Scooby Doo and the Gang, with my wee Molly, chased by Captain Kidd
by Andy Lee
We've been really lucky these last two years, to work with a couple of smashing artists...and we like to really challenge them with various eldritch horrors and folk nightmares. But did you know, you can also commission them to do pieces of artwork for you, friends or family? I'm just one of the folks who has done just that over the last year, and above you can see a special Scooby Doo illustration Andy did for my daughter, below is an illustration Mhairi did for an Alice in Wonderland story I wrote for my wife for our 10th Wedding Anniversary.
You can see lots of Andy's other work and find out how to contact him at Call of the Deep or find him and his sketchbooks on instagram. Mhairi is at Mhairi M Robertson.
And hey...obviously there are lots of other cool local artists and crafters you could be supporting too, some of whom will no doubt be appearing at the next Violet Skulls Market in Dutch Gable House. Apparently it's Christmas coming up...why not do something a wee bit different this year...something special.
Alice, discussing the finer points of relativity with a watchmaker
by Mhairi Robertson
And keep a wee eye out, as Mhairi and I may well be shortly launching a kickstarter for another book.
the volunteers of magic torch are delighted with a busy year
We have been really fortunate this year to receive support from a whole range of funders. We have loads going on over the next few months, and so we felt it was important to just stop, take a wee breath, and remind you about each of our projects individually...but yknow, also all at the same time.
13 Commonwealth Tales is supported by the Celebrate Fund, created to help communities recognise the Commonwealth Games in different ways. We've already had some storytelling days and right now the project is just finishing production on two books, 13 Commonwealth Tales, an illustrated childrens book collecting traditional stories from Commonwealth countries and Uncommon Tales, a comic in which Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes explores some of the darker folklore of the Commonwealth. Thanks to Lottery funding, limited copies of both of these books will be made available for FREE in September and October.
Time and Place is supported by Awards For All Scotland, and is sharing creative responses to Inverclyde past, present and future. Exhibitions and music created by the project will be on display in The Dutch Gable House throughout October and November.
Achi Baba is supported by Heritage Lottery Fund and will explore an important part of Inverclyde's World War One history in comic form. The comic book will be published in July 2015, on the centenary of the battle.
Alongside that, we have our own self supported project, The Battle of Largs, which has created an exhibition based on John Galt's gothic poem, using artwork from Andy Lee and woodcraft created by local social enterprise Newark Products.
So aye, busy times. Good times too. Probably our most action packed year since we started. It's worth noting, that all of the grants above, are under 10k, awarded through funding streams which are ideal for smaller groups. I wrote a wee blog post at the start of the year with my own thoughts about funding, and if you, or your group has an idea for projects, why not try making them happen?
Hopefully we'll see you at some of our events over the next few months.
Fifteen...men on a dead man's chest? Fifteen...minutes of fame?
No...fifteen years since we started doing things as Magic Torch.
That's AGES. It doesn't feel like ages obviously, it feels much longer than that.
And so, a big thank you and a tip of the birthday hat to anyone who has helped us out over the years with our plans and schemes in our 100% voluntary efforts to have fun with local culture and heritage.
Here are five favourite bits of our story...
The handcarved cover to our first project - an illuminated manuscript
telling the story of Inverclyde for the Tall Ships 1999
From the days before we had photoshop, which would have made this picture much cheaper to produce...one of the massive posters from our billboard heritage project... (2004)
Neil sits ready to pass judgement at the retrial of Captain "Ray" Kidd in Greenock Court (2001)
Balloons from our hugely popular / unpopular Greenock Sugar Sheds Campaign (2011)
The formal introduction of our hero, Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes, ushering in a bold new era of Magic Torch comics (2013)
Now seems as good a time as any to also remind ye about some of our publications from down the years...free and otherwise...
The following was excised from the notebooks of James Watt on grounds of National Security.
I could think of nothing but that machine.
