many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact

The first poem of this Glasgow spring

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:29:58 GMT

Strawberries
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

Edwin Morgan, again

The last poem of this Glasgow winter

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:07:09 GMT

Windows in the West

Turn the kaleidoscope and the seventy-eyed creature
Stretches, yawns, shakes the roof snow
Off its back in clumsy dollops, gets a glow
Going, cries of ‘It’s freezing!’ (not really, just a feature
Of tenement winter), puts some coffee on, come on -
How can a single one be a multiple seventy -
I don’t know, but I know I like the mystery -
Breathe out, breathe in, never in unison -
‘When did you get in last night?’ - ‘Where the hell
Did you put my razor?’ - ‘Dog has started
To chew things up again’ - ‘Well well,
You were going to give it a bone, that’s your department’ -
‘That was never what art meant,
Pictures falling off the wall, everyone has a -’
‘Don’t throw it away. I might need it’ -
‘You’ll never write a line if you don’t heed it
When I tell you there’s enough life,
Enough strife
In this old sandstone block
To turn Anna Karenina and The Great Gatsby
Into one noble undefeated cry
Which is the single tenement sigh
Any time, anywhere.
Turn up the heat,
A new day’s always sweet.’
‘Coffee up.’
‘My god another cracked cup.’

Edwin Morgan

soupe aux oignons

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:27:21 GMT

Today I made onion soup. Is there any cheaper, more comforting, more delicious food? Even leek and potato has nothing on the delicious frugality of onion soup.

I can't hear the phrase 'onion soup' without thinking of my granny, because she can't hear the phrase 'onion soup' without thinking of Madame. It's always a little unsettling, I imagine, for people who don't know her, when she begins to reminisce about 'my Madame'. One might think that she is looking back on her golden days as a call-girl. But no...as far as I'm aware. Madame is a character in my mind almost as much as in my granny's, now, because I'm sure that she's told me the stories so many times that they've been wholesale copied from her brain to mine.

When my granny was a young girl, she worked as a milliner's assistant. These were the days when no women would think to leave the house without a hat on. You simply weren't dressed if you didn't have your hat! And Madame, the most parisienne of parisiennes, was the lady in charge. Granny goes into raptures talking about her.

She wore not one, but two corsets. She wore nothing but black, ever, with the reddest of red lips painted onto her face. Her hands were always immaculately manicured, and round her neck was draped a fox-fur, with a head on each end, their beady eyes watching over all the girls as they worked. With one deft movement of her hands and a few carefully placed pins, she could shape a swatch of fabric in the most elegant hats imaginable. For me she has become a kind of 1940s Anna Wintour/Carine Roitfeld hybrid...

She worked the girls hard, but she cared about them. "Violetta! To the stock room! Violetta! Do this! Do that!" she would cry. Or rather, my granny cries out, grinning, as she remembers. And when the stock room had been tidied, and this and that had been done, it would be time for lunch. Out would come a flask of beautiful home-made onion soup, and everyone would get a little taste. Apparently there was nothing like it in the world.

New blog

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:44:58 GMT

I've started a new blog over at Wordpress - not to replace this one, whatever this one does, but to address more weighty topics in a rather different style. If you have time to spare and fancy a read, you can find it at differentfromadoormat.wordpress.com

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:36:09 GMT

Can we ever reconcile the two?

Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop - Gertrude Stein

I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. - Rebecca West

It's amazing what you can do when you're drunk

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:10:54 GMT

It was another Little League last night. The night begun as it was to go on, with an Arnaud martini (gin + dry vermouth + crème de cassis) as an apéritif, followed by dinner and a cab over to the South Side, to Queen's Park and its lovely bowling and lawn tennis club, in the clubhouse of which the Little League is now held. The Queen's portrait looks over the bar, the club president was helping to wash the glasses, and Glasgow's indie types were out in force once more.

As well as the charming, genteel atmosphere and the perfectly trimmed lawns, one of the biggest advantages of the venue is the double-take-worthy drinks prices: they are super-low. As R said, "I ordered a pint and it was so cheap, I felt terrible. I couldn't give them just £1.80! So I had to order a whisky, too."

Such low prices meant a quite extraordinary amount of gin was consumed on my part, and goodness knows what on the part of everybody else.

After a slow start, things got increasingly enthusiastic.

