Clava Cairns Revisited

Another instalment of my 'Gothic Travels', which is something I want to focus on this year. Today's visit is to a 4,000 year old burial ground in the valley south of Culloden. I've been there before, and you can see the previous post (with really terrible photographs!) about when I went there for a Pagan gathering ::here::.

On February 4th, my partner Raven and I visited Clava Cairns near Culloden. We drove there, and parked up at the carpark on the site, which only had a couple of other vehicles. I was surprised that there was anyone else there at all on such a cold and frosty Monday afternoon; the carpark was iced over with compacted snow for the most part, and while it wasn't utterly freezing, it was cold enough not to melt the settled snow particularly fast, and even in what is a sheltered valley there was as a certain chill - perhaps the damp air from the river that runs under the viaduct further along. [The viaduct is pretty impressive, similar to the Glenfinian Viaduct made famous in Harry Potter, and it too has a railway crossing a valley, but this one is pink rather than grey; I will give it its own post]. 

Long shadows from a low sun beside the ring cairn; photograph by me.

I apologise for the lack of clarity and resolution in my photos - my camera broke last summer and I haven't been able to afford a replacement since then, so I'm just using the camera on my phone, which is average at best. Please click on photographs for expanded versions, especially the thumbnails.

Pile of rocks in the carpark. Photograph by myself.

There's what appears to be a small cairn in the carpark, just outside the boundary to the main complex of cairns. As it's not listed on the maps, and it's not in the enclave, I think it might just be a pile of rocks from levelling a flattish plot to make the carpark, or maybe an 19thC folly addition, or even stones removed in the 19thC excavations of the cairns; basically I don't know what it is at all.

Frozen meltwater in a depression. Photograph taken by myself.

Raven and I; cooperative selfie.

Clava Cairns is specifically 'Balnuaran of Clava', as there are other groups of cairns known as 'Clava Cairns'. There's also a ruined chapel and another cairn at the far end of road, which I have visited before in the past, but didn't visit that day. Nearby there are two other cairns in an overgrown field across the road from the enclave run by Historic Scotland, and also a standing stone in a field that sometimes has I think cows in it. Either way, the other two monuments and the standing stone are not open to the public as monuments, and while there is some freedom to walk in Scotland, these fields often have livestock, so going in them could cause a problem (Highland Cattle/Heilan' Coos are very cute but they are large animals with big horns! Be considerate of cattle and farmers if visiting.

The setting sun makes for a beautiful light over the cairns.

Reflected sunlight on ice.

Photograph by myself.

The enclave around the cairns is of old trees, planted between 1870 and 1871 by the land-owner at the time, who had the Romantic notion of the cairns being a 'Druidic temple' so wanted to plant it into a 'Druid Grove' - I think there are a few Neo-Pagans (Celtic, Druidic and otherwise) who are quite grateful for that, because it really does give the site a beautiful atmosphere of being encapsulated by nature, something simultaneously apart from the world and deeply within it. I'm certainly neither the first nor the best photographer to take advantage of the late afternoon light streaming between the branches and trunks of the trees, and I felt that the melt-water and ice from where the snow had been defrosting certainly did something to make that extra-special.

Sunlight streaming through the trees across where the snow has melted.

Near-to-carpark cairn. My photo.

The cairns are approximately 4,000 years old, and they were used as mausoleums of a sort. There are three large cairns and one small kerb cairn. Two of the large cairns have passage entrances aligned with the setting sun on the winter solstice, and the centre cairn is a ring cairn - a central sealed chamber with no entrance, a sort of stony donut. I've read that the stone circles around the cairns were set after the cairns ceased to be used for new burials. The ring cairn in the centre of the three is almost a wheel design, with the ring cairn as the hub and low stone walls as spokes out to the standing stones beyond. I think the standing stones are also on a celestial alignment.

A cleft stone - was it split by time and ice, or is it a pair?

Photograph taken by myself. 

Scarf to keep my ears warm.

Selfie by the larger cairn.

The far cairn is the smallest full cairn other than the kerb cairn. There used to be an infographic explaining the sunset alignment at the cairns, but I can't remember if it's still there, and if it was, it was buried under snow. I think the far corner cairn has a cup-mark in a stone within it, and was re-used as a columbarium around a thousand years after they were made, in approximately 1,000BCE. It was excavated in Victorian times, but it wasn't excavated with the modern techniques of archaeology, and a lot of data was missed, lost, or destroyed. I don't know if they disinterred any remains, and if so, what happened to the person who was buried there, but from what I gather, the cairn was the victim of overenthusiastic dilettante archaeology in the 1870s.

