Notes from the North

James Hamilton,. 1st Earl of Abercorn Look up the definition of undertaker in any modern English dictionary and you will find something like, ‘a person whose job it is to prepare dead bodies that are going to be buried or cremated and to organise funerals’. But there is another, less well-known definition of that word which I came across while researching the origins of the name Abercorn . Portobello and its neighbouring areas have Abercorn Road/Gardens/ Grove/Drive/Avenue and Park, a great many shops, clinics, social clubs and even a large cemetery with Abercorn in their titles.     Scotland is said to have the most concentrated pattern of land-ownership in Europe, possibly in the developed world). Roughly half the land is still owned by fewer than 500 people, among whom a number of dukes and earls. Some Scottish dukes have fallen on hard times but a lot, the Dukes of Buccleuch, Argyll and Sutherland for example, are doing quite nicely. I already knew this much so I shouldn’...

For decades Scotland (population 5.5 million) has been the country where more people die because of their drug use than anywhere else in Europe (246 deaths in 2022). Now at last, following the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain’s announcement that ‘it   would not be in the public interest to prosecute users of drug consumption rooms for simple possession offences ’ , Glasgow is to get its first safe drug-consumption room. Others may follow. Hopefully there will soon be one in Dundee too, which is, after Glasgow, the worst place in Scotland to be an addict. The Scottish Government is supportive of the new centre. Not so the UK Home Secretary. Predictably Suella Braverman remains resolutely opposed to the provision of any such facilities In England. It is Scotland’s good fortune that Braverman can’t actually stop the centre from opening here, since both health and social care and justice and policing are devolved policy areas – ones on which the Scottish Parliament can legislate. It is wort...

The main art exhibition at this year’s Festival has been Grayson Perry’s ‘Smash Hits’ (on until 12 November). I haven’t been to that. The pink-plastered pillars at the RSA entrance hint at the colour inside but they don’t entice me in. Nor does the prospect of the naked Grayson or more Alan Measles, the teddy bear we know too much of. There are lots more challenging artists on show. The most obvious one is at the City Art Centre behind Waverley Station,  a Retrospective of Peter Howson .  The exhibitions at the CAC are usually free. The Howson is not but you get a wristband that allows you to leave and come back later in the day. Perhaps that’s no bad thing as there are about 100 works spread over 3 floors and none of them makes for easy viewing. Peter Howson wasn't born in Scotland, but Prestwick in Ayrshire, was his home from the age of 4. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art but the programme doesn’t seem to have suited him. He failed the first time and dropped o...

You can read the question on billboards, programmes, street signs and banners throughout the centre of Edinburgh. Can you read it in Wester Hailes, Craigmillar, Granton or Muirhouse? Perhaps not. Like the multitudes of visitors streaming up and down the streets of hectic Edinburgh, I haven’t been to those parts of the city to find out.  I am fairly sure though that, despite Festival director Nicola Benedetti’s good intentions and best efforts, the event she’s in charge of is still stuck hard and fast in the inner reaches of the town. So, one answer might be – ‘ Why don’t we start by going to the out-lying parts of the city? ’ That would tie in rather well with the themes Benedetti has chosen to underpin the ethos of these three weeks of intense (and generally quite pricey) culture. They are:     1.       Community out of chaos 2.       Hope in the face of adversity 3.       Exploring a perspec...

The parkland in front of the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art – One on Belford Road is sculpted into what their website describes as a ‘stepped, serpentine mound reflected in pools of water’.  It was designed by the landscape architect Charles Jencks who is also known for his magnificent Garden of Cosmic Speculation at Portrack House in Dumfriesshire.  Garden of Cosmic Speculation  photos taken on a wet day in May 2015 The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is only open to the public for 5 hours one day each year when 1500 tickets go on sale to raise money for the Maggie Centres, a cancer care charity named after Maggie Keswick Jencks, Jencks’ wife. The park in front of the Edinburgh art gallery hardly bears comparison but is inspired by the same cosmic concepts that Jencks was able to express more fully in his own garden. The Belford Road site is also open all year round.    At present the gallery building itself is displaying Work no 975 by Martin Creed, a hopef...