The downside of the bowling clubhouse is that they won't let us keep dancing past midnight. So when the lights went up - what was the last song?* it's all a blur, by this point - we wanted to go on. Five of us piled into a cab and and after much giggling decided to head to a party, the other side of the park from where we're based. Down Kelvin Way, with its grand ornamental chandeliers, through the tunnel of leaves, under the spires of the University and the Museum, and onto a street of grand old Glasgow tenements.

I don't know whether it was just the alcohol in my bloodstream, but this flat was really something, even in the extraordinary context of Glasgow flats. It was built on a scale which seemed to have had giant tenants in mind. The close (the name for tenement stairwells), the ceilings, the rooms, everything was vast. I felt like I was floating in some great, white void.

And then I realised how tired I was, how drunk I was, and how much I would regret it the next day if I stayed much longer. So we set off back across the park to our neck of the woods. Only, you'd never walk through it at night. It's a great black void of sinister rumours, mostly exaggerated, but still.

So we went a long way round, up crumbling classical staircases and terraces of gabled sandstone houses, past lanes of old stable blocks, and down the other side of the hill back home.

I was wearing 4" heels that I can normally barely walk to the pub in, but I made it all the way home, sozzled, without falling over once.

This morning, upon reflection, I was very impressed with myself.

*I remember now...it was Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones

Why I love Johann Hari

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:03:45 GMT

<< Anything which can be deemed "religious" is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN – and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah "will not happen" and "Islam will not be crucified in this council" – and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.

Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest – but the Shariah police declared it was "un-Islamic" and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country's most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.

To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women's, those children's, this blogger's – or their oppressors'?

As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: "The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom."

Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this.

Underpinning these "reforms" is a notion seeping even into democratic societies – that atheism and doubt are akin to racism. Today, whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents immediately claim they are the victims of "prejudice" – and their outrage is increasingly being backed by laws.

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.

I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of "prejudice" or "ignorance", but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.

When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.

But why are religious sensitivities so much more likely to provoke demands for censorship than, say, political sensitivities? The answer lies in the nature of faith. If my views are challenged I can, in the end, check them against reality. If you deregulate markets, will they collapse? If you increase carbon dioxide emissions, does the climate become destabilised? If my views are wrong, I can correct them; if they are right, I am soothed.

But when the religious are challenged, there is no evidence for them to consult. By definition, if you have faith, you are choosing to believe in the absence of evidence. Nobody has "faith" that fire hurts, or Australia exists; they know it, based on proof. But it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason. It's easier to demand the source of the pesky doubt be silenced. >>

Mindless terror at the Arches

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:04:11 GMT

I have to say, 5 of us did it. It was bloody brilliant, especially in such a small group, and I held Sean's hand the whole time. There's an especially brilliant twist, but in case you go, I won't spoil it for you...

(You also get to hear some particularly delightful versions of the local accent here.)

Hazy Sunday winter sun

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:08:59 GMT

in defense of fashion

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:18:17 GMT

...the term [realism] is useful in distinguishing between those forms which tend to efface their own textuality, their existence as discourse, and those which explicitly draw attention to it. Realism offers itself as transparent.
Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice

There is no natural way to dress, no neutral, opting-out way to decide what to wear.
Fashion is a discourse, composed of signs, just as language is, and it's one we all participate in, whether we embrace that fact and revel in it, or try to ignore it and claim not to care about fashion.

Those who claim not to care, to just put on any old thing - this is to make as much of a statement as the teenage goths that hang around the doors of the local shopping centre.

We understand and interpret people's appearances based on the semiotic system we are immersed in from our earliest days. A proclaimed 'disregard' for one's appearance is impossible. It is using the system while claiming to step outside of the system; it means electing to appear within it in a certain way, rather than to not appear in a it at all, as, unless you are invisible - transparent - you are observed, and you are playing a part in the game. You may claim that you are 'effacing' any regard for your appearance, but you are not.

And that's why, rather than being élitist, time-wasting, pointless or pretentious, people who recognise this, seize it with both hands and run riot with it have my full admiration. Carefully crafted, studied 'looks' are no more pretentious or dishonest - perhaps even less so - than people who say they just throw on any old thing.

To claim that what you're doing is neutral when it is in fact simply one of many possible stances within a system is not only naïve, but dangerous. There is no such thing as common sense, no such thing as opting out. Every stance is ideological; it might as well look good.

Eyewear, cont.

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:54:25 GMT

Fake eyelashes like it if you mix it up.

bespectacled

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:36:21 GMT

I got glasses yesterday - my first pair of actual glasses.