The far cairn, aligned with the sunset. Photo by myself.

In South East England, where I grew up, there was a theory relating the placement of barrows to either be prominent on the brows of hills, or to be near rivers, and while I think the builders of the cairns at Clava may have been culturally different, the cairns are hardly on a hilltop, but they are in a valley with the River Nairn flowing through - but I'm not an archaeologist (yet... I'm doing my second undergraduate degree part-time, studying joint History & Archaeology), and it is something I would have to read up on. There's been some interesting papers on the placement of chambered cairns on the Isles, but I don't know about the mainland. Definitely something I need to look into. 

Frosty ground. Photograph by Raven.

The Cairns are very popular in recent years due to the success of the show 'Outlander', as apparently there is some connection to the series. I haven't watched much of it, and the opening scene with early 20thC 'Druids' was filmed on a set on a hillock with foam stones, and Clava Cairns is apparently not the site mentioned in the books (a better candidate for that would be the stones that remain of the cairn at Dunain, which I mentioned in my previous blog entry about Ostara), so I'm not sure what the exact connection is, but it's something to do with magical standing stones as part of the time-travel in the story, from what I gather. They've actually become too popular, and have been damaged by people climbing on the stones, and on the cairns, dislodging parts of the rock walls of the cairns. Large coaches and heavy traffic have also caused an access issue for the garage that runs recovery/road-side assistance from a little further down the road - and therefore for the clients they were off to rescue from mechanical trouble. If visiting during busy season, I would suggest parking elsewhere and walking down, as it is a pretty and pleasant walk (there are also several B&Bs, chalets, etc. nearby for accommodation.).

A rather rectangular stone. Photo taken by myself.

Raven. Photo by me.

The ring cairn was buried under snow, as was a stone with cup-marks tooled into it. When we got to the far end of the cairns, a tour-bus arrived with a medium group of tourist, and the peace of the place felt broken, so we walked off to get a better look at the viaduct instead. I must go back there again this year, and take photographs in different weather and seasons. I follow #ClavaCairns on Instagram, and a lot of beautiful photographs turn up in that hashtag, which is quite inspiring. Hopefully I'll be able to afford a new camera soon, and thus able to work on bettering my photography. For now, I am doing my best with my smartphone and some basic editing software. 

Snow in the dying light; photograph by Raven 

As a historical site, I thoroughly recommend visiting them, just to get a sense of the size and scale of these cairns. As a Neo-Pagan, I visit to reconnect with the sense of place, with spiritual ancestors and those past practices that inspired me to a nature-based spirituality. 

We made a tiny snowman made from two snowballs with twigs for arms. 

It's also just a pleasant place to be. There are some picnic tables near by, plenty of wildlife lives in the area, and the trees are rather lovely. Apart from solemn contemplation, it's nice to enjoy yourself, and I don't think it is any disrespect to those who were buried there thousands of years ago - as long as that doesn't spill into the sort of exuberance that could damage the monuments or make it so other people can't enjoy their time there too.
[My apologies for the formatting errors with the pictures; the blogging wizard keeps putting breaks/paragraphs where I don't want them, even when I remove them in the HTML editor...]

Dundee City

For New Year's/Hogmanay, I went to stay with some friends in Dundee. I think it was either New Year's Day or 2nd January, but one of the days of the trip, Raven and I went for a wander around the city. There's a lot of very pretty architecture there, and an interesting cemetery in the city centre. Raven and I were on a quest to find a specific restaurant, so most of the pictures were just snapshots, and I didn't get a chance to look at what they actually were, and with this being exam season (and with me having been generally extremely busy with college this spring) so there's not my usual historical and architectural context.

Quiet Dundee Streets

The one place I have some context on is the Howff Burial Ground. It is urban, bordered on two sides by walls and roads, and on the other two by the rear walls - and windows - of tall Victorian buildings, including the former newspaper offices. There's a windowed tourelle on one of the old newspaper offices that seems to be firstly an afterthought, and both leaking and leaning precariously, which seemed expected - the whole cemetery seemed like a bubble within the city that was in a different time and a little bit like a different world. Even the trees there were tangled, winding and strangely shaped! The burial ground was originally part of the grounds of a Franciscan monastery, and I think the wall with the arches dates from 1601!

