A Glasgow Album: Merchant City Festival 23 July 2011

Welcome to my wee photoblog on Glasgow, where we feature the joys and unjoys of walking and cycling through a fascinating, beautiful and often badly run city. For the blog's origin see the 'Introduction' post -

http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2010/02/introduction.html

An alphabetical list of all posts so far can be found at the end of this post

Today is Saturday 23 July, and with our friend Ian we are heading to the Merchant City Festival. See http://www.merchantcityfestival.com/

In Buchanan St. See
http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2010/03/buchanan-st.html

The fashion for piping / drumming buskers who look like extras from Braveheart started some time after the movie. This guy sounded really good actually.

Off down the lane to the Lighthouse to pick up some programmes. See
http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/en/Visitors/TheLighthouse/

Cobbled lane off to right

Now at Sloans Market off Buchanan St

We will first of all take in an 11am 5-act opera at Sloans on the right here. Sloans is Glasgow's oldest bar and restaurant -
http://www.sloansglasgow.com/

The opera begins in the bar and moves gradually upstairs until the 5th and final act. Great music, great singing, and also great acting. See

http://entertainment.stv.tv/onstage/263354-the-sloans-project-at-sloans-bar-glasgow-hits-all-the-right-notes/

First act was downstairs in the bar; we are on the first floor here

Lovely ceiling

Staging is finely done

Now in the bar; one of the singers is about to play a jukebox to wonderful effect

Now up on the top floor - they have fab ceilidhs here on Friday nights

Opera over - wonderful event. Now heading back down


Back in Sloans Market, Ian on left; over on the right there we note that fine critic Joyce McMillan, a prominent member of the Scottish establishment who, as Kenneth Roy points out in this 2 August piece in the Scottish Review, is very keen to deny she is a member of the Scottish establishment. http://preview.tinyurl.com/3rr7984 Denying that there is a Scottish elite is a very Scottish thing to do - especially from members of the elite. Once, when I was at a book launch at the Signet Library, a friendly upper-class chap pointed to a group of murmuring advocates going into a quiet room and said to me: 'See them? You and I may come to grief, but those buggers will sail through every crisis that hits Scotland'. Murmuring groups going into quiet rooms: you see this all over Scotland in 2011. People (I am not thinking of the exemplary Ms McMillan) who used to be stridently pro-union suddenly became pro-nat when they saw the nationalist gravy trains heading into the stations. No change here. Elites have always been fundamental to Scottish governance: this is how the Labour Party ran Glasgow and Lanarkshire; it is how the Rotarians and masons still run much of rural Scotland, from Bute to the Mearns, as Burns knew: his Holy Willie's Prayer is for all time, all cultures, yet is also a personification of the Scottish Great and Good - Yet I am here a chosen sample, To show thy grace is great and ample; I'm here a pillar o' Thy temple, Strong as a rock, A guide, a buckler, and example, To a' Thy flock. Perhaps, as that noted Scottophobe Anthony Powell observed Vices that sicken; Virtues that repel We Scots are especially prone to such hypocrisy. You have to reverse a line of Yeats. Instead of Ireland shall get her freedom and you still break stone. we have the rather less poetic but still truthful maxim - 'Scotland shall get her freedom but dinna worry there will still be highly paid committee jobs for those who please the New Masters'

Heading out to Argyle St

In Argyle St. See http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2010/04/glasgow-cross-trongate-and-argyle-st.html

Pawn shop on left; wonderful neoclassical building in distance; derelection and pound shops on right. Glasgow, check

Posters plugging the RSAMD. See http://www.rsamd.ac.uk/

Kids boxing ahead: worthy but not for us

Italian Market

Note sign

Something happening here later: the story of all our lives

Old joke: a crocburger please, and make it snappy

The chap on the raised chair is shouting at people, telling them to behave. . .

. . . nicely of course at wee kids running across the open space. .

. . .this girl was across in seconds. . .

There are two of them. They are called the 'Lifeguards'.
http://www.merchantcityglasgow.com/event/the-lifeguards/1682
'No horseplay goes unchallenged, no running tolerated and petting is right out of the question. Perched high on their chairs with their classic pool rules signs, the lifeguards attempt to impose the timeless values of the municipal baths onto the streets. '

Two First Aiders do a nice shuffle past

This lady and her partner are told off for 'petting'

Notice the pink creature in the middle? We shall see more of that apparition shortly

A long-legged pink alien is stalking the market - let's follow

The woman on right is running away after kissing Pinky's bum

This pink alien is actually from Slovenia -
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/editor-s-picks/look-out-pink-aliens-are-invading-the-merchant-city-1.1113543

He is given a love cake. . .

. . .but drops it

Pinky meets a friend. Perky perhaps

A difficult thing to do this

Alas we have to move on - bye Pinky

Now in the old Fruitmarket

Noe in Ingram St looking up at Montrose St. . .

. . . one of the steepest streets in Glasgow. For the view from the top see
http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2010/12/kings-theatre-to-glasgow-cathedral.html

View down Ingram St west to GoMa, for which see http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2010/04/goma.html

View down Ingram St east, to High St

Now in George Square. For the Orange Order in George Square a couple of weeks ago - a colourful event but more for the natives than for the tourists - see
http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2011/07/george-square-2-july-2011-orange-order.html
For the Square itself see
http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2010/03/george-square.html

Like (I imagine) most observers I assumed that pole vaulters would be attempting the bar, but apparently it is set at the world record and is only there for aspirational reasons. Like the whole of the Festival itself, really, come to think if it.