Sadly, there was another fire at Glasgow School of Art on Friday night. Four years ago a fire destroyed part of the building including the library, but this time it was much worse. By the time a passing policeman saw the flames, the building was well alight, and it has been completely gutted. The outer walls are still standing but it’s still unclear whether they are stable enough to be saved. The building seems to have been under the care of the building contractors who were still in the process of restoring it after the last fire. The cause of the fire is not yet known.
Glasgow School of Art was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and is a very famous and much loved building; generations of Scottish artists have studied there (including my own Mum and sister), so it’s a real shame that it has been destroyed. Although I agreed with Nicola Sturgeon that thank goodness there has been no loss of life. No doubt there will be vigorous debate about its ultimate fate, whether to demolish or to attempt to restore it again.
As it happens, we were the Stand Comedy club on Saturday evening. Jennifer was visiting us before we all headed to Bill and Katy’s party the next day, and Davie came too. We had a great evening and all four comedians were very funny. Since it was very topical, I was not surprised that one of them brought up the subject of the fire, but I wondered how the mainly Glaswegian audience would react. He was talking scathingly about the very low terrorist barriers at Edinburgh Castle and suggested that the terrorists must have been scared away by them and set fire to Glasgow Art School instead. When the whole audience gave a sharp intake of breath followed by a collective groan, he said, “What, do you think that terrorists started the fire?” The audience laughed and he then sensibly moved on to other topics.
No comments:
Post a Comment