Tangle-wood tree

I don't know if this is is a specific species of tree that grows like this, or the result of some kind of pruning technique, but this tree just grew in knots and tangles and lumps and snags. I've never seen a tree like it, but there were at least two in Howff Cemetery. There were no leaves or flowers on it so I, who am no expert on trees, didn't even have that to go on to identify them.

It is possible to do a virtual cemetery tour if you look up 'The Howff' in Dundee, Scotland, on Google StreetView. Apparently it was uploaded by a Google user (a Kevin Reid) - I didn't even know that was possible! It looks like it was done with one of those 360° image cameras or something, as a series of "image spheres" at locations all around the cemetery paths. I don't know how you link to a specific place in Google StreetView, so I won't add the link here, but I do recommend looking it up. 

Neoclassical tower

Near the cemetery was this rather large and fancy Neoclassical building - I didn't catch what it actually was, as I was walking within the cemetery walls, not without, and didn't actually walk past the exterior of whatever it was to see a sign or anything. Whatever it is, it's a very ornate and grand building, and the light on that wintry day caught it beautifully. I looked it up on Google StreetView, and it looks like a concert hall or theatre. 

Church tower, one of a pair

I liked this church, but it was hard to get a god photograph of it because there is a bus stop right in front of it. It is on Panmore Street and has two of these towers and a charming rose window. I thought I'd take one of its 'witches' hat' roofed spire. I love the vents - possibly to help the sound of bells escape. 

McManus Galleries

I had a walk around the McManus Galleries - an amazing Gothic Revival building. I didn't get to go inside them as they were shut, but I took several photographs of the exterior. I would love to do a photo-shoot on the fabulous steps - I wonder if that could be arranged! I also think the steps - in Baroque swirling design - work really well with this otherwise very Gothic design. It's an altogether fabulous, magical-looking building... 

Steeple under rainy skies

This is the steeple on a rather interesting building. In the centre of Dundee is a building that, at first glance, would look like a cathedral. It is huge, old, and Gothic and very definitely the size and shape of the average cathedral. However, it is not a single-purpose building. It has been subdivided, and done so historically. There is the steeple, shown above, which I think is a municipally run clock tower, and at least two churches and a youth group using the rest of the building, with the spaces subdivided for these uses. Apparently subdividing the building became a necessity centuries ago, as there have been several serious fires in the building. The history of the site is very long with the earliest church on the site being from 1192 - a time-line of history of the building can be read ::here::. It's currently surrounded by a shopping mall!

The observant will have noticed that some of the photographs -specifically the ones of  buildings and monuments - are watermarked 'Architecturally Gothic'. This is one of the two Tumblr accounts I run. ::Architecturally Gothic:: is  my architectural photography Tumblr. It's mostly my own work, but I reblog a lot of other people's architectural photography too. 

Fortrose Cathedral Ruins

The second stop on our little road trip was Fortrose, a town I have never visited before. I had hear that it had a ruined cathedral, but didn't really know anything about it. There's very little of the original cathedral left - just one arcade. The main building is gone pretty much entirely. ::This artist::, Kieran Baxter, did a reconstruction, which can be viewed at the link, for Historic Scotland; it shows that there's not a lot left at all compared to what was there originally. 

The Bishop's Tomb

I liked how the sun was streaming through the glassless window to illuminate the Bishop's effigy. The town surrounding the cathedral has grown up around the cathedral square, which is now like a little green park in the centre of the town. The remaining portion is still the size of a whole church, and it's quite eerie looking up into the vaulted arches (all fenced off) and in at the tombs and memorials. It was once a place of worship, but is now a mausoleum. Closing it off was probably for safety reasons, but its inaccessibility also gives a greater sense of reverence.  

Clouds And Arches

I wonder if the interior walls were once plastered and painted, but currently they are only covered in whitish lichen. I was walking around, trying to imagine the scale of what had once stood there, strolling down where the aisle would have been, wondering at what kind of roof had spanned above me, what sorts of vaults or beams, how it would have been with stained glass and wooden pews, and a choir singing psalms. I need to find out more about the local history; it seems like all the great cathedrals and ecclesiastical buildings in the Highlands were destroyed. Inverness' cathedral is small by comparison, Victorian and thus comparatively recent, and also was never completed. I sometimes think that if I suddenly became astronomically rich, I'd pay for the towers to be completed on Inverness' cathedral so that the cathedral finally has the presence it was designed to have, and so that the architect's vision is finally realised. 

