We have hopped, skipped and jumped from Istanbul to London to Glasgow in this modern way that grinds up the human experience of physical space. Tom’s energies are being sapped by something awful – hopefully just a cold – in a November Glasgow that is much cooler, damper and drearier than we found it in August. Nevertheless, short of time we ventured out for the day, first to the Burrell Collection (with its famous tapestries, mostly from the 14-16th centuries) situated in a large estate park south of Glasgow, then further south to East Kilbride where Betty’s grandmother (her mother’s mother, Nan) lived as a girl around the First World War, just before her family emigrated to Vancouver Island.
The collected tapestries, mostly created to hang in convents and churches and the grand houses of the nobility, are impressive in their details, colour and especially their depictions of natural features – birds and other animals, flowers, foliage – some naturalistic, some fantastic like unicorns, and some imagined to exist in unknown regions well beyond Europe. Pinks and wild strawberry blossoms, still familiar to us now, are two recurrent features.
One especially large tapestry, The Camel Caravan, some eight by ten metres, displays a regal-looking cavalcade of brightly festooned camels (towering like great curvy seahorses over everything else) with West Indians and Europeans of various classes moving through an equatorial l
andscape which itself is a mix of the naturalistic and fantastic – all probably inspired, we read, by Vasco da Gama’s voyages to the Indies. Another tapestry depicts lovers on horseback pursuing a stag; another a family of rabbits scurrying in lush foliage, one crawling into its burrow, only bushy-tailed rear-end showing; still another includes a tropical seashore landscape, perhaps on the Indian Ocean, a dhow and European three-masted ship in the bay, heavy-beaked, great-winged tropical birds flying between the trees.
Outside, walking across the estate grounds, the bitterly damp November air and black leafless trees come as a shock. It is dusk when we arrive in East Kilbride, one of Scotland’s so-called New Cities, a completely planned place and now one of Scotland’s fastest growing cities, launched several decades ago to encourage people in crowded central Glasgow to move out. We are in search of whatever remains – if anything – of the old town, and possible records of Nan’s presence here. Passersby seem uncertain hearing our enquiries about the original old village. With some help, though, we make our way past 20-year-old row houses and shops into an out-of-the-way parking lot where we come upon the local parking meter man. "Is anything left of the old village of East Kilbride?" we ask. "You’re here!" he says. "Just around that corner." We’re in luck. The man’s full of good humour and historical information and soon offers to show us around. "I’ve got plenty of time. No one wants to see me in this lot anyway," he says, chuckling.
Now dark, the three of us enter a cobbled square enclosed by several-hundred year old stone shops, a pub
and houses and, through a narrow short lane, a church and cemetery – the whole magically lit with white Christmas-like lights and streets lamps, giving us glimpses of the atmosphere of the older town, apart from the few cars parked down side streets. Standing in the chilly air, we ask more questions and hear more stories about the history of older place, including the nearby loupin stane or leaping stone, a block of steps set in the square for people to climb into carriages and carts, now hollowed buttery smooth in its centre with centuries of use.
"Have a visit to the pub," the meter man says. "There’s sure to be people there who can tell you more. Maybe even someone who knew your family." Inside there’s a blazing fire, men leaning on the bar and seated at the tables (a few women as well) and a nothing-has-or-will-ever-change-here feeling. We hear a little more about the village’s history (and the surrounding large city), but more about the pub we are in. It is one of the rare independents left, the owners, several generations deep, hanging on to the old artefacts, wood and stone work, and traditions (the free lemonade on the counter), but having to give up, by law, the tradition of a men’s-only haunt, although we are told it is still mainly a men’s hangout – which, by the few women here tonight, looks like the case.
We are then sent off to the city’s library where "They’ll be people who will look up your family records for you" – as there was. Off again into the dark, frigid evening, asking our way each block through a tangle of crossroads and walkways … past row housing and
little strip malls, across a busy thoroughfare or two, more housing, down a main street, through an underpass, into a mall parking lot, Hey, there’s a door, into the mall itself, vast empty concourses, papered up shops, a florescent dead spaciousness, then, surprisingly, an ice rink at the corner of which we climb upstairs and There it is! – the East Kilbride Library. Within moments Betty and the indeed helpful librarian-cum-village-historian are looking at microfiche and web archives and data files, printing out what they have found, gathering local history books – the librarians, two now across a shift change, responding with such interest and enthusiasm you would think they are a family uncle or niece.
Even tucked into the cold end of a long day, the visit is a success. Certainly the beginning of being able to discover more. Then off we go, past the ice rink, soon lost in the mall’s dead bright spaces, but finally finding someone who helps us escape, picking up a guide who knows the fast way to the commuter station. "No worries. It’s on my way." The fellow has a brother in Hamilton, Ontario who he has just visited. "They watched a lot of baseball and … football you call it. You know … you’re kind of football. Couldn’t bear it. Boring. Really boring. Nice country but I couldn’t never do that again …." Soon, there it is, the station. "You should be okay now. Train’ll be here in a few minutes. Good to meet you. Have a good trip."
