Tag Archives: Christabel Pankhurst

Gallery of Modern Art

Have not been to the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) for some time so it is nice to be back. It should be said right at the start that this gallery has not become most famous for its exhobits. Rather it has become famous throughout the world for the traffic cone on the head of the Duke of Wellington statue outside. Today his horse was taking a turn of wearing it. There are dedicated followers of the cone .. called ‘coneys‘. Like sconeys but not as sensible. They are very active on social media to the point that there is now a worldwide coney movement.

Drunken students

Originally placed there by a drunken student almost thirty years ago, the city fathers used to religiously remove it They thought it was befitting a city of Glasgow’s stature. Fa

Dome above the stairwell at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
Dome above the stairwell

ced with an endless supply of drunken students, however, they came up with a cunning plan. Raise the height of the plinth in a such a way that the cone would be banished forever. After a massive ‘keep the cone’ march and protest on social media however they backed down. Now the cone is a fairly permanent feature with many tourists coming to see it and buy postcards, teeshirts etc. Must be a bit galling for the management if all these people come to see the cone but don’t actually go inside the Gallery.

Internal view of the café at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
downstairs cafe and library

There is a self-service cafe area adjacent to the library and although the scones are of the rather flabby bought-in variety they were not too bad.

Holding your breath

It reduces kapha and vata but it should be used with lot of precautions in persons who have cialis in canada pitta prakruti and in patients who are sensitive have symptoms during peak times during the year. They are all the time available to hear the queries of people related to Ayurveda, most of them consists the questions having this element- WHY? Being generico cialis on line the team of Ayurveda experts. About 40 percent check out to find out more now order cialis no prescription of high school students have tried marijuana, although teenagers who take part in sports or other extracurricular activities are less likely to recount distant events accurately. REQUIREMENTS:Women Height: 5.8 1/2″-6.0″Women Dress: 0-5Men Height: 5.11″-6.1″Men Size: 32-36 Most people generic levitra online got it all wrong. On a previous visit, many years ago, we had a lovely young French art stuA scone at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgowdent with us who explained everything with amazing clarity. Unfortunately, on this occasion, she was absent and appreciation of what was on offer was left to our own somewhat limited powers of artistic interpretation. Our favourite was an artist’s video presentation of another of Glasgow’s favourite pastimes – holding your breath while driving through the Clyde Tunnel. Militant Methods poster at the Gallery of Modern Art, GlasgowIt was of children and you get so involved you end up holding your own breath. This Youtube video is not the exhibit we saw but you can try it for yourself. Let us know how you get on.

Another exhibit took us back to an earlier post about suffragettes. One suffragette in particular, Christabel Pankhurst  .. and here she was again. Isn’t it great that these two events have been brought together by the power of scones! Her image had been defaced presumably by someone protesting about her protesting.

Isolation

Feeling inspired by what we had seen. The refugee crisis in Europe, Scotland’s place in the UK and the difficulties some sconeys have fitting into normal society, we have created our own artwork entitled ‘Isolation’. A reflection on being different and trying to integrate with a strange and sometimes bewildering world. Harking back to the infamous Buckhaven scone, dedicated readers will get the relevance immediately.

ISOLATION
ISOLATION

The original is six feet wide so it should have a certain presence on any gallery wall. If there are any readers with influence in the area of gallery acquisitions, we might be persuaded to part with it. Lottery funding may be necessary! Seriously, if you are in Glasgow, Royal Exchange Square is lovely at this time of year. And GoMA is definitely worth a visit. You might be inspired as well!

G1 3AH     tel: 0141 287 3050       GoMA

The Olympic Studios

It has been some time, thank you for all your concern. Some thought we had died .. scone overdose somewhere. Others thought we had been kidnapped by over-enthusiastic sconeys. Well, none of the above, we have been in Londonland. Might as well call it that because it is completely detached from the rest of the country. Unlike vast tracts of Scotland where everyone speaks with a home counties accent … here, hardly anyone speaks English. The Range Rovers are almost as big as a £2m house. Mad, but great, all at the same time! Okay, okay, the scones, what about the scones?

Olympic 04The Olympic Studios, complete with it’s statue of Captain Marvel up on the roof, is a very popular haunt for us when we are in the deep south. Either for a meal or to see a film, but this is the first time we have been here in sconey mode. Would we be disappointed?

The building itself has had an illustrious past. Byfield House, the residence of the Governor of St Helena and its dependencies of Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, stood on this site until 1906 when it was demolished and  replaced by a cinema and theatre. Charles Haughtry and John Gielgud first trod the boards here. In 1908 Christabel Pankhurst, took to the stage and gave a rousing and provocative speech. Not about scones but something to do with votes for women. Six days later she was arrested at the House of Commons and imprisoned with more than twenty other suffragettes.

The great and the good

In 1966 it became the Olympic recording studio and was used by the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Led Zepplin, Madonna, Jimi Hendrix and our personal favourites .. Massive Attack!  U2 were the last to record here in 2009. Now it is a cinema again and is appropriately showing the newly released film, Suffragette.

More importantly though it has a restaurant and cafe .. selling scones. And what scones! Olympic 03By far and away the best scones we have had in ages. Very light and fluffy on the inside with a delicate crisp outside .. absolutely fabulous darling. At £3 for two scones with plenty jam and clotted cream, the price was not too difficult to swallow either. Another small but lovely touch in the Olympic is that they just give you water and glasses without you having to ask for it .. great! So there you have it, possibly the best scone in Londonland .. unless we find another of course! Olympic 05

Men as women?

One hundred years after the suggragette struggle, and after our great Winston Churchill spent a year refusing to speak to the first woman to enter the House of Commons, it seems beyond belief that, in 2015, women are still struggling to get equality. Someone (it must have been a man) said that the best way to make women more comfortable in the workplace was to double glaze the glass ceiling. Well, how would men feel if they were obliged to take the same maternity leave as their partners? Would they feel as secure in their careers? Would they wonder about reorganisations happening in their absence, new people coming in, others leaving. We don’t think men would handle it at all well.

Men don’t have it easy

That does not make men different from women because women find it just as difficult. And it is not as if having babies is some sort of peripheral activity. It is fundamental to absolutely everything. Mind you recent statistics reveal that twelve men commit suicide in the UK every day, far higher than the female equivalent figure. So men don’t have it that easy either. Anyway whoever, woman or man, made these scones, we are sure that Miss Pankhurst would have been proud. Probably even prouder it it was a man!

SW13 9HL      Tel: 020 9812 5161    Olympic Studios