Light And Shadow

The cathedral is an odd building to photograph, as you can only photograph it from the outside, but most of the really interesting stuff is on the inside. I'm a very enthusiastic architectural photographer, but not necessarily a very good one. I really like the angle I got for the picture below, bit the space was quite dark, and it's ever so slightly motion blurred because I couldn't hold my camera steady enough for the exposure required to get the detail in the ceiling. 

Vaulted ceiling

I am thinking of getting a Tumblr account, and using it just for architectural photography - not really connecting it to anything else I do as a blogger (e.g not a Goth a Tumblr, a buildings Tumblr). I know Tumblr has its problems with drama and unreasonable, immature people - I quit Tumblr once before because I was frustrated with how I'd go through tags looking for something, but find that people had tagged so much irrelevant stuff in there, plus a lot of stuff I found... a bit unpleasant. I know Tumblr has put in more stringent measures around self-harm content, and also I think around pornographic content, but these things still turn up in searches for things - I know why self-harm related content comes up in the Goth tag, but that doesn't mean it should. Anyway, despite my previous bad experiences with Tumblr, I am considering making an account there just for my architectural photography. Hopefully I stick to quite a specific content niche, I'll minimise my exposure to the negative and frustrating side of Tumblr. I'd like to share my architectural photography with a broader audience - more than just those who also have an interest in Goth, and I do wonder if Tumblr might be a better platform for that. 

Photographic Friday: Gothic Revival Church By The Sea

I have to do a precedent study for college, as I am designing a seaside home in a semi-rural location, so I have been visiting a bunch of little fishing villages on the Black Isle coast as that is the area our home is for. That is quite a long way to go just to look at stone cottages with bottle-neck gables, rectangular windows and dormers ('coastal vernacular residential architecture idiosyncratic to the locality')  as lovely as they may be, so I gathered up some friends and made a road-trip of it. Raven, Catastrophe and K went with me. 

Catastrophe and K photographed by Raven; he's an awesome photographer!

The weather was a bit chilly, and partially cloudy, but a lot milder than I would expect for February in Scotland; there's still snow on the taller hills, but it's strangely mild this year in terms of temperature -  in terms of storms, it's been quite bad. Catastrophe and K went to stand right up near the sea wall and got utterly soaked by the crashing waves. Raven photographed them, and I went off to look at cottages. But I didn't JUST look at cottages... 

Above the cottages I noticed a graveyard and church... 

How can I resist Gothic Revival architecture?

I haven't been able to find out much about Rosemarkie Parish Church except that it was opened in 1821, and is in a similar style to most of the stone-built Gothic Revival parish churches in the Highlands; it's very 'Church of Scotland' - fancier than most Free Church churches and less fancy than Catholic ones. I know that many of the parish churches are very similar, but I find them all uniquely charming in their own way, and while to some it may seem "they're all the same", to me each one is different with its own quirks, and I appreciate all of them. 

I like dramatic skies and pointy arches

As far as churches go it is not the biggest, nor the fanciest, nor the most unusual, but the thing I really like about it is not just the building itself - it is its location. It is just up the hill from the beach; it overlooks a row of cottages and then there is the coastal road and the pebbled beach. The view is pretty impressive. It is an exposed place and the salt on the wind reminds you that you're not far from the sea at all. 

That's not a field beyond the hedge, it's the sea

I love these wee churches with their pretty graveyards. I've been around hundreds, and they never fail to enchant me. I've written about why graveyards appeal to me before, and while I am no longer Christian, ecclesiastical architecture still appeals to me - people have made such beautiful things in devotion to their God (and sometimes, I guess, for secular ulterior motives too) and many of the better-designed churches convey a sense of peace and optimism, or in the case of grand cathedrals, seem to be man's best attempt to build something on Earth approximating how it is in Heaven.  I think some of them got pretty close. 

I also like mausoleums...

It has its own graveyard. I would think there are quite a few who would like to be buried looking out at sea for the rest of eternity, especially in a community that was for a long time a fishing village. I really liked this Gothic iron fence - the gate seems broken, not closing properly; I didn't leave it open like that out of laziness or anything; I didn't even open it, and I didn't want to fiddle with it in case I broke it more. 

Beyond that row of graves and the hedge behind them is a steep hill and then it is, as you can see behind the fence at the rear, the sea. Rosemarkie faces onto a firth, rather than the open sea, so somewhere on the horizon will be Morayshire - the land between Ardersier and Culloden. 