By day I was working on more plans and
sketches for Dalmarnock, but each evening was spent imagining this marvellous
steam powered man.
As our world moved further and further
towards full automation, I envisaged a future where even the greatest of our
weaknesses - war - could become automatic, both creating new industry and
saving lives. My automaton soldier would take the place of flesh and bone,
never wearying, always obeying. Stronger, more determined and relentless - a
metal man.
I busied myself with the plans, taking care
to have the parts created in several different foundries, fearing some would
think me mad for such an endeavor. I had no wish to play God, only to serve
man.
I began to see the other applications; if
successful in war, perhaps the automatons could be put to work in mines or in
the more hazardous factory professions. I was creating us a workforce, which
would leave mankind more time to indulge in the pursuit of science and social
reform, surely the only ways forward for our society.
By the winter of 1811, he was built,
already capable of several movements, determined by the notations upon a
cylinder, much like a barrel organ. Differing actions could be achieved using
different cylinders. I quickly realised however, that powering my metal man was
t be more challenging than I thought. The energy consumption was intensive,
even allowing for reuse of water through steam condensing. Either I would have
to make more space to store water, or accept that the automaton would only be
able to work in short bursts, requiring assistance to continue. I feel sure I
would have achieved this, for the basic principles were all in place, and the
most challenging problems - the movements of joints etc, had been all but
solved. This is when I was visited by the gentleman from the government. I had
dealt with his sort once before, during the unfortunate business with the Saint
Nazairre experiments.Having somehow
heard about my experiments with the steam powered soldier, they were interested
in deploying my automaton in the Russian and French campaigns. This was not
presented to me as a matter open to discussion. My metal man was taken.
I heard but brief reports of his exploits,
enough to know he survived destruction on the peninsula. Despite several
requests for his return, he remained with the military, and my missives to
parliament, went unanswered. I tired of trying and moved on to further works.
I do not think of him often, he was simply
another experiment, a tool. However, if maintained correctly, I see absolutely
no reason that my automatic man will not outlive us all.
Tin Jimmy
Megan has a secret, a big secret that only her recently exploded Grandmother knows. To uncover the truth behind her secret, she and her best friend Cam must follow an old town map down forgotten roads and disappeared places, through abandoned bomb shelters and railway tunnels, to graveyards and secret passages beneath the river. And all the while, the sinister men from the Waterworx company are watching, with their strangely menacing Public Art sculptures...
James Watt, perhaps outraged that in future he will be dishonoured by the
very rude renaming of his college, creates a giant robot to destroy us all.
(by Andy Lee, as seen in our Tales of the Oak comic)
We've been working on our Tales of the Oak comic for almost a year now, and we're really pleased to say it's finally away to the printers and will be available exclusively at the Dutch Gable House on Doors Open Weekend, 14th and 15th September. 64 fully illustrated pages of local terror featuring shambling tunnel dwellers, cursed hiflats, ghost pirates, zombies and evil cultists. Oh, did we mention that it's FREE.
Tales of the Oak is funded by Heritage Lottery Scotland, like our storytelling project and our childrens book Wee Nasties. We'll also have our last remaining copies of Wee Nasties available on the day, along with an exhibition of some of Mhairi and Andy's original artwork and sketches from the book and comic.
And that's not all you'll be able to enjoy. We've now moved lots of Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes furniture and curios out of storage and into his replica study in the Dutch Gable where you will be able to experience his life and times, the wonderful Newark Products shop will be open, selling a wide range of bespoke and handcrafted gifts, plus there will be folk music in the Back House and films in the Secret Cinema. It's all good.
We'll be along from 10 - 4 on both days, hopefully see you then.
And I don't want to panic ye or anything, but the last time there was a local heritage graphic novel, Identity The Archivist's Treasure, there were 4000 copies and they were all gone in quicksharp time. That's why you can only get it online now. There's only 1000 Tales of the Oak. So get em while they are hot...
We still have a few copies of the original book which we'll make available again later in the year, but in the meantime, here's a copy you can enjoy right now, for FREE.