I was told I was borderline, and would only need them for computer work and long periods of reading in any case. This is basically the definition of my life. So I got them.

I am not ashamed to admit that my concern for my eyesight was in no small part due to the fact that I have been desperate to wear glasses for years now, for purely aesthetic reasons. I was so keen that I was tempted to buy 'fake' ones, with plain plastic lenses, but to accept the wearing of fakes would go against everything I believe in.

Now I have the real thing. I have joined the élite. The boyfriend is wildly jealous and has compiled a list of glasses he wants, if he ever needs them, but he doesn't, so he can't have them - but I can, aha!

Now I can wear my Wayfarers even when the sun's not shining - as long as I've got something to read.

Good morning Woodlands

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:23:32 GMT

Where I live, the houses are pink.

Exciting News!

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:31:25 GMT

The Doctor AKA David Tennant looks to be moving into my neighbourhood!

And even more excitingly, we have quite a few of these old tardises (tardii?) ...

...scattered around Glasgow. This one's just outside the Botanic Gardens. (Admittedly, they've been turned into miniature takeaway coffee shops. But so what?)

Exciting times lie ahead.

Official Recognition

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:17:44 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/oct/15/glasgow-scotland

Glasgow is great.

Across the park

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:10:10 GMT

On Wednesday I'm going to the studio, which ought to be less strange than singing down the phone, though I suspect no less nervous.

Stuart is making a film - a musical! I've not had the chance really to ask him to explain it, yet. When I did, last year, he'd not got it all quite planned out, and now the script's nearly finished so you'd hope he'd have a good idea. I hope it'll be set around here, it's about time someone tried to capture the spirit of living in this part of the world, so different from that gritty world of the estates a few miles off that seems so much more appealing to modern British film makers.

So I might be singing one of the songs on the soundtrack, or I might not, depending on whether I can sing well enough and in the right way. I've only ever really sung classical music and it's hard to switch to a pop style. It's also hard doing an individual audition. But it's really cool to be a part of such a big creative project, even if it is an extremely tiny part.

Eek

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:27:01 GMT

I just did an incredibly nervous and embarrassing audition down the phone to Stuart Murdoch. One of the more surreal moments of my life!

Knee deep...

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:31:07 GMT

I’m so grateful I was back in time for this.

As D said, the Pop League (and its spin-off) was always about memories, nostalgia, and minor myths, and so it seemed fitting that it should pass into memory itself.

I’ve never known anything like it, and probably never will. What other club could take place in the clubroom of a boules and lawn tennis club, with a portrait of the Queen, lists of past champions and winners, trophies and photos of blazered suited members on the wall? S said that out of all the venues he’s seen, and they get better and better, this would be the best so far for his film’s dancing scenes. We had a nice little chat about his film, actually. It’s quite exciting.

I would need many words to do it all justice, all those years of dancing, but perhaps last night’s little zine handed out on entry holds the best tribute, written as it is by the man behind it all.

Hello, and thank you very much for coming to the Little League tonight.

One proviso when the Little League started at the RAFA in 2004 was that there would be no badges, no fanzines, no hoo-ha. Circumstances are different tonight though, so I hope you’ll indulge a bit. This isn’t the RAFA club of course, but I’m hopeful that it’ll fit.

It’s now two months since the National Pop League ended! And, on top of my vague rules of what should and shouldn’t be done, I want to avoid monthly eulogies. Over and above what happened over the course of the NPL’s lifetime I’m proud that the end was quick and sudden and with little fuss. We went out on a fantastic run, and the cut was clean. I’m glad it didn’t limp on aimlessly.

As it happens, there is now a laminate from Glasgow City Council outside the Woodside proposing plans to convert the club into flats! I knew something like that would happen. And so I’m very happy that the choice to end the club was ours.

In practical terms this all makes sense and yet it still leaves a gap for me, if no-one else. I never really wanted to let on, and it bothered me when I felt it showed, but a lot of the NPL was a selfish endeavour for me. I very much needed a routine, for one. And I desperately needed to try and make sense of all the hopeless romance and sadness I felt about Glasgow. Nothing dreadful ever happened… just moments. All the moments seemed to have a location and a song.

The Pop League gave me an opportunity to think about them carefully, to pay tribute, to write about them obliquely. But as much as I worried about repetition in the play list, I worried about repetition in the concept. You look around and people are having children and dying and you’re still at home on Saturdays, sketching out a view you remember from 15 years ago, listening to the same songs, reading the same books.

