Mar 152012
 

Self-outed, unfit men of a certain age with a higher-than-is-strictly-good-for-you Body Mass Index have been gathering at all SPL clubs and Hamilton Accies to take part in a health and fitness programme allied to research being carried out by the Medical Research Council and universities. A participating Voice contributor reports, between gulps of oxygen and mouthfuls of bananas.

It’s voluntary, it’s not particularly strenuous and it’s good fun.

About fifteen of us gather every Tuesday at Pittodrie with community coaches Jason and Scott, weigh ourselves, discuss topics such as food intake, mild exercising and the downsides of booze. Everyone has a pedometer with weekly targets on step count.

Last week, following the previous session’s discussions on calorie intake and fat-burning, the pre-session chat was like an edition of ‘Loose Women’ as hairy men discussed the relative merits of low-fat yoghurt and M&M addiction.

Said one participant:

“Of course, I’ll go home and tell the wife that we spent the time talking about last week’s Dons game”

We all knew what he meant.

There’s a superb atmosphere of mutual support for our shared pursuit. Each participant knows what 5% and 10% weight losses will mean personally. Hard work goes on between weekly sessions to reach and exceed step count targets, to avoid industrial estate cheeseburger vans and to reduce the five pints/steak pie matchday ritual.

The track around The Hallowed Turf is ours for the evening to increase that step count. That’s also a time to chat to new friends about our efforts in the previous week and make obscene gestures to the empty away section on each circuit. Old habits die hard.

In the concourse of the Richard Donald Stand, Jason and Scott introduce us to simple exercises to aid fitness and increase strength and suppleness. Rudimentary football drills also feature, but Craig Brown has yet to pop his head round the door and say,

“You’re just what I’m looking for son, you’re partnering Verno upfront on Saturday”.

We’re nearly halfway through the programme, the second that has been run by the Dons Community Department this season. The previous group still meets on a Monday evening to exercise and play mildly strenuous 5-a-side. Some from the current programme have joined them and have been made welcome.

The encouragement and enthusiasm is phenomenal, the laughs many and the dedication remarkable considering we all have day jobs, family commitments and the temptation to lounge on the settee watching Corrie when we really should be strolling around the suburbs overdriving the pedometer.

All results are confidential to the participants and the researchers, but of course we all share our step count and our weight loss, if any.

The current programme completes at the end of April. You’ll hear from me again then.

Feb 032012
 

It’s the American holiday Ground Hog Day this week, and Old Susannah wonders if she’s not reading the same old stories over and over again in the local news.  By Suzanne Kelly.

Happy Ground Hog Day!  In America people eagerly await the movements of groundhogs on 2 February (everyone has to have a hobby I guess), and allegedly can predict whether there will be an early spring by what the little things do.   Ground Hog Day was also a Bill Murray film wherein he kept reliving the same events over and over again.

As I read the Evening Express and the Press and Journal, I wonder if the same old stories aren’t coming back again and again just like Ground Hog Day.  Another car crash, more pictures of cute babies and cute pets, potholes and personal health stories I’d rather not read.

 And of course Union Terrace Gardens stories have sprouted up faster than the  ‘rare’ pine forest  the architects have now drawn fully mature in their ‘vision’ of the concrete future.  Guess the pines should appease all those environmental-type people.

I had really wanted to ‘keep off the grass’ and spend one week not writing about the City Gardens Project.  However, the issue continues to dominate our local newspapers, other than a few car accidents and cute pictures of babies and/or pets, there’s nothing else in the local news.

On the other hand our bus fares have gone up – by about £150 per year for weekly pass users.  This is to pay for all the improvements – the increased reliability, cleanliness, and improved frequency and so on that you are experiencing.  No doubt you likewise received a pay rise of 15% or more, so you don’t mind stumping up more for First Buses.  I hear their owners are a bit hard hit by the recession, and heating mansions isn’t as cheap as it used to be.

Last week I was one of the deputees at the City Council’s great vote on shovelling  money into the City Gardens Project.  If you’re interested in what I had to say, here’s a link:  http://oldsusannahsjournal.yolasite.com/

I spoke for 10 minutes, and answered 10 minutes of questions from our elected officials.  Councillor McCaig repeated the promise  made by Alex Haig the Scottish Infrastructure Secretary that the project will NOT go ahead if the people vote against it in the referendum.    We shall see.

But back to the Ground Hog Day theme.  Sir Alex Ferguson has stepped up to the plate concerning Union Terrace Gardens:  he’s in favour of the garden scheme (and ‘scheme’ seems like the operative word) going ahead, per the Evening Express.  But haven’t we heard from him on this score before?  Yes we have – several times.  You have a feeling of déjà vu for a reason.