There's another opportunity to grab copies of Wee Nasties and see the accompanying exhibition upstairs at The Dutch Gable House tomorrow as part of the launch of the new Greenock Town Trail....
On Tuesday 9th July a new Greenock Town Trail is being introduced, using 21 plaques which are situated in pavements across the central area of Greenock, highlighting historic locations in the town as well as famous local people in Greenock’s past, notably James Watt and Abram Lyle.
The new Town Trail has been put together by local tourism group Discover Inverclyde and the Inverclyde Tourist Group with help from local historians and Inverclyde Council and with the majority of funding coming from the Council’s Community Facilities Fund.
Chris Jewell, a Director of Discover Inverclyde said, ‘We are delighted to have had this funding to introduce what we believe will be a fascinating insight into many aspects of Greenock’s past. The Trail will take around an hour to complete on foot, unless you linger at some of the areas highlighted by the individual plaques, but you can start and stop the Trail at any point. Thanks are due to the Council and the Tourist Group in particular for enabling the Trail to be put together for the benefit of the many tourists coming here and also for the local community.’
Eleanor Robertson, Chairperson of the Inverclyde Tourist Group added, ‘The Trail will provide a lot of interesting history of Greenock to the many visitors coming from the cruise liners, and help them to focus on our local heritage, while giving them a fascinating Trail to follow. We had a lot of fun putting all this information together, and also discovered a lot of facts about Greenock’s past which are not well known.’
On behalf of Inverclyde Council, Provost Robert Moran said, ‘Inverclyde has a rich and varied history. The Greenock Town Trail highlights some of the most fascinating aspects of the town. It's appropriate the launch of the trail is in William Street in Greenock. It is our oldest street with two of the oldest surviving properties, next to the birthplace of the incredible James Watt, in the shadow of the historic Municipal Buildings and round the corner is the Strathclyde Fire Museum and Heritage Centre. Within a very short walk this town trail will open up some amazing stories and I would encourage as many residents as possible to take the trail and share the incredible history of Greenock with your friends and family.’
The plaques extend from the Custom House on the river’s edge to Greenock Cemetery to the south and take in the Esplanade, Ardgowan Square and part of Nelson Street, Grey Place, Clyde and Cathcart Squares and William and Cathcart Streets. An accompanying booklet has been produced giving more detail to each location and copies are available free of charge from local libraries, the Dutch Gable House, the McLean Museum and a number of local shops.
In addition to the new Trail, six new double sided information signs are being installed highlighting to tourists and visitors many places worth visiting and including a number of additional facts about Greenock, its people and its past. Chris added, ‘We hope that both the new Trail and the information banners will add considerable interest and enjoyment to visitors’ time spent here and they will also provide a good source of information for the local community.’
The new Town Trail will be launched in William Street at 11am on Tuesday 9th of July after which a mini trail of four of the plaques in the immediate area will be visited by those present, accompanied by a number of characters from yesteryear including James Watt and Abram Lyle.
Originally, our new book Wee Nasties featured a verse about local legend the Greenock Catman, but in the end, he didn't quite fit. Of course, we are all big fans of the Catman and wouldn't want to be offending him, so we thought we'd print Mhairi's rough draft sketch and our verse on the blog. A much friendlier version of the Catman appears in the childrens book I've written The Superpower Project, which is published by Floris Books in February 2016.
Remember...you can still enter our Wee Nasties competition...
There’s a poor wee frog lurking in some of the pages of Wee Nasties, he ended up trapped in a jar by Auld Dunrod. Happily, though, he escapes. Maybe you can tell us what happened to Dunrod’s Frog when he escaped.
Did he meet even more nasties? End up as frogs legs on toast? Or maybe there’s a much happier ending....
Why not try telling us what happened in less than 200 words, and you can win a prize.