Finishing the Pop League doesn’t end that for me. I know I’m still going to do that, and I know that I’ll feel guttered at times by particular weather and light. I’ll feel I’ve betrayed people when I listen to something gentle and heartfelt and I’m not able to write it down and try and pass it on in some small way.

My God, all this is a clatter of symptoms! But the Pop League gave me the opportunity to pick through them and make something worthwhile with it. I didn’t say I was grateful for people coming just to fill the page – I was continually surprised by it, and utterly indebted.

And now this is the last Little League! I’m purposefully using such a definitive phrase because I want it to be a promise I cannot break. I thought for a while I might try and start something again fairly quickly but I don’t really know how I feel about that now. There is something very seductive about just leaving it be.

This is the line underneath it.

There are things I always think about. Milkmen, postmen, blackness. Newsagents early on weekdays in Crosshill, the lights shimmering through cold air from the top of the staircase at Kelvingrove, moss and railings, dust in the afternoon, clocks, bridges, hands, photographs, faces. Lighting up time and how it changed and looked as the season progressed. The soft September greys all around me as I write. What would I do if I couldn’t fall back on that any more? what if they just looked plain again?! These things always made my heart burst. They’re still going to do that.

Thank you for coming tonight. And, of course, thank you for coming out over the past years. I hope you enjoy this evening, and I feel so proud to have been able to share this with you.

It feels perfect like this, it feels secret.

State of play

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:00:15 GMT

Back in Glasgow.

No internet at new flat, yet.

Wait of two weeks to set it up.

It's still raining here.

Lost Property

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:52:40 GMT

While in London, I didn't just drink free cocktails with the hipsters.

I also found my camera! If only I'd found it BEFORE I went to Provence.

Also, in preparation for returning home, I've been checking the weather forecast for Glasgow every few days. You need serious psychological preparation to get yourself ready to handle the dreich Glaswegian weather, believe me.

Here is this week's forecast:

Tuesday: Rain: Maximum temperature 17*C.
Wednesday: Rain: Maximum temperature 16*C
Thursday: Rain: Maximum temperature 18*C
Friday: Rain: Maximum temperature 17*C
Saturday: Rain: Maximum temperature 19*C

From this you can see that the highlight of a August week in Glasgow is the possibility of feeling marginally less chilly on Saturday. Still just as damp, but less chilly.

Can't wait...!

Where I Have Been

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:32:50 GMT

Rose Bakery has been shut for two weeks, and I've been away. I'm back in Paris now, but only for what's left of August. Then I'll leave this city, and go home - via London, for long enough to pack up all my errant belongings trailing there, and then really home, to Glasgow, to the new home there that I've not even seen yet. So while it might seem a bit silly to have two weeks off when I'm leaving for good so soon, it's been the perfect opportunity to make the transition a little less abrupt than it could otherwise have been.

Northern Europe has been slumbering under clouds for a while. It's been grey and damp and not at all summery. It's perfect for easing me back into Scotland! I've got myself a British phone and phone number, I've been buying things for the new flat and thinking about colour-schemes (feeling a little like Bill Murray's wife in Lost In Translation, but in a good way). I've caught up with a few friends, who are still their old lovely selves, and that's reassured me that my lovely, caring Glasgow 'family' will still be there to welcome me back with open arms. R has even saved up 4 precious bottles of champagne from her birthday celebrations to be opened only once we are all finally reunited. (And for a hard-up student who enjoys a tipple, that means a lot!) I've bought boots and started thinking about chunky knits. Yes, I'm excited about autumn, about Glasgow, cups of tea, books, quilts, stormy skies, mittens, lectures, walking up University Avenue every morning, under the cloisters, through the grassy quads...

I've been away from the UK for long enough now that going back there this week felt exotic and exciting. I was gleeful at the supermarket when the total was so much lower than I would have had to pay in France. I rejoiced at the expansive range of produce available that just isn't easy to find in France, the multi-cultural facets of the UK, the decent music and the television programming, a million miles better than the rubbish shown in France. The pubs, the newspapers, the everything! I couldn't quite get over how good it felt just to be back.

I went to a photography exhibition opening at the offices of Dazed & Confused in East London that was basically an excuse for a party, with a DJ and free cocktails (with flowers in them!). All London hipsters were there. A scene which, three years ago, I'd had too much of, seemed once again vital and exciting. After the chic, grown-up simplicity of Parisian style and nightlife, it was a breath of fresh air. I can't explain how much I've missed that grass-roots creativity and eccentricity of British style, the up-for-anything, party-any-time, carefree way that people take their youth head-on. We really are the coolest fucking people on the planet. Apart from Scandinavians, perhaps.

