At the beginning of the month I represented Glasgow Women’s Library at the Scottish Association of Teachers of History Conference with a stall and a workshop on Pioneering Women of the West End. My love of history was first inspired by the teacher I had when I was 14 so it was lovely to meet a new generation and hopefully give them some ideas to inspire others.

In other women’s history news I led two walks, one in glorious sunshine as part of a Women’s Library team, and the other, my Maryhill walk, in rain – though not as torrential as it was the last twice I did it. I also went to a talk with my friend Beverly about a nurse in World War One, from which I returned home during the height of Storm Austen and had to be rescued from a flood at the end of our road (it’s a cul-de-sac so no other way in). Fortunately John was at home and drove out very carefully to collect me.

Also in the rain – there’s a clear theme here – was the unveiling of a statue to Nelson Mandela. For some years the Scottish Nelson Mandela Memorial Campaign has been raising funds for this. Glasgow was the first place in the world to bestow Freedom of the City on Mandela in 1981 when he was still in prison. Eight other local authorities in the UK followed suit and in October 1993 he came to Glasgow to receive all the Freedoms in a joint ceremony. There is a Nelson Mandela Place in Glasgow, formerly known as St George’s Place. It was renamed in 1986, a gesture prompted by it being the location of the South African Consulate. How it must have galled them to use that address! This is where the statue has been placed. At the end of last year I viewed the shortlisted designs in the City Chambers and this would not have been my first choice, but it does look good.

Both the institutions where I volunteer have new exhibitions. Glasgow Women’s Library is celebrating its 35th birthday with a wall of significant items, one from each year of its history, and a display of banners from its collection.

At Maryhill Halls another birthday is celebrated in This is what community looks like: 25 years of Maryhill Integration Network. The Network has several objectives but, in a nutshell, it aims to support refugees and asylum seekers and to promote understanding and relationships between them and the host community. It’s a joyous exhibtion.

We also had a day out in Edinburgh where we visited three wonderful exhibitions. In the morning we went to Modern 2 for Gwen John: Strange Beauties. Mick of Down by the Dougie has written an excellent review of this should you be interested (it’s on till 4th January). I shall confine myself to three portraits – Gwen herself, and two girls with things I love: books and cats.

After lunch we hotfooted across town to the Dovecote. Elizabeth Blackadder: a Life in Colour closes soon which was the reason behind the timing of our visit to Edinburgh – she is one of our favourite artists and we own one of her flower prints. She is also a renowned cat lover as you can see below.

The other exhibition at Dovecote was also fascinating – Costume Couture: Sixty years of Cosprop (on till 16th January). Founded by Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer John Bright in 1965, Cosprop specialises in period costume for film, television and theatre. Below I’ve chosen some examples from productions I have seen. And yes, the Pride and Prejudice group does include the legendary wet shirt – sadly dry and with no Mr Darcy in it.

The explanations about the costumes revealed subtleties that I would never have noticed, in common with most of the audience I suspect. For example, the last image above is of a 1770s gown created for Keira Knightly as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. According to costume designer Michael O’Connor:

Georgiana begins the film in pale blue. When we meet Lady Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell) she is wearing dark brown, as they grow closer, and when they are at their most sisterly, they are both wearing white; at the end Bess is in pale blue and Georgiana is in chocolate brown.

I almost feel I have to watch it again to check!

The final exhibition we attended was in Paisley, The Big Art Show. With almost 1000 exhibits, this open entry exhibition was always going to be of variable quality and a bit overwhelming, but we still absolutely loved it. Here are a few things which caught my eye – if I had ben in the market for a picture (and we have way too many already) I would have liked one of Morven Howell’s beautiful woodland scenes.

While in Paisley we also visited the Abbey and Fountain Gardens, but given that this post is already too long I’ll hold them over.

Moving on from exhibitions to public art, I was delighted to see one of the Scotties back. A reasonably accurate map of Glasgow West by Adrian B. McMurchie stood outside Hotel du Vin on Devonshire Gardens during the trail, and they bought him back in the auction.

A Sign of Humour has been busy again – the sign below was spotted near the River Kelvin at Maryhill. You probably have to be British and of an age to remember The Two Ronnies to appreciate it!

And, of course, the cyclist continued to cycle – though nothing matched his trip to France. Some days, the views were beautiful, some days the skies were ominous, and for days (and there have been a lot) when the weather was too appalling even for John, a new toy has appeared.

A couple of sites have been drawn to my attention this month. I can’t comment because I haven’t used either of them yet, so feel free to ignore the next couple of paragraphs, but they seem like interesting ideas that others might be interested in. Blogr is a directory of Scottish blogs created by Paul who says:

The reason I started Blogr is that I worry we’re slowly losing the internet we once knew. Between Google’s changing search results, big publishers dominating everything and AI-generated answers keeping visitors away from actual websites, independent bloggers are finding it harder to be discovered. I miss the days when you could stumble across someone’s wee corner of the internet, enjoy a good read and follow a link to discover another interesting blog.

I’m Safe is created by Jeson and is a way of sharing locations with people you trust. I do like to know where John is and that he is still moving when he is out cycling, and I like him to know where I am if, say, I am coming home on my own at night. As we both have iPhones that’s easily done (and I have had to use location sharing once to find him when his bike had an irreparable puncture) but I can see other circumstances where this app might be useful. (NB neither of these people have offered me anything).

We ended the month at a Scottish National Orchestra concert at which the major piece was Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. It was truly wonderful and more relevant than ever when fascists are again on the march. Because it was Halloween we were then entertained on the way home by crowds of young people getting on and off our train in amazing fancy dress. They were happy, good-natured, and only very slightly drunk. I guess for them the night was still young (10.30ish). I bet I felt a lot better than they did the next morning though.

Finally, I’m linking to Natalie’s Monthly Wrap-Up as usual. Happy November!