The top 5 entries will be printed on the Magic Torch blog www.talesoftheoak.co.uk, with the overall winner receieving a framed print of one of the Wee Nasties signed by the artist Mhairi M Robertson.
Your entries can be posted to
Auld Dunrod, Magic Torch, 175 Westburn Centre, Greenock, PA15 1JZ, or emailed to aulddunrod@gmail.com
Competition open to all under 12s and the closing date for entries is 26 June 2013.
Almost 500 copies of Wee Nasties have been distributed this week, thats brilliant. So there should maybe be enough folk to help us with the wee competition above.
The book will still be available from Dutch Gable and your local library this week, so there's still time to nab yourself a copy...
Here's a video to accompany our new book Wee Nasties. We have copies to give away from Thursday 16 May at The Dutch Gable House as part of the Inverclyde Festival of Heritage. You can also see an exhibition of Mhairi's lovely artwork there.
We'll be at The Dutch Gable House from 16 - 19 May, and from the following week, there will also be some FREE copies available from Inverclyde Libraries. When they're gone, they are gone, but don't worry, we'll be making a digital version available later in the month.
A big thank you to Heritage Lottery Fund Scotland for supporting this project.
We're really excited about our Wee Nasties book launch this Thursday, but there's loads of cool stuff happening through the week. Here's a wee trailer for what's going on with the Identity Inverclyde project at the festival.
A new
Inverclyde Festival of Heritage is being introduced in May by tourism group
Discover Inverclyde, the Inverclyde Community Development Trust, the Inverclyde
Tourist Group and other local groups to help highlight Inverclyde’s history,
some of its heroes and its industrial and maritime heritage.
The
Festival, which runs from Monday 13th to Sunday 19th May
makes use of a number of venues including an exhibition unit in the Oak Mall
shopping centre, the Dutch Gable House in William Street, the Waterfront cinema,
the Beacon Arts Centre and the McLean Museum, as well as potentially the area
alongside the Egeria statue at the west end of West Blackhall Street and Ginger
the Horse at the entrance to Cathcart Street, weather permitting.
As well of
being of considerable interest to the local community, the Festival of Heritage
is timed to appeal to thousands of cruise line passengers and crew arriving in
Greenock that week on the Queen Mary 2 (Wednesday 15th May), the SS
Mein Schiff Ein (Thursday 16th
May) and the Caribbean Princess on Sunday 19th May.
Activities
on offer will include an exhibition all week long in the Oak Mall unit, drawing
from the Community Development Trust’s Identity project, funded by Heritage
Lottery Fund Scotland,
which is a time lined
story of the history of Inverclyde dating back to the earliest recorded period
and following through to major developments in Inverclyde’s industrial and social
past.
The
Waterfront cinema will be showing a compilation of films and animations
covering topics including the ‘Identity’ project film,St Patrick school’s animated film and song
The Shipyards, St John’s animated film The Comet, plus films from Aileymill
Primary School, Glenburn School and the St Andrews documentary style film on
the history of Larkfield and Schools Past and Present. There will also be also
the ‘River of Steel’ film highlighting the history of the
local shipyards, and ‘Into the Past’, a 20 minute film showing the changing
landscape of the towns of Inverclyde.
A number of
major Scottish characters will come to life during the exhibition including
Robert Burns, Highland Mary and James Watt with storytelling of Burns’ life and
his poetry. On the upper floor of the Beacon Arts Centre on Wednesday 15th
May there will be a performance of the drama ‘Guerra, Guerra’, written and
presented by young people from St Columba’s High School on the impact of Italy
joining Germany in the early part of the second world war and how this
developed into a harrowing journey for the Italian community living in Scotland
and the Inverclyde area.
Two new
books will be launched as part of the Festival. On Monday May 13th
in the Dutch Gable House a new book entitled ‘Kith & Kin’ and telling the tales of local people’s roots and
how their families came to be in Inverclyde will be launched and on Thursday 16th
Magic Torch will be launching their new
children’s book Wee Nasties also in
The Dutch Gable House. Wee Nasties is beautifully illustrated
by local artist Mhairi Robertson and introduces younger readers to the myths
and legends of Inverclyde. Free copies will be available throughout the day,
with a storyteller in attendance, sharing local stories in the afternoon and a
display of the original sketches and artwork from the book.