And the fact that Erol Alkan will be playing Death Disco two days before term starts just makes me squeal. What a night that is going to be. Back to school with a bang!

A Foodie Meme

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:49:28 GMT

I don't usually do this sort of thing, but... it's pretty important, this one, for the foodies of the world.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (Yum yum.)
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding (Be it black pudding, boudin noir or morcilla, it's all good.)
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (Regrettably.)
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream (Ah, gelato.)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (Misty childhood autumn walks in the Kent countryside, gorging ourselves on berries, and dodging the poachers' shots...)
23. Foie gras (Don't really see the appeal, though.)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
~~26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper~~ (Why? Why would you do this?)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
~~36. Cognac with a fat cigar~~ (I can't stand smoking or inhaling anything, cigars, cigarettes, anything.)
37. Clotted cream tea (One of my favourite meals ever. When I was a stick-thin child and could eat what I wanted, I'd easily eat three scones loaded with a layer of cream that I now realise was obscenely thick.)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
~~42. Whole insects~~ (I know it's pathetic, but I just couldn't.)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (Wasted on me: to me, all whisky tastes the same - foul.)
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala (Well, I am British...)
48. Eel (I would try this as long as it did not resemble in any way jellied eels. They are the most disgusting foodstuff I have ever seen.)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (Overrated.)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (Not for a long time, and never again. I was pre-teen and ignorant. Forgive me?)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (Gin martinis are the only REAL martinis. People who drink vodka martinis are uncivilised and deluded.)
58. Beer above 8% ABV (I wondered why I was so drunk after one pint.)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
~~63. Kaolin~~ (What's the appeal in eating clay?)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis (So delicious. Vive l'Écosse!)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab (My favourite dish at my favourite Maylasian restaurant in Glasgow, and I can't want to go back there.)
93. Rose harissa (I've never even heard of this: will have to go deli-scouring upon my return to the West End.)
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Le Musée d'Orsay

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:23:54 GMT

I just got back from the Musée d'Orsay, that famous Parisian art destination housed in a converted train station on the left bank of the Seine. On a rainy Sunday I thought a little culture would be a good thing. And I was interested in seeing two of their photographic exhibitions currently running, one showing daguerréotypes and another showing the early developments of photography in Great Britain.

Having lived in Paris for over 3 months it may come as a shock that this was in fact my first visit to Orsay. I can even get in for free! (They assume the 'Arts' label on my Glasgow student card makes me an art student, rather than a student at the Faculty of Arts - quite a different thing - and art students get into lots of Parisian museums for free.) So that was another incentive to get down there: the fear of looking like a philistine on my return.

The former station is a magnificent building, and a museum dedicated to 19th century art with a massive Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection is precisely my cup of tea.

But, but. I have to say that the Orsay is one of the most horrible museums I have ever visited in my life.

The main hall of the station is an incredible high, spacious, light arch with an ornately panelled ceiling that soars above you the moment you walk in. The space is vast, airy, and should be flooringly beautiful. But it has been entirely ruined, in my opinion, by some of the worst interior architecture and design that I have ever encountered, and considering that the building was re-designed as a museum with the specific collections that it now houses in mind, I cannot imagine how the result managed to be so uncompromisingly unsuited and downright damaging to the works within.

I'm no expert in architecture or in art for that matter, but when the potential for great natural lighting is ignored, when the artificial lighting actually flattens and dulls the paintings, when the rooms are small and low-ceilinged and claustrophobic, when the walls are swirled with grey-beige paint patterns that distract the eye, when it is impossible to stand back and take in large canvasses from a decent perspective, when access for the wheelchair-bound must be all but impossible - I call foul. After enjoying the exhibitions I had gone to see, I tried to visit the Impressionist galleries. I climbed endless sets of stairs, and yet found myself in a set of rooms that felt more like a basement than an upper level of a grand and spacious structure. After 10 minutes of disorientated wandering, I felt mildly sick and claustrophobic and had to leave. I have never felt like this in a gallery before. Bored to death, yes (in Russia, aged 12) but actually distressed by the space? Well, there's a first time for everything.