This is just one point on my road-trip, and there will be more architectural photography over the next few days, including the ruins of Fortrose Cathedral. It  surprises me how many truly grand and quite vast ecclesiastical buildings lie in ruins across the Highlands - Beauly Priory and Elgin Cathedral being notable examples. 

Graveyard Etiquette

In my last post I mentioned graveyard picnics, and it got me thinking about being respectful in graveyards. Something I have come across is a perception that Goths are disrespectful to cemeteries and graveyards, or that we will vandalise them. I even know someone who was removed from a graveyard simply because of how they were dressed. This is mostly a prejudicial attitude that comes from a general perception of Goths as delinquents, but sadly there have been instances where members of the Goth community have damaged graveyards - most notably the situation in Whitby where Goths and opportunistic photographers have caused an issue with the local cemetery due to people clambering on the stones to pose on them for photographs. There are sometimes occasions where "Satanic" or "occult" graffiti appears in graveyards, and this is often presumed to be the work of Goths - I doubt that it actually is, but again, this is a thoroughly wrong thing to do. 

I would say, from my experience of Goths, that we tend to actually be a lot more attached to graveyards and cemeteries, especially ones that don't contain the last resting place of a loved one, than a lot of more mainstream people, who generally avoid them. We're more likely to be interested in things like the symbolism in the carvings, the history of the place, and suchlike, and we are also more likely to visit them for some peace and quiet (I have actually written ::this:: post explaining why I like visiting graveyards, because a lot of people, mostly mainstream people, think it is weird), and as such, I think a lot of Goths find it very upsetting when someone desecrates or vandalises a graveyard, and as such would never do anything like that themselves. 

There are, however, those amongst all groups of people who are not very respectful of their surroundings, sometimes just out of not thinking rather than actual malice. I definitely think there is an issue when it comes to people not being respectful or thoughtful when doing graveyard photoshoots. I've been both the model and the photographer in graveyard pictures, and when doing such, try to minimise my impact and do so respectfully.

An important distinction is between historic and contemporary graveyards. More recent graveyards are often arranged with roads within them wide enough for a motorised hearse, more accessible paths (e.g paved or gravel, etc.) and the monuments are usually in better condition (but don't climb on them), however they are also in active use, so people will be visiting them as mourners visiting loved ones, and it is even more important to remain respectful of other cemetery-goers, and not to do anything that could impact on its use. Historic cemeteries often have very interesting and sometimes quite large and elaborate statues, mausoleums, tombs, etc. but they also tend to have less accessible paths, and the monuments can be in a state of disrepair; I know several locally where some of the mausoleums are in such a dangerous state of dereliction that they have to be fenced off with warning signs, and others where some of the graves have sunken downwards - in such places, keep to marked paths if possible, and avoid entering the mausoleums, especially if they look unstable or are closed off. I know they're enchantingly gorgeous, but that's not worth ending up as a permanent resident... 

There is also a difference between municipal or council-run cemeteries and ones attached to a place of worship. Obviously, if you are in a graveyard associated to a church, cathedral or chapel, one should be respectful to the place as a religious place as well as a place of rest for the dead. The church may well still be in use, even in historic graveyards with no new graves and is important to both be respectful of those attending the church and not to do anything that might disturb them; do not be noisy, for example, especially when there is a service of any sort in session, and remember that services are not only on Sunday mornings! 

So here are my guidelines to cemetery behaviour. This is based around my experience in the UK, and other cultures have different etiquette for visiting graveyards.

1) Do not clamber on the statues/grave-stones/grave-markers/tombs. From a practical standpoint, you could damage them. Yes, a lot of them are made of stone, but stone weathers with age, and not all stones have the same sort of strengths. A lot of times it is the details of carvings which become fragile, and some stones become soft, friable or flaky with weathering. Acidic rain from the industrial revolution onwards has had a very depressing impact on specific kinds of stone, especially. 

From a perspective of being respectful, these are people's burial places and it can be considered disrespectful to those interred and their families to be using their markers as props for photo-shoots, something to clamber on, etc. 

2) Do not drop litter. If you are having a picnic, or bringing any kind of food or something with a wrapper (even if it's just the plastic over a sketchbook, for example), either dispose of it in a bin, or take it home with you.  A lot of cemeteries and graveyards have bins provided, especially ones which get frequent traffic, and ones still in use, but even if they don't, that is no excuse to be slobbish and leave litter. 