There will
also be a small exhibition featuring local pirate Captain William Kidd, with an
exclusive free exhibition booklet, while a comic featuring the exploits of
Captain Kidd will be available for purchase from the Dutch Gable shop.
There will
be no cost to attend any and all of these activities. In addition, throughout
the Festival a number of pubs and clubs will be offering live music with an
accent on music concentrating on the past.
Chris
Jewell of Discover Inverclyde said, ‘We are excited to be able to introduce
this new Inverclyde Festival of Heritage with the Inverclyde Community
Development Trust and the tourist and other groups, and the Festival is
something we intend will develop into an annual event with an ever increasing
number of elements to it. We anticipate that a number of other events will be
added to this year’s Festival and a leaflet detailing all that is going on is
being produced and will be distributed shortly, as well as appearing on the
Discover Inverclyde website www.discoverinverclyde.com
and the Inverclyde Festival of Heritage Facebook page at www.facebook.com/InverclydeFestivalOfHeritage’.
Paul
Bristow of the Inverclyde Community Development Trust added, ‘This brand new
Festival has given us the opportunity to showcase much of the work we have
undertaken as part of our major ‘Identity’ and other projects involving lots of
local groups and we would encourage everyone in Inverclyde to be a part of the
Festival by coming out to see all that is being displayed and portrayed. I know
that we will all learn a good bit more about our history and the local
population.'
Councillor Ronnie Ahlfeld, a
Director at Discover Inverclyde is enthusiastic about the Festival and its
interest to the local community. He said, ‘It is great to make an opportunity
for Inverclyde to showcase its past and a lot of very interesting history has
been unearthed as part of things. The plan is to broaden the scope of the
initiative in future years to include projects in Gourock and Port Glasgow. I
also would like to thank Inverclyde Community Development Trust for their outstanding
contributions to this project.’
Discover
Inverclyde will be introducing alongside the Festival a new Greenock Town
Trail, with 21 plaques located around the central Greenock area, accompanied by
a new leaflet telling much of the history of Greenock
and its people. There will also be the introduction of six new double sided
information panels along the route from the Ocean Terminal to Cathcart Street,
providing valuable and new information about what Greenock has to offer
visitors, cruise line passengers and crew, all aimed at making their visit to
Greenock an increasingly interesting and memorable one.
Wee Nasties is the first publication from our Heritage Lottery Fund supported project Tales of the Oak.
FREE copies will be available on Thursday 16, and throughout the weekend. After that, from 20 May, you will also be able to get copies from your local library, 7 1/2 John Wood Street, McLean Museum and we'll be delivering a limited number of copies to local schools and nurseries.
Magic Torch will also have an exhibition of Mhairi's original artwork and sketches in the Dutch Gable as well as a wee space dedicated to Captain Kidd (it is May after all, traditionally Captain Kidd month for us)
There will be an audio version online, digital version available later in the month and also an exclusive competition which we'll share with you soon.
This is Mhairi's lovely cover for Wee Nasties, launching soon.
There's all sorts of Wee Nasties hiding around Inverclyde, a bogle with smelly feet, a grumpy old wizard catching spells, and even a (mostly) friendly monster in the river.
Meet them all and hear about some of the strange things going on in your home town...
Wee Nasties is our new childrens book, funded by Heritage Lottery to help introduce younger audiences to the myths and legends of the area. It will be launched at The Dutch Gable House on Thursday 16 May, during the Inverclyde Festival of Heritage as part of a day of storytelling.
For now you can buy our first two books, Tales of the Oak and Downriver, as well as our new reprint of a 1950s comic Captain Kidd Buccaneer. All profits are used to help run projects which promote local heritage and folklore in Inverclyde. There's also a few links to free stuff, cos we're nice like that.
