A Son of the Rock

Another from 1990. Another from Inspiral Carpets.

I suppose I ought to add the warning, “This video contains flashing images.”

Illustration of French Ocean Liner Interior, SS Normandie as I recall:-

Illustrations for proposed ocean liner interiors; never used:-

Art Deco bronze wall plaques:-

Art Deco Ocean Liner carpet:-

Art Deco Ocean Liner wall display and chairs. The chair on the right is stunning:-

The entrance display room to the Ocean Liners Exhibition, V&A, Dundee, displays advertising posters from the earliest liner eras up to the time when they were replaced by air travel.

My eye was mostly taken by classic Art Deco ones such as this for an Italian shipping line:-

Not to mention the classic SS Normandie:-

And the SS Empress of Britain:-

This brochure is from the NYK line:-

These are pages illustrating the high life of ocean liner travel:-

Finally and not Art Deco, the cover of a brochure for the QE2, whose first voyage down the Clyde to take her sea-trials we were all given a day off school to witness. Even then everyone knew there would never be such a ship built on the Clyde again:-

I seem not to have posted this before even though I took the photogaphs in April 2012.

Stratford-upon-Avon has two civic war memorials, one for the Great War, moved to near the river from its original location, and another for the Second World War on a wall nearby.

Great War Memorial:-

World War 2 memorial:-

This web page shows the memorials’ relative dispositions.

On another nearby wall is King Edward’s School Boat Club War Memorial – for both wars:-

Between the Great War Memorial and the Second World War Memorial lies a memorial to an individual. I’m afraid I can no longer remember whom it commemorates and the writing is too indistinct to make out when magnified.

We visited the new V&A, Dundee, last week where the first exhibition was on Ocean Liners, with the sub-heading Speed and Style:-

Exhibition Poster, V&A entrance behind:-

This post only scratches the surface of what is a sumptuous exhibition which is mainly a feast of Art Deco style reflecting the ocean liner’s inter-wars heyday.

Brochure for French shipping line:-

United States Lines Brochure:-

It’s not exclusively Art Deco, though. This is a Louis XIV style door from a pre World War 1 French liner:-

A similar Louis XIV style panel and chair:-

Wall panel from one of the Titanic’s sister ships, SS Olympic:-

The ultimate in streamlined ship design. Perhaps it was fortunate this was never built. Everything’s enclosed, there’s no deck where you could take the air. (It also looks a bit like a submarine):-

Also known as “Some Passages in the Life of Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle.”
The Saltire Society, 2007, 172 p, plus xxii p Introduction by Ian Campbell and vi p Notes.
One of the 100 best Scottish Books.

This book squarely targets that intersection of Scottish life with religion which so firmly shaped the national character during the centuries of the Calvinist ascendancy – not always to the good. A critic quoted in the introduction (which again it is wise to avoid till after the book itself has been read) says its characters are “earnestly attached to a religion which makes little appeal to taste, and rejects every allurement of art,” while another opines that “Lockhart feels that in destroying the presence (or indeed the possibility) of beauty in the services of the national church the Scottish Reformers damaged the national imagination.” Yet there is a glimmer of salvation to be found as the book proceeds to its close, its unfolding providing signs of a first crack in that edifice of stern righteousness in the attitude of the populace to a fall from grace.

First published in 1822, Adam Blair is, like the works of Lockhart’s father-in-law Walter Scott, to modern eyes over-written. It also has an odd approach with regard to the placement of commas. Parenthetically Lockhart provides a comment on the passing of time with the thought, “in those days, Scottish widows and Scottish grandmothers were not a whit ashamed of being dressed like widows and grandmothers.”

The book’s focus is almost entirely on Adam Blair, minister of the parish of Cross-Meikle, situated somewhere in the Argyll/Dunbartonshire area. At the novel’s beginning, Blair’s wife has just died and is buried in the churchyard, her body lying beside their three dead children. Other characters appear but are not explored in any depth at all. Even his surviving daughter Sarah is only a fleeting presence. The measure of consolation Blair finds in his daily act of worship, shared in by the whole household, is shown in all its bleak stoicism.