3) Don't let your dogs foul the graveyard, and if there's a sign saying no dogs, then respect it. Personally, I wouldn't bring a dog into a graveyard at all, and if I did, I would keep it on a lead, especially if its liable to go chasing the squirrels or something, to preserve both the peace of the place and the statuary and tributes from getting knocked or damaged. If you do bring your dog into the graveyard, and it uses it as a toilet, please clean up after it. Just imagine the person who has to use a strimmer on the grass finding concealed dog faeces. 

4) Respect the peace of the graveyard as resting place. You do not have to keep to absolute silence, but using quiet voices and not being raucous or to bouncy is probably a good idea, especially in one where people have recently been interred, and where people might be visiting as mourners. Treat it as a garden of quiet contemplation, not a public playground. 

4) Don't let children play in the graveyard. Some children can be trusted to be well-behaved and quiet within graveyards, others can't. Don't let children climb on the stones, run around very excitedly, or otherwise behave in a manner that might damage the graveyard, cause injury to themselves (recently a boy was crushed to death by a gravestone as can be read about ::here::). Graveyards are not a safe place for play, especially as tombs can become unstable over time. 

5) Leave tributes alone - don't mess with anything anyone has put on a grave. Absolutely NEVER take anything left by mourners on a grave. The only exception I would see is if a real candle was lit and something had fallen or was in a position where it might cause a fire-hazard. 

6) Don't use it as a place to host your super-spooky 'ritual' or seance or whatever. Most graveyards are associated to a church, and it is disrespectful to them as hallowed ground places of Christian worship. It is also not a good idea to do this in municipal/council-run cemeteries, as many people would consider it disrespectful. You can do a seance in your own home. Sometimes ghost-hunting groups can get permission to engage in their practices with permission from whoever runs the cemetery, but do not do anything of that nature without permission. 

7) Pay close attention to the opening and closing times. Many graveyards and cemeteries shut at night due to problems with drunks and delinquents being a nuisance after dark, and if you stay too late, you run the risk of both being locked in, and being considered a miscreant. Don't try and jump the fence after closing; respect that whoever runs it is entitled to set their own opening hours. 

These are the 7 things I would give as 'rules', but also check to see if there are signs by the entrances specifying additional rules. Just because I haven't mentioned something, that does not automatically make it a good idea, and if in doubt, it's better to be safe than sorry.  

Notes for photographers
I would avoid are taking photographs of the text on markers; to me, that is the private details of whomever is buried there, and is for their family, not for everyone to gawp over, but that is my personal preference. As you may note from my photography, I tend to either photograph only a small detail, or the whole cemetery, rather than focusing on specific stones. 

I also would never pose, or act (in the theatrical sort of way) as a 'widow' or 'mourner' at someone's specific gravestone; that person probably already had real mourners, and it seems distasteful to play at being mourner when someone probably suffered real grief and pain over the person that was buried there. I would not encourage anyone modelling for me to do so either. 

In a similar manner, I would not encourage anyone to model, nor model myself, in an overtly sexual way. I think this would be disrespectful to those interred, and to those visiting, especially those who are going there for a sombre purpose.  Mix the iconography of sex and death, by all means, but don't be disrespectful in a cemetery to do so. 

Glasgow Travels Part 2

Saturday 30th November

Saturday morning started early - Sarge woke up to missed calls from Cordelia and Raven to text messages asking if we'd been caught up in the helicopter crash. I somehow combined the two in my sleepy head and got worried that Cordelia had been hurt, having not yet established the time of the accident, or really woken up to clarity yet. Sarge went out to check on Cordelia, who it turns out had only been looking for directions to a particular bus stop, and was  safe well. While he was out, we looked up the news reports for the helicopter crash, and suddenly the shouting and sirens from the night before made sense.  The news made the mood subdued, but it was still St. Andrew's day, and nobody we knew personally was affected. 

Goth meets Visual Kei, Aristocrat style.

Thanks to Raven for the snap. 

Outfit rundown: Wig - offbrand ♛ satin ruffled shirt -  Zanzea ♛ waistcoat - modified from Oasis charity shop find ♛ lace gloves - Accessorise ♛ brocade frock-coat - Hearts & Roses London ♛ brocade trousers - Primark ♛ lace over-skirts - Gothic, Lolita & Punk ♛ platform buckle boots - Demonia 

I picked out my outfit for the day - one inspired by a mix of Goth and Visual Kei styles, especially some the styles worn by Versaille Philharmonic Quintet - one of my favourite Japanese bands. I had neither the amount of accessories and fanciness with me to pull off a look as elaborate as that of the band, nor the inclination. Raven wore all black with New Rock boots and a trench-coat.