For me, however, the biggest disappointment was that main hall, with its grand arch. It recalled instantly Glasgow's own Kelvinbridge museum which is designed around two smaller but otherwise very similar arched spaces. The (recently renovated and re-opened) Kelvingrove celebrates these spaces: their light, their scale. Visitors are encouraged to look up, to feel a sense of wonder and a desire to explore, up the grand staircases, into the side galleries, round the corners. The collections are excellent, too, grounded in the spirit and the style of the city itself. Kelvingrove is a real museum of the people: free to get into, and visited by Glaswegians (and others) from all walks of life. When it reopened, it was like a municipal celebration. From hairdressers to cab-drivers to baristas to lecturers, the number of people who simply head there on a rainy afternoon when they've not much else to do is amazing. Everyone will have their own favourite exhibit, and everyone has a real fondness for the the place.

In stark contrast, the interior of the equivalent space at the Orsay feels like the stockroom of some giant, disorganised shoe-shop. Huge grey blocks are stacked up against the far end, in a juxtaposition with the curve of the arch that does no favours to either structure. The visitor is unable to take in the space, cluttered as it is with similar bland structures throughout the entire length of the nave. You are forced up and down enclosed, short flights of stairs, the view of the roof is impeded, and the entire thing is shambolic. Furthermore, you have to pay to get in, the exhibits are deliberately divorced from their historical context and presented without illuminating information. The concept behind the curating style at the Orsay is interesting, having read a little about it, but I dare say that the average punter will not have done so, and will simply find themself baffled and somewhat rebuffed by the experience.

Oh well. Good thing that one is 10 minutes from my house, come September, and one will be reserved for another day, when I'm feeling more up to it - because the Orsay's contents are, at the end of the day, quite stunning. If the museum makes people happy, it is because many of these works have enough strength and beauty to shine through even the roughest treatment. It angers me that their current home cannot do them justice.

Ville fantôme

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:55:08 GMT

Paris is suffocating.

Everything has either shut or will soon shut for summer.

It's like a ghost town. A very hot, very stuffy ghost town.

I can't even face the idea of taking the métro down to one of the 'beaches' of Paris Plages to give them a try. I am falling into a heat-induced stupour.

A Tale of Two Cities

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:49:56 GMT

I'm beginning to feel worryingly at home in Paris. Attached, comfortable, decidedly someone who belongs here, who knows the tricks of the métro, who can sigh at tourists, who can be very rude when required...

Worryingly? Well, I will have to leave before too long...

But I know that deep down, I do love Glasgow, even if I love Paris, too - and I do, more every day. I think I could really be happy here for a long, long time. I think I could establish a whole life here. I have projects I'd like to launch into, people who fascinate me that I'd like to get to know, and so many more things on my agenda. There's no doubt in my mind that I'll come back to this city one day.

So as these things were going through my mind every now and then, it was as though Glasgow was plotting to make sure I didn't forget it.

I met up with a friend for drinks and she brought along a couple of friends, and a couple of their friends, and one of them was a Glasgow School of Art graduate, and the other a Glasgow University graduate, and in their own way they were both infused with a little bit of Glasgow, something in the way they wore their hair, in their humour, and of course in the stories we swapped of nights at the Art School Union and meals in curry houses and old tenement flats and dark bars full of raucous laughter. I don't know if certain kinds of people simply gravitate to Glasgow, drawn by something there that they all fall in love with, but I feel that I meet more of my kind of person there than anywhere else in the world.

Then we all headed up to the Parc de la Villette to go to the open-air cinema, and met the Art School graduate's half-French half-Northern Irish boyfriend, and he was wearing a Belle & Sebastian t-shirt, with Marissa's face looking out from it.

Then I was rolling pastry at work, when I heard the sing-song of a Glasgow accent through the window, and saw a girl sat at one of our outside tables. In her vintage dress, with her 60s-inspired hairstyle, and her pale skin, she mixed a little bit of Glasgow with her Parisian Ray-Bans and well-manicured nails. I wanted to talk to her, but wasn't sure what exactly I could possibly say.

I am looking forward to being back more than ever now, though.

There's something almost pastoral about the rambling, green Victorian grandure of the West End, and at times you could almost be in the lanes of some village that time forgot. It's a place that makes you want to pick up a guitar, to curl up with a book, to knit, to make short films on Super-8, to make soup, to listen to Vashti Bunyan, to be idiosyncratic, to be content.

(Thanks to the very talented Tommy for the photo, a man who speaks the visual language of modern Glasgow more fluently than anyone else I know.)