The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs.
J Fergus Lamont, arts correspondent and author of Contain Yourself: A Design History of the Carterra Rubislaw Quarry Development
I pen these words from my box-shaped, 3-star hotel room in London’s fashionable Euston Road. (It’s a long story, involving an engrossing article in the latest edition of the WS Gilbert Society Journal, and a bus driver who clearly misheard my enquiry as to whether or not he was going to Lumphanan.)
As I look out at the throngs of people marching determinedly up and down the eponymous road – jarringly few in the traditional cockney attire of a pearly king or queen – I notice a seemingly endless parade of shopfronts, and find myself laughing at this antiquarian vista.
Despite inflation’s imminently predicted rise to 13%, our own Granite City still leads the way in transformative experiences located at the vital nexus twixt art and retail.
You may not have heard of it, for it has garnered little or no publicity, but Aberdeen’s prestigious The Bon Accord (Centre), not two weeks after their provocative “Big Bounce 2022”, has now revealed that the bounce has most thoroughly left the building.
Their latest artistic happening has a title which is both stark and powerful – “In Administration”. Two words which conjure up both the efficiency and industriousness of the blue-collar retail worker, whilst simultaneously suggesting quite the opposite.
But, what does this nebulous concept mean? Reader, I endeavoured to find out, and so took my morning constitutional along to “The Bon Accord”. (There is no “Centre” now, the word having been expunged. A metaphor which I, for one, find a little “on the nose”.)
One first passes through the introductory retail corridor previously known as The St Nicholas Centre, acclimatising oneself to the gaudy frontages of Claire’s Accessories and The Card Factory, and the heady aromas of The Body Shop.
The ghosts of thousands of weary shoppers trudge disconsolately around the Sky TV island, avoiding eye contact, in a dance as old as time
Leaving this veritable bazaar, and avoiding the highly-amplified busker who serenades one at the crossing, one enters the hallowed portals of The Bon Accord itself, invariably through the single automatic door on the far left. All other doors left closed, ignored, in a powerful commentary on our overreliance on technology.
Within, the installation dramatically subverts our expectations. Whither now the great glass lift of yore? Instead, there is created a revolutionary form of anti-shopping, where the majority of artistic spaces (or “units”, to use the artists’ parlance) are empty, void, but full of exciting potentiality.
One stands in the boarded up doorway of Topman and is positively chilled by the thought of what once was there, but isn’t anymore – the ghosts of thousands of weary shoppers trudge disconsolately around the Sky TV island, avoiding eye contact, in a dance as old as time.
Sheer magic. And, truly, a powerful metaphor for our beleaguered isle – devoid of stock, boarded up, all glories firmly in the past, doubtless, in the days and months to come, to be trussed up good and proper.
I wept.
Jonathan M Lewis, local headteacher
The new term is in full swing here at Garioch Academy, and it’s been great to welcome some fresh faces, as well as all the familiar ones we missed seeing so much over summer break.
Our exam results have been formally deemed “acceptable” by the education officers, and we look forward to what we hope will be a full session without the disruption and distress of recent years, where we can build on, or at least maintain, that extraordinary achievement.
We still face challenges, however. For example, schools are by no means immune to soaring energy bills, and I can assure the Garioch community that I will leave no boiler turned on in our efforts to make savings.
I have asked all of my colleagues to be fastidious when it comes to switching off lights. Mr King of the biology department is famed in the staff room for his catchphrase – usually delivered after a practical experiment with S2: “I need a lie down in a darkened room.” Well, these days, he’s got plenty to choose from.
There is one measure I think will make an enormous difference – and it’s something parents can help with. It has not escaped my attention that pupils have taken to charging their devices using the school’s power sockets.
Sometimes, that’s necessary, of course, but last week I saw S5 pupil Daniel Metcalfe using school sockets to charge his phone, iPad, laptop, an electric drill, a Dyson hoover and a belt sander. So, let’s all play fair.
Pupils should only charge devices needed for school at school – and, in the spirit of community, I promise I’ll stop putting my sheets and towels in the home economics tumble dryer.
- See The Flying Pigs live in The Rothienorman Picture Show at HMT Aberdeen from September 21 to 24
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