Glasgow Gallivanting: May 2022
The beginning of May found us in Dumfriesshire, at the end of a long weekend in yet another lovely cottage. The neighbours were no bother, as you can see. That will have to go in the blogging queue behind our previous cottage stay in Angus. I’ll really have to stop gallivanting so that I have time to write things up! Oh no, that’s a terrible idea …
Since then, the month has stayed busy with women’s history walks and talks (both leading and attending), concerts, museums and galleries, and a cinema visit. Normal life in fact! However, I still have my lockdown-acquired habit of tramping around the city looking for street art and other interesting or quirky things. Here’s some of what I found – there has been so much street art, I’ll need to hold some over.
Protests and Suffragettes at Anderston Station
This is my favourite, but sadly it was temporary and has already disappeared. Protests and Suffragettes is a project celebrating women activists from history – I’m not a member, but have worked with them on a couple of occasions. They decorated one of the pillars at Anderston (a particularly ugly station on the local train network which sits underneath the M8 motorway) with portraits of five Glasgow Suffragettes. The rest of the pillars and planters are looking a little more attractive than normal thanks to Waterworks, artwork left over from COP26, the big climate conference held in Glasgow last year.
Stockline Plastics
The memorial garden at Stockline plastics, commemorating an industrial accident in 2004, has featured here before. Recently, the front of the building has been decorated with this lovely bird and flower mural by Mack Colours and Frodik.
Partick Thistle
Partick Thistle is Glasgow’s “other” football team, ie not part of the Old Firm rivalry of Celtic and Rangers. This portrait of former player and manager David McParland is by Bobby McNamara, aka Rogue Oner. It’s part of a much longer wall mural which I couldn’t photograph because of all the cars parked in front of it.
Dram / New Golden Bell
The eye is on Dram in Woodlands Road. The New Golden Bell Chinese takeaway in Finnieston has had a recent makeover.
Ashton / Cresswell Lanes
The wall at the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant in Ashton Lane has also featured before, with several different murals. Currently it is displaying a bottle of The Glenlivet. I’ve never before noticed the cat on the wall of Nancy Smillie’s shop in the adjacent Cresswell Lane. It appears to be made out of little paper rosettes.
Arboretum
We spotted a new set of ceramic graffiti in the Arboretum – John’s pointing finger is to give a sense of scale. I don’t know anything about these, but wonder if the blue and yellow indicates a Ukrainian connection.
Scotstoun Community Garden
We visited the open day at this community garden which has been reclaimed from an industrial site, the former Albion Motor Works. As well as entertainment, there was tea and cake which disappeared too quickly to be photographed. John is sitting in The Shelter o’ Dreams.
A random selection
And a random selection of other stuff that caught our eye this month.
- The teddy which has observed us from his window throughout the pandemic (I’ve shown him several times – he’s the only one left that I know of). The message says, do you think we can talk about something else now?
- An odd carving in a very ordinary North Kelvinside wall, which sits next to the odd face I included in one of Becky’s square challenges. Strangely, we didn’t notice it when we noticed the face.
- A yarn-bombed pillar box – this was spotted by John on a business trip to Manchester.
- A memorial bench to Peggy Weir, 1911-2004. I came across this when walking with a friend in an area I don’t know very well. Jude’s bench challenge was years ago but I still look for them! Judging by the lady’s age I thought she must have died naturally, but apparently she was killed in a random murder. A sad story.
- A canal boat passing under the bridge at Ruchill. Quite a rare sight on our part of the canal.
- Also on our part of the canal, nesting swans. Last year we were monitoring three nests, but this year we’ve only seen one pair. Last time I passed (30th May) there were no cygnets, though John has seen some further out on his cycle rides.
- Burncrooks Reservoir, taken by John on one of his cycling trips.
- A mirrored love token (a romantic goodbye?) spotted on the bridge on the Kelvin Way.
- Some of the cards we picked up at Glasgow Art Fair (I’d have loved to buy something but we’ve run out of wall space) which we combined with a visit to the new John Byrne exhibition at Kelvingrove. It’s on till September, so Glaswegians – please go! The man is a genius.
- A general view of Glasgow Necropolis where I spent the last afternoon of the month. I was on a hunt for specific graves to do with our women’s history tour – successfully found and will probably be written about at some later date.
Finally, in this random section, Museum on your Doorstep in Kelvingrove Park. Glasgow Museums sent out postcards with illustrations of some favourite objects and requested a response from the public. These are some of the results – a lovely idea!
Scottish words
I used to include a Scottish Word of the Month in my gallivanting posts, but have got out of the habit. Recently I noticed that the lift shaft in St Enoch’s Shopping Centre is covered with them. It’s glass, so hard to photograph without reflections, but you can still make some of them out. Feel free to ask for elucidation!
So that’s it for May – wishing you all a happy June.
The Glasgow Gallivanter 
I love all these street arts it brings more life to the streets.
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It does, I love looking for them – there’s always something new.
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Wow, you had a fun-filled, action-packed May, Anabel. Pretty much back to normal. Isn’t it nice to do so many things that you don’t have enough time left to write about them? 🙂
Sad they made the Protests and Suffragettes street art temporary. I wonder why…
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And still keeping busy! Often those pillars are used as advertising billboards – the suffragette art was a poster, not painted, so I guess they only got permission to display it there for a short time. They can reuse the artwork, and in fact have popped up with it since elsewhere in the city.
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