Inverness -Then and Now
I'm in Inverness today, talking to the production team here about, well, the future. We're linking up with Highland 2007 at the turn of the year and have ambitious plans involving all the secondary schools in the area. We've also had some good audience feedback to the Inverness-produced Action Scotland series and the various conversation programmes we run at eleven o'clock each morning.
At lunchtime I went for a little walk around town and popped in to the Museum and Art Gallery. They have a great exhibition of watercolours at the moment, all painted in the sixties by William Glashen. Glashen was an architect and his paintings provide a glimpse of Inverness before progress and planners resulted in the demolition of so many buildings.
My favourite was a painting of "High Street before Woolworths" which shows you how the main shopping street looked before a hideously bland monstrosity was slotted between the neo-classical and traditional architecture.
I spoke to one of the museum attendants and said I had heard rumours that some of the worst office blocks on the banks of the Ness have been earmarked for demolition. She wasn't sure this was the case and, in any case, nominated the museum itself as another candidate for the bulldozer of good taste.
"Mind you," she whispered, with typical Highland wit, "they'll probably spend a million pounds renovating the building and then decide to pull it down."
Anyway, a great exhibition and it runs until March so worth having a look.
Later I ran into comedian Bruce Morton who has just relocated to Inverness and told me he wishes he had done so years ago. He's clearly in love with the place and is one of the few Glaswegians who openly shares my enthusiasm for this city.
He's trying to get some comedy projects off the ground and I told him we'd been keen to support a Highland Comedy Cup if that would be useful.
Watch this space.
