Glasgow Flowers
A wet summer Sunday is as good a day as any for a walk in the Botanic Gardens, which this year celebrates its 200th birthday. Today I noticed something I hadn’t spotted before: the city’s motto Let Glasgow Flourish and its Coat of Arms sculpted into the wall of a building just inside the Gt Western Road/Byres Road entrance, complete with the tree that never grew, the fish that never swam, the bird that never flew and the bell that never rang.
For the story behind the City of Glasgow’s Coat of Arms, see here.
Benches I have known
Benches make me think of open-air places: public parks, private gardens, lakes, beaches, picnics, sports, places in the city where you can have your lunch on a warm day…
But also the workbenches used by artisans, the schoolbenches used by children, the (back)benches occupied by politicians, the pews where churchgoers kneel, maybe also the judge’s (figurative) bench.
The solitary bench is a familiar image, showing splendid or melancholy isolation, often set in beautiful landscape.
A bench on one’s own, on the edge of the crowd, may be pretty melancholy too, but there’s something so forlorn about a broken bench, or a bench that’s made for conviviality but left empty.
Here are a few of the many benches I have come across recently.
Solitary bench on the Isle of Arran (Scotland)
Picnic table and cottage on the Isle of Mull (Scotland)
Botanic Gardens, Glasgow
Old town, Rhodes (Greece)
Inside the ferry on Lake Como (Italy)
Church benches (Como)
Glasgow
Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
John Street, Glasgow
Venice
Venice
Kumrovec, Tito’s village (Croatia)
An upturned and broken bench near Sermoneta (Italy)
A luthier at his workbench (Naples)
Vincent’s bench
A bench in the sun
Bench in high water (Venice)
Bench at the Kelvin Grove Art Gallery (Glasgow)
Museum bench
A place to sit between takes (filming with Brad Pitt in Glasgow)
On a day-trip to Sermoneta
Still waiting for Brad in George Square, Glasgow
Contemplation at Hoan Kiem Lake (Hanoi)
A bench is a place where you can change your shoes…
…and air your armpits…
…and have your wedding shoot (Hanoi)
Benches at Scotland Street school, Glasgow
Schoolchildren at their benches in a village in Northern Vietnam
Guarding the benches at George Square (and still waiting for Brad)
Check out Where’s My Backpack for this week’s travel theme: Benches.
