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Obsidian Urbex Photography

🆕 #Photo gallery and blog post - Val-Benoît Institute of Chemistry & Metallurgy, Belgium

Val-Benoît Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy, founded 1937, trained generations of Belgium's scientists. It closed in the early 2000s.

Head over to my website to explore abandoned laboratories, dusty lecture theaters and an interesting #Modernist entry hall.

Full article with history and photo gallery - obsidianurbexphotography.com/e

abandoned laboratory with wooden fume cupboards, long pipes run along the ceiling to exhaust the fumes
#ArtDeco
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

“[Davidson] makes the case for those in the depth of hardship by the depiction of an ordinary husband and wife, suffering inescapably, but maintaining a grip on their powers of resilience and love.”

—Carol Rumens on John Davidson’s “Villanelle” – “A still potent vision of a Glasgow family in poverty at the end of the 19th century, clinging on to hope.”

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theguardian.com/books/2024/dec

The Guardian · Poem of the week: Villanelle by John DavidsonBy Carol Rumens
#Scottish#literature#poetry
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

“As a condition-of-England poem, ‘A Northern Suburb’ rings bells louder than a Royal wedding, even today.”

John Davidson grew up in Greenock, a son of the manse – although he soon rebelled against his father’s religious beliefs. A prolific writer, he influenced many Modernist poets such as WB Yeats, Wallace Stevens, TS Eliot & Hugh MacDiarmid

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theguardian.com/books/booksblo

The Guardian · Poem of the week: A Northern Suburb by John DavidsonBy Carol Rumens
#Scottish#literature#poetry
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key…

—“Thirty Bob a Week”, by the 19th-century poet, playwright & novelist John Davidson (1857–1909) – born #OTD, 11 April. A 🎂 🧵

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Page images from THE YELLOW BOOK vol. 2, 1894 – available on @gutenberg_org

gutenberg.org/files/41876/4187

John Davidson Thirty Bob a Week I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw, And set the blooming world a-work for me, Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you— On the handle of a skeleton gold key. I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week: I’m a clerk at thirty bob as you can see. But I don’t allow it’s luck and all a toss; There’s no such thing as being starred and crossed; It’s just the power of some to be a boss, And the bally power of others to be bossed: I face the music, sir; you bet I ain’t a cur! Strike me lucky if I don’t believe I’m lost! For like a mole I journey in the dark, A-travelling along the underground From my Pillar’d Halls and broad suburban Park To come the daily dull official round; And home again at night with my pipe all alight A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.
And it’s often very cold and very wet; And my missis stitches towels for a hunks; And the Pillar’d Halls is half of it to let— Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks. And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh, When the noisy little kids are in their bunks. But you never hear her do a growl or whine, For she’s made of flint and roses, very odd; And I’ve got to cut my meaning rather fine Or I’d blubber, for I’m made of greens and sod: So p’rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell, And lost and damn’d and served up hot to God. I ain’t blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue; I’m saying things a bit beyond your art: Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung Thirty bob a week’s the rummiest start! With your science and your books and your the’ries about spooks, Did you ever hear of looking in your heart? I didn’t mean your pocket, Mr., no! I mean that having children and a wife, With thirty bob on which to come and go, Isn’t dancing to the tabor and the fife; When it doesn’t make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think, And notice curious items about life. I step into my heart and there I meet A god-almighty devil singing small,
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street, And squelch the passers flat against the wall; If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take, He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all. And I meet a sort of simpleton beside— The kind that life is always giving beans; With thirty bob a week to keep a bride He fell in love and married in his teens; At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn’t luck; He knows the seas are deeper than tureens. And the god-almighty devil and the fool That meet me in the High Street on the strike, When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool, Are my good and evil angels if you like; And both of them together in every kind of weather Ride me like a double-seated “bike”. That’s rough a bit and needs its meaning curled; But I have a high old hot un in my mind, A most engrugious notion of the world That leaves your lightning ’rithmetic behind: I give it at a glance when I say “There ain’t no chance, Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.” And it’s this way that I make it out to be: No fathers, mothers, countries, climates—none!— Not Adam was responsible for me; Nor society, nor systems, nary one! A little sleeping seed, I woke—I did, indeed— A million years before the blooming sun.
I woke because I thought the time had come; Beyond my will there was no other cause: And everywhere I found myself at home Because I chose to be the thing I was; And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape, I always went according to the laws. I was the love that chose my mother out; I joined two lives and from the union burst; My weakness and my strength without a doubt Are mine alone for ever from the first. It’s just the very same with a difference in the name As “Thy will be done.” You say it if you durst! They say it daily up and down the land As easy as you take a drink, it’s true; But the difficultest go to understand, And the difficultest job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that’s the proper thing for you. It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf; It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It’s walking on a string across a gulf With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck: But the thing is daily done by many and many a one . . . And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
#Scottish#literature#poetry
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

Nan Shepherd (1893–1981) was born #OTD, 11 Feb. Recently her nature writing, & her memoir THE LIVING MOUNTAIN, have gained attention—but she was also an important modernist novelist. Charlotte Peacock weighs her contribution to Scotland’s literary renaissance

A 🎂 🧵

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thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/qu

The Bottle Imp · Quiet pioneer: the novels of Nan Shepherd (1893–1981) - The Bottle ImpCharlotte Peacock on Nan Shepherd's three remarkable novels: The Quarry Wood, The Weatherhouse and A Pass in the Grampians
#Scottish#literature#NanShepherd
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