The Flying Pigs: Can we try making Union Street inflatable?

By The Flying Pigs

August 13 2022, 6:00 am

The Big Bounce has taken over Aberdeen (Photo: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson)

The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs.

J Fergus Lamont, arts correspondent and author of High Green Aberdeen – How the City Is in Bloom at Rooftop Level

It is truly heartening to see that, despite a cost of living crisis enveloping the country, the appetite for monumental public art is undiminished. Edinburgh may have it’s International Festival, Dundee it’s admirable V&A design museum, but neither can trump the massive installation currently invigorating our city centre.

You may not have heard of it, as it has received little or no publicity, but the Bon Accord Centre and Aberdeen Inspired’s provocatively named “Big Bounce 2022” may be the most scintillating piece of public art I have ever seen, and I include in that the Horn Restaurant’s coruscating “Cow on a Roof”.

I stumbled upon this utter delight (quite literally, tripping on a loose electrical cable) as I took my morning constitutional, intending to visit the Art Gallery, there to swoon over Viking relics. I was, instead, waylaid, blindsided and astounded by the sight of a sea of inflatable structures in rainbow colours. I must say, it surpassed even the triumphant “Aberdeen Christmas Market” in terms of exhilarating spectacle.

I found the entire area of Schoolhill and Upper Kirkgate transformed by the removal of all traffic. Instead, upwards of 20 kaleidoscopic inflatables of all shapes and sizes were arrayed.

Dyland Bremner and Hunter Campbell having fun at the Big Bounce (Photo: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson)

All was noise and happy tumult, as children bounced up and down upon them, shrieking in a state of high excitement, while a pulsating cacophony of music fought for one’s attention at a volume almost, but not quite, capable of drowning out the screeching of the pint-sized participants. A powerful metaphor for the current state of the country and its political situation – garish, wobbling alarmingly, full of hot air, yet easily punctured, and with hysterical participants at a fever pitch which could at any point tip into genuine danger.

I took the opportunity to immerse myself fully in this extraordinary installation by removing my footwear and bouncing around in wild abandon

I was drawn to one particular exhibit which was coloured a vivid red and emblazoned with the words “Big Balls Challenge”, as if daring participants to brave the spheroid encumbrances within. A commentary on the posturing of the Conservative Party leadership candidates which I found, if anything, a little unsubtle.

Could you take on the Big Balls Challenge? (Photo: Paul Glendell/DC Thomson)

What sets this remarkable work apart is not only that it benefits two noble children’s charities, in Charlie House and Great Ormond Street, but that, in order to engage with it fully, one must surrender to it, and experience the loss of personal control which that entails. Thus, I took the opportunity to immerse myself fully in this extraordinary installation by removing my footwear and bouncing around in wild abandon, all troubles and woes forgotten.

Sadly, however, my adrenaline rush was curtailed when – having successfully managed to perform a “seat drop” as a comment on the government’s attack on the legitimacy of the European Court of Human Rights – hubris overcame me, and I attempted a forward somersault.

Alas, I landed awkwardly, and became suddenly and acutely aware that I ought to have taken my keys out of my trouser pocket. I wept.

Tanya Souter, local lifestyle guru

I dinna ken about youse, but I love a bit of al fresco dining when the weather is this het. Me and the kids have had heaps o’ picnics of late (I say “picnic”, but fit else wid ye cry eating a Deliveroo Maccy D’s in yer backie?), but Thursday evening there was only een thing on the menu – a barbecue!

I used tae hae my ain barbecue, but I hid tae chuck it oot. Weel naeb’dy telt me ye hid tae clean them efter ye’d used them, so I just stuck it back in the sheddie efter me and Big Sonja’s joint 40th birthday party. In 2017.

I says til the boy, I says: ‘Fit? Wildfires? In Northfield?’ but it made nae odds

Fan I opened it up last month, there wiz mair foost growing on it than on Alexander Fleming’s sandwiches.

So, I’ve been making do wi’ disposable eens iver since, and they’re a total lifesaver. Nae mess, nae faff, and nae cleaning up neither. So, I sent my aul’est, Jayden, oot tae pick een up in time for oor supper.

Disposable barbecues will no longer be sold in many supermarkets (Photo: Cookie Studio/Shutterstock)

The little nyaff comes back fae Aldi saying “they didnae hae ony”. So I went tae Sainsbury’s and they didnae hae ony either. Then I tried Tescos and spoke tae a loon fa works there and it turns oot that a’ the shops hiv stopped selling them, because they can be a cause o’ wildfires.

I says til the boy, I says: “Fit? Wildfires? In Northfield?” but it made nae odds.

Fit a chick! The very thought that someb’dy as environmentally conscious as me wid be irresponsible fan discarding my barbecue.

Look at fit I did wi’ ma foosty een – some folk wid jist hiv let it rot in their gairden, but nae me. I got big Sonja tae uplift it and dispose of it appropriately: intae her neighbour’s skip fan he wis getting his bathroom done.