We'll be adding to the selection over the year, because as well as our Heritage Lottery supported FREE books Wee Nasties and the Tales of the Oak comic, we have a few new ebooks coming out later in the year. Anyhow, fill yer boots.
Today is Tell A Story Day. Be sure to do your bit.
Here's one from me. This is sort of a cheat, on account of the fact that it's a poem telling a story, so if that's not yer thing, there's quite a few wee stories you can hear FREE on Auld Dunrod's soundcloud.
A ragged vagrant terrifying the town's children while looking after dozens of stray cats...or a fictional bogeyman from our industrial past? Who is, what is, where is...The Catman?
Greenock's shipbuilding was already in decline in the seventies and fast heading towards complete collapse within the eighties. Sightings and mentions of The Catman stretch back to the nineteen seventies, all centred around a specific narrow lane which connects what was the industrial “East End” of the town, with the town centre - one of those interesting crossing points at a self imposed division line - very often the focus for folklore and fairy stories.
Throughout the boom years of shipbuilding, many local shipyards informally employed a “Catman”, someone who fed and kept cats around the yards in order to keep rats at bay. It is interesting to note that the first mention of the vagrant Catman in Greenock coincides with the decline of the shipbuilding industry.
From the seventies onward, he fulfilled both a basic “bogeyman” role and source of scary stories for local children. For example, there was an abandoned railway tunnel near his apparent den; dubbed “the double darkie”, children would dare one another to see how far in they could get into the tunnel, all the while assured that if they went too far, Catman would jump out of the darkness to grab them.
He was rarely seen throughout the eighties and nineties, but certainly still talked about - and there were more than enough sensible grown ups prepared to confirm that they had spoken to him, or passed him food or flasks of tea. Also, his den was in plain view and frequently showed signs of someone living there.
It was a few years ago that the most major Catman development took place, mobile phone footage of the man himself, crawling around under cars in a bus garage located next to his den, then apparently eating a dead rat. This footage beamed around every young person in Greenock’s mobile phone, before ending up on You Tube and eventually in the pages of The Sun.
So convincing was this sighting, that Greenock Social Work department explained to the local paper that they had sent someone up to the site to see if Catman could be located in order to provide assistance. Since then....nothing more. Perhaps he has been quietly helped and moved into some form of residential care to maintain his dignity.
No one of course can agree on who he is really - stories range from a Russian sailor down on his luck to a former yard worker who never returned home. Another theory runs that his first appearance was not long after the TV debut of “Catweazle”, and that he is nothing more complicated than a childhood fantasy made flesh.
Even more intriguing is perhaps the fact that his appearance in the seventies also coincides with the beginning of a series of Big Cat sightings which continue to this day. Could this be some sort of Were-Cat? It is not for me to speculate...though clearly, that would be really cool.
I wrote a wee hometown horror story featuring The Catman in the Greenock Sugar Sheds, its called Candybones, you can listen to it here.
In 2015, a group of students from Edinburgh University created a short film which tried to uncover the truth about our local bogeyman...
Happily, a much more friendly version of the Catman story, appears in a children's book I've written, The Superpower Project...
With the help of a wisecracking, steampunk robot, two accidental superheroes discover that they have inherited some amazing, if unusual, abilities. Computer whiz Megan can fly (mostly sleep-flying, but she's working on it) while her best friend Cam can (in theory) transform into any animal, but mostly ends up as a were-hamster.
Together they must protect the source of their ancestral powers from a wannabe evil mastermind and his gang of industrial transformer robots who've disguised themselves as modern art installations on their Greenock estate.
It isn't easy to balance school and epic super-battles, not to mention finding time to search for other super-talents and train with their Mr Miyagi-esque were-tiger coach.Can Megan and Cam beat the bad guy, defeat his robot transformers and become the superheroes they were born to be?
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