A running dialogue by NVA

Ever wondered what people talk about when they run? Listen in to Angus Farquhar, NVA Creative Director, and Hayden Lorimer, Panel Member for Speed of Light, as they jog in the park.

Beginning with philosophical thoughts about running to clear your mind, this charming short ends with a humorous discussion about what to eat after a run.

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For Angus Farquhar, NVA’s Creative Director, these were the highlights:

There were many good points during the day, I like the fact that even with some stunning allotment and homemade dishes on offer throughout the day, the biggest spontaneous queue was for the dinner ladies doing extra chips between the double rubble schools competitions!

The other memory is the mixed expressions of horror and happiness on the small kids on the barber’s chair being mercilessly spun around and played with by the maverick 85A crew before their grassy headpieces were hacked off with giant scissors…

To help you re-live the day, we’ve uploaded some photos, courtesy of Neil Davidson, our photographer for the day. Take a look here. Do you have any of your own? If so, please do add them to the group, we’d love to see them.

Also, if you tasted anything you’re keen to re-create, then you could peruse our online Recipe Collection, full of recipes jotted down on the day and uploaded by us. Now you can re-create a little slice of Glasgow Harvest in the warmth of your own home.

If you managed to pick up a pack of Secret Seeds, keep checking back here to find out what you’re growing. Let us know how you’re getting on by uploading photos of your plants as they get bigger.

If you were at Glasgow Harvest, we’d really appreciate a couple of minutes of your time. Follow this link and fill out our evaluation survey. There are just four questions and they’re very quick to answer, it will help us in planning any future harvests.

Thanks so much to all who were involved. From the dinner ladies who helped out with the Double Rubble Chip Challenge, thirty volunteers, the eighteen schools who grew their own tatties, to the many allotmenteers who made sure there was always some soup on the go.

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To find out what Tasty twEATS & Harvest 2010, click here.

Well its been an upside down week since we launched the White Bike Plan on a sunny day last Thursday. There is a Baltic chill in the air, my family are all still stuck in Lanzarote care of Ryan Air, who make Thatcher look like the good samaritan.  Never have I abstractedly hated a company more and their ethos of treating customers as little more than ‘dirt with wallets’. If there was a god, that shower of shit and their vile little leader would have had their come-uppance long ago!

I only share this small rant as I suppose their ethos is so diametrically opposed to what the White Bike Plan stands for. Of course, we will never have major impact on the world or bring joy or misery to millions, but in a way I believe its better to be small in your impact but have a shred of idealism left…

Meanwhile I haven’t been back on a bike because my legs are not actually functioning after running Lochaber marathon at the week-end. Although I trained for up to 50 miles a week through the winter I was still physically destroyed after crossing the line in 3hours 30mins. It’s amazing how your mind must edit out the pain memories from previous races. I couldn’t believe that so many muscles can be sore for so long. Right, I need to get a grip; this is turning into a blog moan. I am walking again and went in search of a bike this morning I spotted last night, but it had gone. I even had a Dutch white bike sweatshirt on so if I had to confront someone I could just show them my logo without confrontation and ride the bike back to the hub in Miller St. But word is, the bikes are out and about and holding up well and being well used. The footage and images on Vimeo, Facebook, YouTube are stunning and a great record of the action. It really has worked as a form of democratic art representation.

I think on the final week-end of the festival we should do a massive call-out to all the good hearted people of Glasgow to track down the 50 bikes so we can get them back in one piece to re-distribute to deserving community groups and local programmes across the city.

I finally realised tweeting has a purpose as there has been ##KA##a great campaign with people tracking down and spotting bikes in unusual places. Joe at Gear who built them for us had a nice story, a wee boy from the local primary school came in to see him, his sister’s bike had been stolen, so he wondered if he could have one of the “free” bikes to give to her. On that happy note, adieu.

Angus

Photo: Alaisdair Smith

Usual questions, about what if they are stolen and is this art….to the first: if you base what you do on the worst that can happen, nothing good in the world would ever happen, on the second: that a re-enactment as social action communicating ideas about real issues that were relevant to everyday life 45 years ago as they are today is an important strand of contemporary practice (they won’t use that bit).

After ten takes I said to the interviewer that I was beginning to sound like a politician, he said yes but the difference is that you mean it.

Angus

Since the weather has improved I’ve been riding an old 1940’s Dawes super galaxy racer round town. This is a bike with a strong lineage going back to before the Provo’s time. My friend Wendy’s dad Norman Shillinglaw was an amateur champion cylist with Gala CC. He emigrated to Canada in the early 1990’s and had to sell most of his bikes before he went. I was luck to get one of his Dawes touring bikes. It was stolen last year, I was completely gutted and could hardly bear to tell Wendy as her dad had recently died and there was a real sense of connection to him through the lost bike.

It turned out that he had kept one last bike in Canada and it had come home to Scotland in bits in a cardboard box and was lying in a garage in Kilbarchan. Wendy wanted me to have it, so I picked it the box and took it unopened to Joe at Gear Cycles in Glasgow and we found a 65 year old English Leatheries seat and the original frame and wheels of a single speed track racer from the same period. Norman had found it in the coal cellar at the back of his uncle’s house in a village near Durham and had done it up 40 years ago. Joe put on new forks, as the huge bend at the end of the old forks (which gave it the look of a pre-war original from the Tour de France) made it really wobbly to ride! He also put on a set of Campagnola gears and new brakes as we weren’t too purist when it came to safety.

So I feel like I’m riding a piece of living history with this bike, it’s a hybrid of different people’s attention and care from over the years, but most important is the fact that its still going. If any of the white bikes survive that long it will be testament to either good manufacture or luck!

Angus

It proves that if an idea is really good it can inspire change and that the seemingly leftfield can often influence the mainstream without compromising itself.

It’s good to know that the moronic right wing is still alive, if not kicking in Scotland. We had a first critical article in the Daily Mail, railing against the waste of public money on free bikes that will be stolen by Neds; (I suppose for once they can’t blame asylum seekers). When a paper as lacking in moral acuity as the Mail is on to you- then you must have something worthwhile to attack!

Angus

P.S. Unfortunately the Mail article is not available online, but check our write up from The Sunday Herald of the same week.