Change begins to come with the arrival at Cross-Meikle of Mrs Blair’s cousin Charlotte, a woman with a colourful past – including a divorce from the young man she had eloped with and who in turn ran off with an Italian opera singer. Her devotion to Sarah commends her to Blair and when she rescues Sarah from drowning his gratitude is effusive. Wagging tongues promote Charlotte’s father to demand her return to the family home, despite Blair’s protestations of innocence. His decision to follow her there provokes the novel’s crisis point. Four lines of eight asterisks begin Chapter 14, masking the exact nature of Blair’s lapse but we are in no doubt as to what it was. He confesses his sin to the Glasgow Presbytery and is stripped of his pastoral role. The interesting thing is the response of his parishioners; not condemnation, but understanding. His subsequent taking of a cottage in the town and working the land is seen as a confirmation of his belonging to the community and a penance beyond duty.

The story of Blair, his struggles with and against his conscience, is an illustration of the hold Calvinism exerted on the Scottish psyche, its baleful effects and meagre consolations. One of the 100 best Scottish novels? Yes, in terms of the significance of its subject matter to the Scottish historical identity.

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction; “the two or three across of land” (acres of land. This is correct in the actual text in the book!) The introduction also quotes the same passage twice, the second time in a longer form, and has an extraneous single end quotation mark plus a varied approach to the placing of the numbers indicating a footnote. In the Notes; Jesus’ (Jesus’s.) Otherwise; as in Scott we have shrunk for shrank, rung for rang, sunk for sank, sung for sang; Benlomond (now always written Ben Lomond,) “a fine herd of cattle were passing” (a herd was passing,) faultered (faltered. Is faultered an archaic spelling?) “The family sit” (the family sits,) “in twos arid threes” (twos and threes; is this possibly a compositor’s misreading of the original handwritten manuscript?) “A merry party were busy curling on the ice” (a merry party was busy,) “fourthly and lady, the gay lady” (context demands “fourthly and lastly” – another compositor’s misreading?) “Mrs Ardens beautiful face” (Arden’s,) Loch-Fine (nowadays spelled Loch Fyne,) bosomn (bosom,) Pere la Chaise, scorm (scorn,) “beneath then” (beneath them,) boundlng (bounding,) roundedwith (rounded with,) Camnpbell (Campbell,) “what he most do” (must do,) “in few minutes” (in a few minutes,) “waive of his hand” (wave,) perfecfly (perfectly,) imme diately (immediately,) “not with, out some suspicion” (not without,) a missing full stop.

From the Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft via Astronomy Picture of the Day for 10/10/2018.

Filmed in ultraviolet light, a solar prominence almost looping the loop:-

I thought I’d take a respite from Norway for a while so here are some pictures of Liverpool where our friends from Rochdale took us on one of our days with them.

Liverpool is a bustling city with a lot of fine architecture.

Liverpool Anglican Cathedral from the side of the River Mersey:-

It’s a traditional kind of building, quite chunky and solid.

View from the road:-

Liverpool Catholic Cathedral is by contrast in a much more modern style, a bit like a tepee in appearance:-

Keeping up the ecclesiastical theme, the bus tour we were taken on stopped at traffic lights by St Luke’s, a bombed out church which wasn’t restored after World War 2 as reminder and memorial:-

St Luke’s bombed out church:-

St Luke’s Church spire:-

*As the line from the song In my Liverpool Home has it,

Two days ago (Wednesday) I was in the Sainsbury’s at Straiton in Edinburgh. I happened to notice that the shop assistants’ name badges had poppies engraved on them.

It was October 10^th! Over a month till Remembrance Day.

(Okay; same time interval as last year.)

Last night a woman in the Question Time audience was sporting a largish cloth poppy. First TV sighting of the year. At least I can be sure she wasn’t corralled into wearing it.

One of those sixties songs that speak of their time, mainly due to the fact it was used in the film Easy Rider, from which the video here is an extract.