I am a terrible photographer

After a breakfast of left-overs from the night before, we headed out, first to the Christmas Market in St. Enoch's Square, and then to the adjacent mall. I am not a fan of malls, but I needed to use the bathroom, so we went in. After I used the facilities, we had a wander around. The mall has some interesting modern art/sculptures on the wall, and fabulous Christmas decorations. It was also very busy, and I am not a huge fan of crowded places by any means (not to mention navigating my way through a crowd in platform boots while having spacial awareness and coordination difficulties is tricky!). One thing did make me pause in the mall - a shop called Pulp selling pop-culture merchandise (with an Adventure Time promotion) band t-shirts, horror-kitsch fashion and Gothic printed clothes. I saw a vinyl clutch with a skull clasp and skeleton finger print design that I did very nearly buy, and some Iron Fist zombie shoes that caught my with its eyeballs, but I had to be careful with my spending so alas, I left without buying either. 

Such Beautiful Intricacies

We went back to the Christmas Market, which smells gorgeous with various food stalls, and investigated it further. There was a stall of Nepalese things run by a Nepalese chap that some flutes from that area - I already have one, but I couldn't resist trying one out, and so I very nearly ended up with a second. We headed off to a stall sending non-alcoholic mulled hot drinks, and I went for a hot sarsaparilla with spices that was both warming and delicious - a little too warm when I tripped, steadied myself on Raven, causing him to spill his drink, and spilling mine across my hand. It wasn't enough to properly scald me, but it hurt, and holding my hand against the cold marble of a nearby stone wall helped a lot! 

Classical inspiration in an ornate facade.

Our plan for the day was to head off to the Necropolis, and so we set off on a hike in that direction. In retrospect, I should have brought more sensible boots, but I had anticipated travelling by bus and I hadn't anticipated how many cobbled and uneven paths Glasgow has - I am so used to the concrete flagstone pavements of Inverness! On our walk, I kept stopping to photograph interesting bits of architecture, probably more times than I ought to, as you can probably tell from all of these photographs! It's like there's a more elegant world floating above street level. 

Gorgeous columns - I wish shopping centres were still built this fancy!

Glasgow was considered the second city of the British Empire by many in the 19thC and when looking at its glorious and ornate architecture you can see plenty of architectural grandeur that was built to display considerable wealth at the same time as make the city beautiful. It is slightly unnerving to think that this was mostly built back in the days of colonialism, work-houses, brutal child labour and non-existant health-and-safety, so a lot of the buildings built then would have been funded off a lot of suffering, but this is just like every other major European city full of beautiful 18th and 19thC buildings, and old castles built on heavy taxation of peasants, etc. At least something beautiful that people will enjoy for centuries has come of it. I'd rather look at such architecture as a memorial to the people who toiled and suffered and the cleverness of the architects than as a memorial to the merchants and property developers who commissioned them. 

Bank Window

On the way to the Necropolis, we found some public art with a Pagan theme at the corner of Shuttle St. and George St. - stone benches around a well converted into what appears to be a fire-pit, with a circle carved into the paving around the well/fire with symbols for the four elements and rather poetic invocations of them, with a mini "avenue" of stones engraved with natural and spiritual poetry. It looked fairly recent, and the iconography seems genuinely Pagan, so it made me curious. This is something I would really like to know more about, so if any Glaswegian readers know more about it and care to enlighten me, do tell me. 

We headed up past a wonderful occult shop called ::23 Enigma:: (website doesn't appear to have been updated recently) selling items for Wiccan, Neo-Pagan, and other magical paths. I had to stop and shop! I really didn't want to spend much at all, so bought a black orb-shaped candle with moulded Celtic designs, a Green Man fridge-magnet and a greetings card to send to a friend. Their selection of Pagan and occult (and Gothic) jewellery is fabulous, they have a wide variety of books on topics from Wicca to ceremonial magic, wands, cauldrons, crystal balls (Raven bought a crystal ball) and the chap behind the counter was very polite and helpful. Sadly it, and it's sister shop - Ladywell Crystals (slightly more New Age) is under threat of closure as the building it is housed in is in dire need of repair, with a damp problem, but the company from which the building is leased have as yet refused to sort the problem. There is a petition ::here:: if this matters to you. 

Rows Of Graves - here they look jumbled!

