The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs, written by Andrew Brebner, Simon Fogiel and John Hardie.
J Fergus Lamont, arts correspondent
This week, I have travelled far to experience the much anticipated retrospective of the work of Marina Abrahamović, the grande dame of performance art, at London’s Royal Academy. Perhaps her most notorious piece is Imponderabilia (also known, by the rather more prosaic moniker Naked Doorway), which requires visitors to the gallery to pass between two performers, one male and one female, entirely in the nude.
Challenging, yes. Provocative? Certainly. An unsettling meditation on the nature of personal space charged with the undeniable frisson of enforced intimacy. But nothing, I considered, one hasn’t experienced down Gaelic Lane on a Friday night.
Upon my return from those delights in the capital, I happened upon a similarly fearless and indefatigable transformation now ongoing at the site of one the city’s most iconic architectural edifices. You may not have heard of them, for they have received little or no publicity, but “The Back Wynd Stairs” are Aberdeen’s premier vertiginous ambulatory edifice. And I include in that the psychedelic charm of the St Nicholas steps.
The Back Wynd Stairs have provided generations of Aberdonians with a quick route from the elevated viaduct of Union Street down to The Green – sometimes extremely quickly – and have an oft overlooked important cultural dimension.
Many late-night revellers, losing their footing, have been able re-enact the final scene of The Exorcist, and Brian De Palma’s Untouchables is forcefully brought to mind whenever one sees a mum absentmindedly stopping her buggy on the top step whilst contemplating her Insta.
Similarly, many a weary traveller looking to get from The Green up to Union Street have gazed at the Everest-like gradient and decided to go to Cheerz Bar instead.
Sometimes known as “The Green Steps”, possibly because of the colour of some of the mouldier bits, they have also been known as “The Boots Steps”, and have been there since 1922.
But, now, local situationist art pranksters “Aberdeen City Council” have satirically reimagined The Back Wynd Stairs by erecting corrugated metal fencing at the top and the bottom, rendering them unusable, and possibly also giving a bit of a shock to any hommes de la rue who might have been having a kip in the doorway halfway down. Still, glimpsed through the gaps in the fencing, the steps remain, as ever, a crumbling colossus in a variety of faded hues.
This is, of course, a powerful metaphor for the state of the nation; in great need of a deep clean and repair, dangerous for the vulnerable, elderly or infirm, quietly crumbling, yet, at the same time, robustly traditional and unbowed by modernisation. The rainbow colours of tolerance may be faded, but there is, undeniably, hope for a better, brighter, safer future – albeit one currently obscured by a massive metal barricade.
I arrived there having disembarked, footsore, from the London train and en route for my bus stop. Faced, in that moment, with the length of the detour which lay before me, and the blister, like the dome of St Peter’s Basilica, already upon my heel. I wept.
Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who knows the score, unless he’s in the lavvy when a goal goes in
“We is going to Hampden, we is going to Hampden, yous is not!” That was the cry from the Red Army on the terraces on Wednesday as the Dandies booked theirselves a date with dentistry at the notional stadium in November. It is only a semi-final, and it was only Ross County, and they did have only 10 men, but it’s great to see Robbo’s Reds moving in the right direction.
It was funny playing the Staggies on Sunday and Wednesday. The Reds turned them over 4-0 at the weekend, which was obviously a big confidential booster for the lads. I overheared one of the Red Army singing, he sings :”Can we play yous every week?” Which was ironical, considering they was the only team we played this week.
Fingers crossed we can keep up the winning streak against The Rangers on Saturday down at Castle Greyskull, but I is not holding my breadths.
In other sporting news, it’s a big weekend for the game of Golf, with The Ryder Cup is on this weekend, so old Kenny has got everything ready for the occasion. I’ve got my European flag, my European rattle and my Venezuela to cheer on the boys in blue and gold as the putts go flying in!
When they done a clean sweep over the Armenians on Friday morning, I made such a racket that Melody conscripted me to sit in my man cave for the rest of the weekend! I is not complaining, because that’s where I keep my beer fridge!