set in renaissance Florence, there is an abortive History of Scotland from the Big Bang, a longer section dealing (in two well separated parts) with Socratic Athens, another with the origins of a small nineteenth century English religious cult called the Agapemonites, also known as the Lampeter Brethren. This last becomes a trifle tedious as it meanders on. Aside from the diary extracts the most successful of these is the part featuring Socrates – especially the scenes of his trial.

In the diaries, Tunnock is revealed as a curmudgeonly socialistic Scot, ill at ease with the modern world. But then, he was also uneasy in his youth, being brought up by two aunts and unaware till much later of his illegitimate birth.

All of this is tied up in a metafictional conceit since there is an introduction, as by Lady Sara Sim-Jaegar (an Englishwoman, now living in the US, who is the supposed beneficiary of Tunnock’s will) which mentions Gray himself in less than flattering terms. As does the epilogue, attributed to Sidney Workman – an educator marooned in Fife (I know the feeling) whose address is given as 17 Linoleum Terrace, Kirkcaldy, which, of course, does not exist – wherein the book is said to be a ragbag collection of previously published stories, plays or television transcripts. This is another Gray trope, attempting to defray criticism by anticipating it. The epilogue treats extensively with Lanark (“Workman”’s contribution to which is maintained to have sabotaged his career) as well as the remainder of Gray’s œuvre which “Workman” characterises as derivative and not worthy of the acclaim it has garnered.

Whatever the truth of these criticisms and whether Gray himself believes them or is merely presenting a posture of self-effacement, Lanark did prise open a door through which an array of Scottish SF/Fantasy writers at first trickled (Banks 1984, MacLeod 1995) then breenged (eg Cobley 2001, Gibson 2004, Duncan 2005, Campbell 2007.)

Had it been Old Men In Love which had been published in 1981 that flowering might not have taken place.

Edited to add:-
The Guardian’s Review section had a capsule review of Old Men In Love on Saturday 10/10/09. I can’t find it on their website so I can’t link to it. However, if you caught it, I wouldn’t demur from its assessment one jot.

No pictures, I’m afraid. They were too far out and I didn’t have the camera with me anyway.

Yesterday myself and the good lady were strolling along the prom (prom, prom) at Kirkcaldy and our attention was attracted by raised voices and pointed arms to the Forth estuary.

Leaping and sporting out of the water some distance from shore was a pod of dolphins. It’s the first time both of us have ever seen any in real life as opposed to on TV.

The prom at Kirkcaldy, by the way, lacks anything that you might expect a prom to have. Certainly no brass bands playing (no bandstand) but also no shops selling candy floss or postcards or rock or kiss-me-quick hats. No shops period! It used to house the bus station before they moved that up into the town.

The prom is over a mile long and is more or less just a dual carriageway with a pedestrian walkway between it and the sea. A lost opportunity I’ve always thought.

Fine for a walk, though, if you don’t mind wind blown spume and seas fountaining up like fireworks from (and over) the sea-wall when the tide’s in and there’s a swell on.

Ochilview, 13/10/09

Hey! We’ve won a cup!

(Thanks to Big Rab for the comment about this but I had also been “watching” it on Pie And Bovril.)

It may be only the diddiest of wee diddy cups and a showcase for fringe players and under-19s and the like but it’s the first time we’ve won it in fourteen seasons.

It’ll be nice to have something else to jostle in the trophy cabinet with the 3rd Division Championship Trophy and the Festival Of Britain (or St Mungo) Quaich.

This is by the Magic Lanterns, of whose existence I only learned when I looked the song up on You Tube.
They do seem to have had some impressive members, though, who went on to greater things.

However, the (actually quite good) version of this song that I remembered – and the reason I was searching for it – was by Chicory Tip.

Yes, that Chicory Tip. (Wiki article here.)

This is surprising.

I’ve never been to Mull nor, therefore, Tobermory but I came across this photo on flickr and wondered is it for real?

I knew it has a plethora of painted house-fronts but I never imagined Tobermory would have anything approaching Deco. How very blinkered of me. It is, after all, a seaside town.