View it on Google's satellite imaging and you'll see the neat rows.

After a trip to the occult shop, we headed up to the Necropolis, which is essentially a graveyard city, eternal resting place of many of the rich merchants from when Glasgow was at its Victorian peak as the second city of the Empire. As such, it has an amazing collection of monuments and mausoleums and is very meticulously laid out on the hill, which according to the chap from 23 Enigma has a long history before the Necropolis was built, and that it is home to far more ancient burials. This isn't something I had time to explore properly, but again, if anyone knows more about this, I would love to know. 

An Eerie Mausoleum... Can I Live There? 

It is incredibly beautiful, and these are only a fraction of the photographs I took, and a fraction of those I could have taken if I had stayed there longer. The Necropolis does have proper paths, but they are gravel paths, which was something I hadn't reckoned on them being, as they look tarmac on Google's satellite view! For my own future visits and those of others, I would recommend flat shoes, and NOT platforms. I can walk on a good variety of surfaces in those boots (and dance, and run... You'd be surprised!) but anything unstable like gravel is a definite no! Many thanks to Raven and Sarge for helping me down several of the sloped paths... 

I have no idea what this building is except pretty.

The Necropolis is on a hill, accessed by crossing the Bridge of Sighs (presumably so named after the sighing and weeping of the funeral processions that crossed it) and its elevation affords beautiful views across the city. I took a few photographs, including the one above. As you can probably tell from most of the photographs posted, it was a dull and cloudy day. Thankfully, it wasn't too cold out - a change from the Highlands! It wasn't completely overcast, and I did get one where the sun peeked through the clouds. 

Look! Warm colours! 

While I was busy photographing mausoleums and the scenery, Raven and Sarge got talking about more Jewish stories.

The next item on the itinerary was a trip to the ::Tchai Ovna House of Tea::. I changed into a frillier outfit with marginally more practical shoes and considerably more impractical skirts, and Raven into something less casual, and we set off towards the West End of glasgow via the subway from St. Enoch's. 

After a short walk through a district rich in things like vintage shops and proper grocers, we went down some back streets to 42 Otago Road, a small, old building in what looks like an old light-industrial set of buildings (it was dark by this point, hard to tell). The decor was very bohemian and eclectic with elements from locals quite fitting to the origins of the teas and shisha pipes. The Tchai Ovna House of Tea has currently got an exhibition of magical and fantasy art by Julia Helen Jeffery, which I am sad to be missing. Raven and Sarge played chess with each other while we drank a variety of delicious teas - I had a variety of Darjeeling tea, Raven drank a hot spiced apple fruit tea that he has become quite fond of and Sarge drank Faerie Blood - a mixture of fruits, flowers and spices with a rich blood-red colour. I had to try some (drinking it sounded like a particularly supernatural form of vampirism :P) and it was really quite nice! The plan was originally to meet up with Cordelia again, and another female friend, but that plan fell through. 

On the way back, only a few doors down, is a secondhand book-shop. Its atrium is stacked to the brim with books being sold at £1 each. I spotted a book on Pre-Raphaelites from the street (I'm not joking, I really did... I'm not sure if that makes me eagle-eyes or obsessed.) which was my bargain of the day. I didn't have time for a proper look 'round but it looked like the sort of book shop where many a bargain may be found. I think I spotted an old edition of a collection of Wordsworth's poems with a beautiful gilt hardback cove, which would have been nice to add to my collection of Romantic poetry books. 

We went back to Sarge's apartment and changed once more, this time for dinner. I wore the nicest (and above-knee) skirt I had packed, my sky-scraping red satin and black lace burlesque heels, patterned tights and a satin blouse with ruffles, with a straight black wig. Raven wore a suit with a jacket with a Mandarin collar and altogether neat black clothes. We all went to the Nippon Kitchen for dinner, and ate some rather delicious food. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my glasses and gave myself a headache reading the menu. I went for miso soup, battered prawns, a sea-food bento, and some nigiri, with black sesame ice-cream with poppy seeds and cream as a desert. Unfortunately there was a mix-up with the waitress and Sarge got served my nigiri! The restaurant were awfully nice about it and made replacement nigiri for me free of charge!

I, having developed a headache, retired to sleep after dinner. Sarge and Raven went out to at least one pub and came back in the early hours of the morning, with one friend they had met while out. I was asleep, but apparently a spillage of tea occurred and the letter I had written to send back to my friend got rather sticky and damp.

Check my next post for what happened on Sunday!