EGOs get in the way of life and land.
I was awarded every award
in my post-medical landscape.
But awards are not signs
to be posted on maps.
Let nature in.
I am not an architect of any landscape.
Scottish Chapter Prize
Reply
Category Archives: Poems
He practises medicine, plants trees
Credits: Hilary Mantel, The The, Alt-J, Geoffrey Jellicoe, Anton Chekhov, Thomas Mann and every generation of Peter and Sian’s family
Stifling distortions
The lawn was white with doctors
Habitually made marginal comments
Filmed at the abandoned farm of Bishopsfaulds, near Comrie.
Words: by me and some ‘borrowed’ from Liz Lochhead
Music credit: ‘The lost Prince’ – Adrian Johnston (2003)
There was an insistent present tenseness
This film ‘captures’ vintage cars arriving to Bridge of Allan for the rally held on Sunday 14th May 2017 at Strathallan park.
My camera was in two locations: opposite the Westerton and inside the gates of Lecropt Church.
The ‘borrowed words’ come from Iain Banks, William Carlos Williams and Hanya Yanagihara
Music credit: “Century” by Feist from the album ‘Pleasure’
‘Dig the grave and let me lie’
On the early morning of Sunday 7th May 2017, I set off to visit ‘Stank’.
I was looking for the ruined mausoleum to Lord Esher.
The Stank Mausoleum was built in 1925 at the point in this old Roy map where the four sections just happen to meet:
No place could perhaps appear less like it ‘sounds’:
Lord Esher’s Scottish home was at the Roman camp in Callander. Since his death it became a hotel:
It was at this hotel that my grandfather Rab Scott met The Beatles and had a drink with them:
Today, Esher’s Mausoleum is marked this way:
Lord Esher was thought to be the grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte (his mother was thought to be Napoleon’s illegitimate daughter)
Lord Esher was:
Lord Esher was different:
Lord Esher was married with four children but it is considered that he was probably more attracted to his own sex
Lord Esher was respected for the clarity and beauty in his use of language:
Lord Esher’s ruined Mausoleum is on the route to Ben Ledi. Thousands of walkers and mountaineers pass it by each year without knowing.
It was with considerable difficulty that I found it.
Even Hale Bopp found it a struggle to find!
It may be that Lord Esher’s remains, despite his wishes, are not here at Stank?
If that is so, perhaps this is why this mausoleum is sadder than sad.
This was how the Mausoleum appeared at the time of Lord Esher’s death in 1930:
Lord Esher was clearly a great admirer, as I am, of Robert Louis Stevenson.
These inscriptions, of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, survive by the collapsed doorway to Esher’s Mausoleum:
I needed to visit Stank.
Gardens of the Mind
I have put together this post in my appreciation for Geoffrey Jellicoe (1900 -1996).
Jellicoe was an architect, landscape architect, historian, traveller, lecturer and author. He has been a lasting inspiration for me.
When I studied landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh it was Jellicoe who was the guide for my mind’s eye. Without Jellicoe, I feel certain that I would not have gained distinction in all subjects along with the award of the Scottish Chapter prize. I was not a good draughtsman but I had ideas; uncultivated ideas. Six years of training in Medicine (at the University of Aberdeen) had rather stifled my creative and imaginative self and I was altogether rather too tight and rigid. In good part, I feel this a consequence of the unhelpful, and really too strict division between the so-called ‘two cultures’.
In what follows I have “borrowed words” of my betters, taking three quotes from a number of my favourite authors: marginalia and fragments that for me somehow seem to say something about Jellicoe and the ‘two cultures’. Interspersed are a few short clips of Geoffrey Jellicoe talking about draughtsmanship and gardens of the Mind.
‘before us stands yesterday’
This is a film about Haining castle. From the late 17c this castle was renamed as “Almond castle”. This film is a reminder that we may outlive labels or that labels may be outlived.
Today, Almond castle or Haining Castle (if you are a traditionalist) stands in an old industrial estate and brickworks with burnt out cars and rubbish as its landscape setting.
The quotes in this film are about the poet Ted Hughes. I was reminded of Hughes at the castle as the crows had made it there home. Crows often featured in Hughes work.
The music is “Exit Music” by Steven Lindsay
She said nothing and she shone
I went to Invermay looking for the ‘Humble Bumble’. I did not find it. However I did find something else.
This film is for Sian by ‘The Antiquary’
