Jim's travels

For those of you who took the journey through the North Island of New Zealand with me, and anyone else interested in the journey,  I think I’m finished that section of the website, you can check it out here, please let me know if I’ve missed anything or offended anyone.

https://theholmestead.com/

I was in Glasgow yesterday to catch up with Graeme over a few beers in the Raven, one of my favourite haunts.  On the way up Renfield Street, I stepped into Renfield Lane to avoid  a large puddle and spotted this intriguing little piece of street art:

I have since discovered that it was created in 2013 by Peter Drew, a freelance arts writer and street artist, who was born in Adelaide and is currently living in Glasgow.  This piece is one of sixteen pieces depicting a complete soliloquy from Hamlet, I have seen the others online, now I have the challenge of finding them and photographing them.

Another surprise from the visit was the discovery that the Raven had commisioned the prolific Glasgow street artist Danny McDermott, aka EJEK, to create a thermal image styled Raven on the side wall of the pub in Bath Lane.

EJEK is a major Street Artist in Glasgow, most people will know his work with Rogue One, on the Clutha bar immortalising celebrities including Spike Milligan, Jimmy Reid, Billy Connolly.

I don’t want to stray into Briony’s Glasgow Food Blog area by starting to review pubs and restaurants, but for me, the Raven deserves a review.

I’m regularly in the Raven for a few pints and a bite to eat  with my friend Jim, it’s our main meeting place, we say we’ll start there then move on, only we rarely move on, the range of beers is excellent, the food is good and the place is always clean and tidy, plus the staff are always pleasant, they have got to know us and our preference for certain types of beer and are always happy to suggest suitable brews.  I would go as far as to say it’s my local in the city centre.

 

I was very pleased to see the article in the current edition of the Rutherglen Reformer regarding my campaign to get John Dunn’s death in WW1 recognised and added to the Cenotaph.  It was just a pity that I was unable to gather his other remaining grandchildren for the photo shoot.

Since my last post, I have been working away bringing the site up to date, mainly adding more photographs and tidying up the Glasgow mural trail and the Australia sections, so far I have added 2 of my trails and I’m working on the others.  I’ve taken so many photographs recently, it’s difficult to decide which to cut out.

While out and about last week I came across Rogue One’s latest piece of art in the gap left in Sauchiehall Street where Victorias went on fire, I have included one of the images here, the rest will be on the Glasgow Street Art section in due course.

As I had been travelling like a new age hippie over the past few months I thought it was time for me to visit Sharon, in Eaglesham, my friendly barber for a trim, as usual, she did a great job, that’s me sorted until the new year.

Following advice from Graeme, I’ve changed my approach to the Glasgow Street art section of the site. I will attempt to show the photographs as I took them and I will describe the walking route taken, and where possible include a map.

The first of these routes can be seen here, before I commit to this format, please let me know what you think of these changes.

I had a busy day yesterday, I was asked by the Rutherglen Reformer to go to Rutherglen’s Cenotaph to get some photographs taken for a story they intend to run about me managing to get my grandfather, John Dunn’s name added to it. My 3 remaining cousins, my brother Billy and myself were there last Sunday to lay a wreath so it was a pity I didn’t have enough time to get them there for the photographs.

After a lunch at home, I took a wander up to Clarkston Toll and was quite surprised to see a “little train” running down the street, I then discovered that it was the 2018 Clarkston Christmas Lights Switch On, in the Clarkston Halls Car Park.

The car park was very busy with all the usual fun with live music, pony rides, the Santa Express train, a huge firework finale and of course a visit from the man himself in his Grotto – and plenty of stalls selling Christmas goods. The local cafes, bars, restaurants and businesses were well represented, keeping the large crowd nourished.

Back home, I continued to add photographs to the site pages, this time the Alice Springs page.

I’ve also started adding images to the Glasgow Street Art page.

As I had a quiet morning and now that I’ve resized a lot of my photographs, I’ve started the process of adding them to the relevant pages, today I added images to the Perth page, you can see them <here>.

Please bear with me, I’m still working on the layout of the site and I’m currently resizing a load of my images to add to each page.  If you have visited recently, please let me know what you think of the site so far.

Thanks for joining me!

This is the site where I’ll try to post photographs and stories from my recent adventures.

Each location I have visited recently now has its own journal style page, they can be found here.

I realise that not everyone is interested in street art like me but for those that are, the photographs I have taken in each location can be found on these pages.