"Thanks so much," we say as we vanish from one another in the dark.
Just like those kindly, helpful strangers in Turkey, we realize later.
The collected tapestries, mostly created to hang in convents and churches and the grand houses of the nobility, are impressive in their details, colour and especially their depictions of natural features – birds and other animals, flowers, foliage – some naturalistic, some fantastic like unicorns, and some imagined to exist in unknown regions well beyond Europe. Pinks and wild strawberry blossoms, still familiar to us now, are two recurrent features.
One especially large tapestry, The Camel Caravan, some eight by ten metres, displays a regal-looking cavalcade of brightly festooned camels (towering like great curvy seahorses over everything else) with West Indians and Europeans of various classes moving through an equatorial l
andscape which itself is a mix of the naturalistic and fantastic – all probably inspired, we read, by Vasco da Gama’s voyages to the Indies. Another tapestry depicts lovers on horseback pursuing a stag; another a family of rabbits scurrying in lush foliage, one crawling into its burrow, only bushy-tailed rear-end showing; still another includes a tropical seashore landscape, perhaps on the Indian Ocean, a dhow and European three-masted ship in the bay, heavy-beaked, great-winged tropical birds flying between the trees.Outside, walking across the estate grounds, the bitterly damp November air and black leafless trees come as a shock. It is dusk when we arrive in East Kilbride, one of Scotland’s so-called New Cities, a completely planned place and now one of Scotland’s fastest growing cities, launched several decades ago to encourage people in crowded central Glasgow to move out. We are in search of whatever remains – if anything – of the old town, and possible records of Nan’s presence here. Passersby seem uncertain hearing our enquiries about the original old village. With some help, though, we make our way past 20-year-old row houses and shops into an out-of-the-way parking lot where we come upon the local parking meter man. "Is anything left of the old village of East Kilbride?" we ask. "You’re here!" he says. "Just around that corner." We’re in luck. The man’s full of good humour and historical information and soon offers to show us around. "I’ve got plenty of time. No one wants to see me in this lot anyway," he says, chuckling.
Now dark, the three of us enter a cobbled square enclosed by several-hundred year old stone shops, a pub
and houses and, through a narrow short lane, a church and cemetery – the whole magically lit with white Christmas-like lights and streets lamps, giving us glimpses of the atmosphere of the older town, apart from the few cars parked down side streets. Standing in the chilly air, we ask more questions and hear more stories about the history of older place, including the nearby loupin stane or leaping stone, a block of steps set in the square for people to climb into carriages and carts, now hollowed buttery smooth in its centre with centuries of use."Have a visit to the pub," the meter man says. "There’s sure to be people there who can tell you more. Maybe even someone who knew your family." Inside there’s a blazing fire, men leaning on the bar and seated at the tables (a few women as well) and a nothing-has-or-will-ever-change-here feeling. We hear a little more about the village’s history (and the surrounding large city), but more about the pub we are in. It is one of the rare independents left, the owners, several generations deep, hanging on to the old artefacts, wood and stone work, and traditions (the free lemonade on the counter), but having to give up, by law, the tradition of a men’s-only haunt, although we are told it is still mainly a men’s hangout – which, by the few women here tonight, looks like the case.
We are then sent off to the city’s library where "They’ll be people who will look up your family records for you" – as there was. Off again into the dark, frigid evening, asking our way each block through a tangle of crossroads and walkways … past row housing and
little strip malls, across a busy thoroughfare or two, more housing, down a main street, through an underpass, into a mall parking lot, Hey, there’s a door, into the mall itself, vast empty concourses, papered up shops, a florescent dead spaciousness, then, surprisingly, an ice rink at the corner of which we climb upstairs and There it is! – the East Kilbride Library. Within moments Betty and the indeed helpful librarian-cum-village-historian are looking at microfiche and web archives and data files, printing out what they have found, gathering local history books – the librarians, two now across a shift change, responding with such interest and enthusiasm you would think they are a family uncle or niece.Even tucked into the cold end of a long day, the visit is a success. Certainly the beginning of being able to discover more. Then off we go, past the ice rink, soon lost in the mall’s dead bright spaces, but finally finding someone who helps us escape, picking up a guide who knows the fast way to the commuter station. "No worries. It’s on my way." The fellow has a brother in Hamilton, Ontario who he has just visited. "They watched a lot of baseball and … football you call it. You know … you’re kind of football. Couldn’t bear it. Boring. Really boring. Nice country but I couldn’t never do that again …." Soon, there it is, the station. "You should be okay now. Train’ll be here in a few minutes. Good to meet you. Have a good trip."
"Thanks so much," we say as we vanish from one another in the dark.
Just like those kindly, helpful strangers in Turkey, we realize later.
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