  You can usually tell something is a fact if an authority figure tells you it is true

The pro City Gardens teams are still ramping up with their fantastic, well-planned campaigns.  The people in Aberdeenshire were the first to receive the glossy, beautiful (not at all fifties retro, dated, overly busy) A3 colour brochures telling them why they must vote for the City Gardens Project.

It was such a heart-breaking pity to realise that no one in the Shire gets a vote.

Easy mistake.  I just wonder exactly who has paid for these brochures and this little mistake. But this lovely piece of campaigning literature (for which we don’t know who wrote, created, paid for) leads nicely to a definition or two.

Facts: (plural noun; Eng) data based on measurable, demonstrable truths and observable phenomenon.

A triangle has three sides.   The sun rises in the East and sets in the West.  The City Gardens Project will create 6,500 jobs and make Aberdeen £122,000,000 every year for about 20 years.  All these are examples of facts.

You can usually tell something is a fact if an authority figure tells you it is true.  If you read something in print, it must be true as well.  All those lovely brochures that went to the Shire residents (who can’t vote on the issue) tell you to vote for for 6,500 jobs and all the millions of pounds the Teletubbie Park will bring.

Who would vote against these great things?  It’s not as if these figures for an as-yet unfinished design with no price tag on it are just wild, bloated fictional guesses paid for by, er, organisations that want this building project.  Or are they?

My favourite part of the brochure is the transparent boy running through the flower bed in front of the theatre.  If it were to scale, the wee lad is about 27 feet tall.

If you still aren’t sure what is fact and what is fiction, here’s an example from ACSEF meeting minutes from 22 March 2010:-

 “Reassurance was given that the consultation report commissioned by Scottish Enterprise on behalf of ACSEF will be independent, and the consultation process had been robust and transparent”. 

Even if the electronic voting went a bit strange, and even if all of the entities involved in ‘reassuring’ that the report would be ‘independent’ wanted the garden project to go ahead, it was all ‘robust and transparent’.  (and that’s a fact).

    You can’t say Aberdeen doesn’t have its fair share of celebrities

Another favourite fact of mine was when Sue Bruce left Aberdeen and claimed in a press release that our city had a budget surplus of a few million pounds after she’d done her bit.  (Yes, I miss her, too).  Pity the budget surplus didn’t even last as  long as she did here.

Celebrity: (noun or adjective) fame, or being famous.  You can’t say Aberdeen doesn’t have its fair share of celebrities:  There is Sir Alex Ferguson, Annie Lennox, Scotty from Star Trek, an’ tha quine fae Torry wi the accent naebody kens fa’s on ‘River City’ [Editor:  am I getting the hang of Doric yet?  Suz].

But alas:  no longer can Aberdeen lay claim to being the home of ‘Willie’ – school janitor from  ‘The Simpsons’.  Willie is apparently from The Orkneys.  The Evening Express carried this exclusive this week – I think they did a telephone interview with Willie or something.  DOH!

At least we still have Mr Scott, and of course our own talking cactus, Spike.  Neither has yet released statements through their agents or directly as to their view of Union Terrace Gardens.  Annie Lennox has in the past stated that it’s up to Aberdonians to vote for what they want, but that she is a supporter of the gardens as they are.

She is clearly not as vibrant, dynamic and forward-looking as the much more hip Sir Alex Ferguson.  Sir Alex took a break from throwing football boots at players’ heads long enough to yet again pop up in the press in favour of the skateboard park – sorry granite web.  In the Evening Express Sir Alex is reported as saying:-

“I would urge everyone not to be scared of change and to look upon this as an opportunity and something which will allow Aberdeen to be favourably compared with cities both in the UK and further afield”

Well, we can safely assume his friend Stewart Milne looks at the gardens as being ‘an opportunity.’

Perhaps Sir Alex has hit it on the head (which he’s good at doing):  I’m really just scared of change.  I’m not scared of killing off the existing wildlife by removing the vital feeding and living grounds the wildlife depends on.  I’m not scared of destroying beautiful, listed, healthy 200 year-old trees that clean the surrounding air.  I’m not even scared of the city taking a £70 million (or probably more) gamble on an as-yet untried financial gambit:  Nope, I’m just scared of change.

As to how the granite web will make Aberdeen compare to other cities and places, I’d suggest that Milton Keynes, Siberian work camps and Ceausescu’s Romanian architectural projects would be the best place to start.

I think I’ll leave it there for now.   Keep a look out for your full colour brochure from the pro City Garden Project now, won’t you.  It should arrive any day now (if you live in Yorkshire).  You may wonder who printed it and who stands proudly behind its facts.  You may wonder for quite some time, as they didn’t bother to say who they were on this flyer.

There is a helpful web address on it, even if it doesn’t work at the time of writing, I’m sure that’s just another one of the few dozen small errors that’s hit the publicity campaign.

Question:  if the people supporting this project are throwing your money around on inaccurate full colour A3 leaflets that are going to the wrong houses today, what will they do with a giant architectural project tomorrow?

– Next week:  disappearing press releases, Press Complaints Commission, and Code of Practice for Public Relations Agencies – and more.

 

 

Oct 282011
 

With the profile of tennis in the country at an all time high, one Aberdeen based organisation is ensuring it plays a part in guaranteeing a continuous conveyor belt of talent is given every chance of progressing through the junior ranks in the Northeast. With thanks to Dave Macdermid.

Oil and gas services company Glacier Energy Services has provided support to establish the Glacier Energy Services Winter Under 12 Invitational ‘Masters’ Series.

The project, for the City & Shire’s most promising boys,  sees a series of six monthly competitions taking place through to next March at Westburn Tennis Centre.

The inaugural event took place this month and Glacier Chairman Scott Martin predicts a bright future for the sport in the area.

“We have a really strong group of youngsters coming through and, as a district, they receive regular training sessions.

However, during the winter months in particular, there are not the same competition opportunities as there are during the traditional tennis season. The establishing of the Glacier Masters Series enables the top boys to be involved in regular, high standard local competition to supplement their training.

The initiative also allows the boys to get to know one another more, and this group can progress together as a North East district team that can ultimately succeed at Scottish level.”

Organising the Glacier Masters Series is North East district coach Vikki Paterson. “We are extremely grateful for the support from Glacier which not only enables us to run the events throughout the winter but also allows for trophies for the overall winner and runner-up at the end of the series.

“This area has traditionally produced excellent young players and this current group is as good as any who have gone before in my opinion.”

Group winner of the first event was Ross Martin (David Lloyd Aberdeen) and Patrick Young (Stonehaven), Conor McMahon (Rubislaw), Michael Whelan (Cults), Anthony Low (Udny), Cameron Edwards (Cults), Syzmon Kierkiaw (David Lloyd Aberdeen) and Fin Pearson (Banchory) all taking part.

The next event is on Sunday 6th November, commencing at 8.45 am.

Oct 092011
 

By Alex Mitchell.

Art Deco: a style in the decorative arts as defined by a major international exhibition held in Paris in 1925.   It had been planned for 1915, but was postponed because of the First World War.   The exhibition was a celebration of modernity, of modern materials and techniques.   The expression ‘Art Deco’ describes the style which predominated there; a jazzy application of a visual vocabulary derived from Cubism, Futurism, Functionalism and other recent movements to a variety of decorative, fashionable and commercial purposes.

There was a shift in emphasis from the Fine Arts to the Arts Decoratifs.   Artists now applied their aesthetic skills to all areas of design, ranging from architecture and interior decoration to fashion and jewellery.   Oddly enough, the expression ‘Art Deco’ did not come into use until a much later exhibition in London in 1968.   In its own time, the style was generally referred to as moderne (not to be confused with’modernist’) and sometimes as ‘jazz’ or ‘jazz-style’.  

Although it applies to the decorative arts and interior design of the 1920s and 1930s, the description ‘Art Deco’ can be extended to analogous styles in architecture, where it is characterised by smooth, sleek, aerodynamic or ‘streamlined’ motifs, reflecting the contemporary preoccupation with speed and the setting of new land, sea and air speed records.

Sunbursts, sunbeams and sun-rays are another very characteristic Deco motif, reflecting the new fashion for sunbathing and the perceived benefits of natural light and fresh air.   The ‘Deco’ style created clean simple shapes suitable for mass production in factories using modern materials such as plastic, chrome and aluminium.   Even mundane objects like vacuum cleaners and radios were given the Deco treatment, adorned with smooth, streamlined surfaces and sleek lines resembling those of racing cars and aircraft.

Following its revival in the 1960s, Art Deco has been seen as the natural sequel to the Art Nouveau of the 1890s, of which the early work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) provides several examples, e.g., the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow.   Art Nouveau drew much of its inspiration from the natural world of plants and flowers and is characterised by a sinuous, curvilinear style.   A local example of Art Nouveau is the cast-iron Ventilator at the Holburn Street end of Justice Mill Lane.

But Art Deco is more a product of the machine age, and is characterised by flat, geometric shapes.  

Mackintosh at first incorporated a significant degree of Art Nouveau ornamentation in his work, but he later pared down these decorative elements in favour of a starkly elegant and geometrical aesthetic, e.g., the vertical emphasis of his notorious ladder-backed chairs.

Art Deco and other aspects of Modernism as applied to architecture were in conscious rebellion against pre-1914 styles such as Victorian Gothic, Scottish Baronial and Edwardian Baroque, which came to be seen as dark, stuffy, cluttered, over-decorated, pompous and impractical. It was now felt that design should reflect function, that function should dictate form, and that buildings serving modern purposes such as railway stations or schools should not be disguised so as to resemble medieval cathedrals or castles.

Modernism came to favour asymmetrical compositions, unrelievedly cubic shapes, metal and glass framework often resulting in large windows in horizontal bands, and a marked absence of decorative mouldings or ornamentation.  The pendulum of fashion had swung from the one extreme to the other, from Gothic extravagance and whimsy to a style, or absence of style, often described as ‘Brutalist’, if not as ‘Stalinist’.

Art Deco may be seen, at its best, as a via media, a happy medium between the over-ornamentation and clutter of the Victorian-Edwardian era and the stark, totalitarian style too often characteristic of the 20th century.

Art Deco emphasised stylishness attuned to domestic use and popular consumption, and was characterised by geometric patterning, sharp edges and flat, bright colours, often involving the use of enamel, bronze and highly polished chrome.

The simplicity of the style can be seen as Classical in spirit, apparent in the extensive use of Egyptian, Aztec and Greek motifs.   This reflected the widespread interest in the discovery of the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamun in 1922.

The craze for all things Egyptian coincided with the spate of cinema construction in the 1920s and 1930s, and was often incorporated into both exterior and interior designs, being very apparent in Odeon, Gaumont and other chain-cinemas of the period.

Sumptuous picture-palaces were built in Aberdeen during the inter-war period, the ‘Age of Deco’, including:

The Palace Cinema; the old Palace Theatre was substantially extended in 1931 to create its impressive Rubislaw granite frontage on Bridge Place, which itself stands on a ridge extending from Holburn Street to Crown Terrace. The Palace became a dance-hall in 1960. The building was owned by Scottish & Newcastle Breweries from 1993 until recently, and its shabby and neglected condition did them no credit.   It is now a nightclub, operated by Luminar, who have tidied it up considerably.

The Regent Cinema in 1927, by Tommy Scott Sutherland (1899-1963), was built on the site of the Upper Justice Mill, at the Holburn St. end of the ridge described above.   The Lower Justice Mill was down the brae in Union Glen; its mill-pond lay between the two buildings.   The two mills had been in operation well before 1320, when they were granted to the Burgh of Aberdeen by King Robert I, Robert the Bruce, and were still in operation 600 years later in the 1920s.

The Capitol had the most remarkable interior of all the Aberdeen cinemas, which included a Compton theatre pipe organ

The Lower Mill pond was drained and filled, the three streams diverted and covered and the site was levelled by excavating it back towards Justice Mill Lane.   The Regent cinema occupied the eastern part of the site formerly occupied by the Upper Mill; the western part of the site is occupied by the McClymont Hall.

The frontage of the Regent Cinema (latterly the Odeon) was of Rubislaw granite, decorated with bands of red terracotta, with a polished black granite base.   The vertical central windows, giving the impression of height, became something of a Sutherland trade-mark, later deployed to useful effect in the Kittybrewster Astoria and the Majestic.

The Regent opened on Saturday 27 February 1932, a few months after the Palace.   The building is now occupied by the Cannon sports centre and health club.   The new owners have renovated the exterior to a high standard, extending to the rear of the car park, where it abuts Union Glen.

The Capitol in Union Street in 1932, by A. G. R. Mackenzie, had a sparkling dressed granite frontage, slightly asymmetrical in layout.   Above the entrance were three tall windows with two shorter windows to the left and three such to the right.   The frontage was/is surmounted by a plain but elegant pediment which had the effect of concealing from street view the high, steeply pitched roof of the auditorium.

The Capitol had the most remarkable interior of all the Aberdeen cinemas, which included a Compton theatre pipe organ, and it was also the most influenced by Art Deco, both inside and out, e.g., the outer doors with their stainless-steel semi-circular hand plates, forming full circles when the doors were closed.

The Capitol opened on Saturday 4 February 1933.   Its more recent conversion for Luminar involved the horizontal division of the auditorium into two complementary night-clubs, one upstairs, one downstairs.   We are unable to say how this affects the Compton organ, or just what remains of the Art Deco interior.

Tommy Scott Sutherland went on to design the Astoria Cinema in Clifton Road, Kittybrewster, which opened on Saturday 8 December 1934.

This was followed by the Majestic in Union Street, (opposite the Langstane Kirk), which TSS regarded as his finest creation.   It had a fairly plain and austere frontage of Kemnay granite in the style by now known as Sutherland Perpendicular.
It opened on Thursday 10 December 1936.   By then, Aberdeen could boast one cinema seat per seven inhabitants, more than double the ratio in London.   (For more on this, see The Silver Screen In The Silver City by Michael Thomson, 1988.)

Other Deco-influenced buildings in Aberdeen are:

Jackson’s Garage in Bon-Accord Street/Justice Mill Laneof 1933, by A. G. R. Mackenzie.   This is a rare example of excellent commercial architecture of the inter-war period in Aberdeen, and has many Deco characteristics.   It incorporates the distinctive horizontal banding of windows and glazing, curving around the corner to Justice Mill Lane.   The Bon-Accord Street frontage has an impressive central section with three very tall vertical windows surmounted by a distinctive 1930s clock.   The building is now occupied by Slater’s Menswear.

The Bon-Accord Baths in Justice Mill Lane, of 1937, is one of the most characteristically 1930s buildings in Aberdeen, being a giant buttressed granite box.   Inside, there is an abundance of curved blond wood and shiny metal; the swimming pool roof is supported on concrete arches.   The window glazing is distinctively ‘Deco’.

Amicable House, Nos. 250-252 Union Street, of 1933, by Tommy Scott Sutherland, built just west of his Majestic Cinema, embodies some Art Deco motifs and characteristics.   The Majestic was demolished in the early 1970s and replaced by the present bland, characterless office block.

The 1930s Medical School at Foresterhill.

The King’s College Sports Pavilion of 1939-41, by A. G. R. Mackenzie; one of the few Modernist buildings in Aberdeen before World War Two.

Tullos Primary School, begun 1937, but not completed until 1950, by J. Ogg Allan; one of the best 1930s buildings in the city.

I should mention the Carron Tea-room in Stonehaven, built 1937 and recently fully refurbished; it may be the finest Art Deco building in the north of Scotland.

Finally, the Northern Hotel, Kittybrewster, of 1937, by A. G. R. Mackenzie.   Its curved frontage is dominated by broad horizontal banding of windows and glazing.   The Northern Hotel is the most distinctively ‘Deco’ building in Aberdeen, and has recently been fully restored.   The interiors are well worth seeing.

For all that, the Northern Hotel is arguably more a thing of interest than of great beauty.   The Deco style seems to work better in pastel colours and in sunny locales.

I used to walk past the Northern Hotel regularly, and it never occurred to me to think of it as a beautiful building; striking, yes, beautiful, no.   By the time it was built, in the late 1930s, the new architecture of Aberdeen had perhaps slipped too far down that long descent from Victorian Gothic to Stalinist Brutalism; all the way from the splendid Flemish-Medieval Town House of 1867 to the irredeemably awful St Nicholas House of 1967.

These bitter-sounding thoughts were occasioned, quite some years ago, whilst walking from the Castlegate back to the Brig o’ Dee.   It occurred to me that every building I liked along the way dated from long before I was born, and that almost nothing put up in my own lifetime was any good at all.   I like to think that things bottomed out, perhaps as far back as the 1970s or ‘80s, and are now on an improving trend, but the evidence is still uncertain.

That said, ‘Deco’ influences are apparent in at least three recent buildings in Aberdeen, as follows:

The Lighthouse Cinema; I like those sleek glass curves along the line of the old Shiprow.

The huge block of student flats in Mealmarket Street/West North Street is distinctively ‘Deco’ in style, brightly coloured in pastel shades of blue, white and pink/orange.

Talisman House in Holburn Street is another symphony in tinted glass with its undulating green roofline, now complemented by Gillie’s new furniture store across the street.

Talisman House is certainly a big improvement on the old College of Commerce; but is the Boots/Currys building by the Brig o’ Dee an improvement on the former, much-unloved, Dee Motel?   At least the Dee Motel was a low-rise building, set well back and largely obscured by trees and shrubs.   The Boots/Currys building might be acceptable somewhere else but, on this prominent corner site, is too big, too far forward and too close to the historic Brig; and it completely dominates the view all the way down South Anderson Drive and out Holburn Street.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.