Pic via @TintoHill
See that wee fact I shared a few weeks ago about a collection of Highland cows being known as a fold? Came in handy this weekend: a fold of Highland cows escaped from Pollok Park on Saturday morning, with one ending up cornered in the Battlefield branch of National Tyre Centre and the rest wandering around outside the Victoria Infirmary presumably trying to convince patients their doses were too high.
Clearly this was distressing for the animals, and indeed for those that crossed the path of the fierce yet cuddly looking creatures, but there’s still something quite amusing about the whole débâcle. My mother’s quite serious concern for which route they took (Haggs Road then Titwood Road, apparently), @Sunniestbunny’s amusingly dry description of events: “Not often you see Highland cows running through Shawlands followed by 2 fire engines”, and the predictable “udder chaos” headline from local news outlets has kept me chuckling about it all weekend.
Amusing as it all was, though, I do hope they find the idiot whose dog started the whole thing by running into the field and startling the cows — dugs on leashes people!
(Bonus rock points for you if you recognise the title.)
Taking a wee wander through the Glasgow Airport complex this lunchtime, a strong whiff from the wild thistle alerted me to this hitherto unnoticed, very twee, Scottish scene. I pass it every day but have somehow failed to notice it before; perhaps the National Theatre of Scotland play I saw last night, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, has raised my ‘Scottish’ awareness? (Do see the play at the Edinburgh Fringe by the way, it’s really very good.)
Hopefully not long until the next iPhone hardware refresh — I’m getting very sick of the 3G’s very poor performance in low light, though admittedly most of the things that are wrong with this picture are more to do with the hastiness of this snap than the phone… Thank goodness for Instagram!
Ten coos in a field, which one’s on holiday? The one wi’ the wee calf.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I tell that joke every time I’m in Pollok Park, alongside the one and only piece of Highland cow trivia I know: a collection of Highland cattle is called a fold, not a herd. Crazy.
At the Barras in Glasgow, in an undercover area behind the stalls selling towels, cheap clothes and Bob Marley posters is the Glasgow Antiques and Collectibles Market: a treasure trove (or junk yard, depending on your outlook) of antique and not-quite-so-antique bits and bobs. Discarded decorations from generations of Glasgow homes are piled high on tables, hidden in boxes, hanging from ceilings and perched precariously on wobbly shelves and while it’s unlikely you’ll find the next Antiques Roadshow record breaker here, there’s definitely a few diamonds in the rough to be unearthed.
A couple of months ago I went in search of some interesting prints for the flat accompanied by my father who, despite living in London for most of the last twenty years, seemed to fall straight back into the Glaswegian swing of things upon passing under the iconic iron gates of the Barras. Rifling through a huge box of prints, I stumbled across a dusty framed print of a painting of Glasgow University by Malcolm Butts. I’d been looking for a nice print of the University, and while I’d considered Adrian McMurchie’s illustration of the tower, Butts’ more traditional depiction of the South Front seemed more fitting for my alma mater. I left it to Kane Snr. to haggle with the stern looking woman presiding over the stall and walked away happy after paying a portion of the stickered price.
As happy as I was with the print itself, the huge gold frame (which my father, probably correctly, surmises is worth more than the print itself) really wasn’t my thing and found itself the first target of my home improvement project. Armed with a colour of spray paint whose name practically guarantees it won’t be used in any wrongdoing (I don’t think there’s any streetcred to be had in carrying a can of ‘Espresso’), I set to work:
The paint doesn’t quite match the purple-brown hue the can suggests, which is quite fortunate, and after three separate coats the gaudy gold is banished. I need to tidy up the mounting a little (it’s remarkably difficult to get it straight), but I think overall it’s an improvement:
