#westminster abbey just kind of Being In The Middle Of City like!
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Mother-of-the-bride Sarah Ferguson lands fad diet endorsement deal ahead of royal wedding - The Mercury News
Sarah Ferguson probably has so much to do this week, dealing with all the last-minute fuss that comes with preparing for a royal wedding that she and her ex-husband Prince Andrew reportedly hope will be as grand as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s from earlier this year.
Sarah Ferguson arrives for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle on May 19. (Photo by Andrew Matthews – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Sarah and Andrew’s second daughter, Princess Eugenie, is getting married Friday to Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle. There will be trumpet fanfare, Andrea Bocelli performing, grandmother Queen Elizabeth II throwing a reception and — just like Meghan and Harry’s wedding — an open-carriage procession through the town of Windsor.
But amid all the pomp, trumpet fanfare and reported 500 guests, the mother-of-the-bride continues to network and seek business opportunities that could probably benefit from her connections to the British royal family, according to Page Six.
Ahead of Eugenie’s wedding, details have leaked out that the Duchess of York, 58, has signed on to become a pitchwoman for an Italian entrepreneur who markets a high-priced diet program that guarantees people can lose pounds while eating fusilli pasta, pizza and specially formulated flavored drinks, “diuretic tonics,” and chocolate cookies.
Ferguson should have some experience promoting a diet program. She was a longtime spokesperson for Weight Watchers, at one point earning more than $1 million per year, and has been open over the years about her struggles with her weight and the different programs and fad diets she has tried.
Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their marriage at Westminster Abbey in London, July 23, 1986. (AP Photo/Dave Caulkin)
Now she’s partnering with Gianluca Mech, a Rome-based businessman whose family has sold herbal products for 500 years but who may be best known in the United States for spending $200,000 to recreate, for one night in 2017, the Brooklyn discothèque where “Saturday Night Fever” was filmed, according to the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.
If nothing else, touting Mech’s “Italiano Diet” should be lucrative for Ferguson, who has become known for her efforts to find creative ways to fund a high-flying lifestyle that became less certain when she and Andrew divorced in 1996. Most problematically, “Fergie” was caught on tape in 2010 demanding $821,000 in return for business access to Andrew when he was Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment, according to Vanity Fair.
The “Italiano Diet” seems marketed to people who enjoy a high-flying lifestyle or who are willing to go into debt to pretend they do. For example, for customers to stock up on a 45-day supply of food — a “luxury kit” sold on Mech’s website — they need to spend more than $1,000 per person, the Daily Mail reported.
The kit comes with four different kinds of herbal-extract-based “tonics,” two kinds of flavored drinks, soup, and fusilli pasta. But customers can buy items individually, such as the pasta meal for $14 and a box of chocolate dipped cookies for $20.
Ivana Trump attends an event in New York City in 2010. (Photo by Donna Ward/Getty Images)
In becoming a spokesperson for the “Italiano Diet,” Ferguson joins the company of one other celebrity who enjoys a high-flying lifestyle.
President Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, unveiled her endorsement deal with Mech during a lavish food-tasting and press event at the Plaza Hotel in New York in June, the New York Times reported.
In talking to reporters, Ivana Trump boasted that she herself has never struggled with her weight and neither have her three tall, slender children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump. That’s because, Ivana Trump said, she always was a good parent who instilled discipline in her children — not an “obese,” lazy parent.
“If you are an obese parent, I guarantee your child will be obese,” she told reporters at the event. “If you’re a lazy person, it’s much harder — you have to be committed to a certain regime and stick to it.”
Of course, Ivana Trump’s ex-husband, the president of the United States, is a different matter when it comes to dietary discipline. He’s known for loving his Kentucky Fried Chicken lunches and steak dinners, with extra helpings of ice cream.
Ivana Trump says she cares about America’s obesity problem — that’s why she has teamed up with Mech.
It’s not known if Sarah Ferguson likewise cares about obesity in America or Europe, but it’s likely she’ll be a more relatable spokesperson for the “Italiano Diet” than Ivana Trump. If nothing else, she can talk to others about her own struggles with emotional eating, stemming from when she was 12 years old and turned to her favorite comfort foods to deal with her parents’ divorce.
Ferguson already has appeared at the University of Padua in Italy to promote Mech’s products, Page Six reported.
But will Ferguson be able to claim that the “Italiano Diet” offers a more effective strategy for healthy, long-term weight loss than her other endeavors over the years?
According to the Daily Mail, Ferguson lost nearly 80 pounds through “a sensible” Weight Watchers program in the 1990s. But as with many adults, the pounds began to creep on as she entered middle-age.
Sarah Ferguson arrives at the Miramax 2005 Golden Globes After Party in 2005. (Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)
In 2005, she hit a spa in Austria where she had to stretch out her 600 calories a day through “chewing” therapy: each mouthful must be chewed 40 times, the Daily Mail reported.
In the past few years, she has talked about being able to curb her sweet tooth drinking dessert-flavored teas and, through her website, Duchess Discoveries, she marketed a $130 blender for making healthy smoothies and soups.
Maybe Ferguson has been on the “Italiano Diet,” hoping it will help her drop a few pounds before Eugenie’s wedding so she can don a slim, chic mother-of-the-bride suit.
But alas, no matter what Ferguson does these days — even throwing a big royal wedding with celebrity guests for her daughter — she’s no longer an official member of the “firm.” Her ex-husband and daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, also are overshadowed by the major royals: William and Harry, the sons of the late Princess Diana, and their glamorous wives, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle.
Source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/09/mother-of-the-bride-sarah-ferguson-lands-fad-diet-endorsement-deal-ahead-of-royal-wedding/
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The video game apocalypses are already here
Early on in the zombie film 28 Days Later, Cillian Murphy wanders out of hospital after waking from a month-long coma and crosses a deserted Westminster Bridge. The roads and pavements are empty and strewn with litter, all the while the gothic Palace of Westminster looms over the bewildered Murphy, now a sightseeing tourist in post-apocalyptic London. Understandably, there has always been a lot of interest in how this iconic scene was filmed. How was such a busy landmark in the capital entirely emptied of people? The answer was fairly simple: they filmed it at 5am on a Sunday in the middle of summer.
Today, there would be no need for such ingenuity. In the heat of a global pandemic, central areas of London are almost entirely abandoned (except on Thursdays when crowds congregate, zombie-like, to clap for carers on the very same bridge). Photographers from around the world have already been documenting cities under lockdown – a deserted Times Square, a lonely Eiffel Tower, a vacant Piccadilly Circus, its Coca-Cola billboard eerily replaced with the deadpan face of a monarch. It could be an image captured from the upcoming Watchdogs: Legion, or the location of a horrifying shoot-out in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
How quickly reality can be made to look like fiction. We’re used to seeing images of ruination and abandonment. There’s a long artistic tradition fascinated with crumbling visions. From European obsessions with classical antiquity to Romanticism’s love for gothic castles and abbeys. In games this enthusiasm plays out within the realms of the medieval fantasy epic – The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls or The Witcher series’ many deteriorating structures often echo the work of 18th and 19th century painters like JMW Turner, Caspar David Friedrich or John Constable.
In 2014 the Tate Britain ran an exhibition entitled Ruin Lust, which is as apt a name as any for this seemingly innate desire to witness mournful kinds of destruction. More recently, we’ve become fascinated with modern, urban ruins. Culture has spent decades recovering from pictures of catastrophic devastation caused by the World Wars, and several more bracing itself for nuclear devastation. Slowly, decaying stone towers, ancient keeps and overgrown amphitheaters have been swapped out for bombed cities, abandoned factories, and rotting shopping malls.
Games are just as obsessed with representations of contemporary ruin, and there’s obviously a real pleasure to be found in exploring them. Take Fallout 76, a game whose greatest asset was always its environment: a detailed recreation of a West Virginia left behind. Its map is a patchwork of ruined modernity, all rusted mining facilities, luxury high-rises, highway mega stops and middle-class gallerias. Amongst the genuine Appalachian wilderness are various concrete flyovers and tarmac runways – the in between, suburban spaces that recall the drosscapes and edgelands of a J.G. Ballard novel. These are “large tracts of abused” and wasted land on the periphery: “contaminated industrial sites, mineral workings, garbage dumps, container stores, polluted river banks.” Whilst real landscapes may not have been razed by nuclear bombs, they are surely still contaminated.
The Division series is another game invested in this sort of apocalyptic imagery. Its abandoned New York and Washington, D.C has been overturned, not by zombies, but by a devastating pandemic. Quite uncannily, just as real banks are currently disinfecting their notes in fear of the coronavirus’ ability to persist on paper surfaces, the spread of The Division’s deadly pathogen is caused by this very phenomenon. The irony of a globe ravaged by a virus that attaches itself to capital – a sickness travelling on top of a sickness.
Outside of games there’s a boom in documenting all kinds of disintegrating architecture, a growing interest in things like ghost towns and unfinished structures, and even a rise in activities like rooftopping, skywalking and urban spelunking. Whilst intrepid urban explorers jump barriers and sift through reality’s ruins, games allow us to do something similar within increasingly sophisticated virtualities. And yet whilst the real world seems to be filled with opportunities to delve into and examine real ruins and zones of abandonment, games often tend towards fictional extremes. Try and count how many big-budget titles are future-orientated or out-right post-apocalyptic and you’ll quickly lose count. But what seems increasingly apparent – particularly amidst the ongoing pandemic, and widespread environmental collapse – is that for many of us the apocalypse has already arrived. To rejig an oft-quoted line from the father of cyberpunk, William Gibson: “the [apocalypse] is already here – it’s just unevenly distributed.”
We see urban destruction all around us in our daily lives. Another way of looking at all this ruination is as a continuation of Gothic aesthetics. Gothic art and literature was very much about how old, medieval forms were superseded by industrialisation, and how often these ancient things rise up and return to haunt us. Today, the process continues, except instead we are witnessing more industrial elements of capitalism being replaced by newer, more “advanced” post-industrial forms. Instead of ruined castles we get the shells of factories and derelict public housing. Instead of paintings of Tintern Abbey, we get haunting photographs of post-industrial Detroit.
We’re often dreaming of post-apocalypses, waiting for that big moment or cut-off point – for the bomb to drop. But ruins are all around us. Photographers like Matthew Christopher and Seph Lawless have spent years documenting contemporary ruins with their cameras. Christopher’s book series, Abandoned America, looks at a wide range of shattered dreams – everything from derelict schools and universities, to old hospitals and asylums, and even the shattered visages of humongous presidential busts. Seph Lawless has similarly recorded the slow ruination of American capitalism. His books on dilapidated theme parks and abandoned malls are the perfect environmental inspiration for video games. His ghostly images highlight the destructive, self-cannibalising energies of contemporary economic systems. As people like Dan Bell pick through the debris of shuttered shopping centres in his Dead Mall video series, we can begin to appreciate the fact that when even the greatest symbols of 20th century consumerism are left to rot, nothing is sacred.
When it’s not ruins left by American capitalism, it’s spectral images coming out of post-Soviet areas that catch our eye. One of the greatest game series involving urban exploration, STALKER, is based on the very real ruins that surround the Chernobyl Power Plant. Outside of this one specific zone, we see wreckage turned aesthetic in various “Cosmic Communist Constructions”, such as those photographed by Frédéric Chaubin or Rebecca Litchfield.
As time and history moves on, it doesn’t just produce physical ruin, but various ghosts and phantasms that seem to haunt our cultural imagination. Adventure games like Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero and Night in the Woods have all been particularly successful in leaning into this idea of a contemporary Gothic. In Night in the Woods, the town of Possum Springs contains a number of boarded-up and closed-down stores. The game’s declining mall and disused rail system all stem from the loss of industry and severe economic depression. Likewise, the first act of Kentucky Route Zero has you exploring an abandoned mine, whilst Disco Elysium features areas like the Doomed Commercial Area, a shuttered factory, a derelict pier, and even an old ruined sea fort. Sometimes these places are physically haunted within the game’s fiction, other times there is simply an eerie absence of the human – the ghosts are all shattered dreams and failed utopias mixed up amidst the physical rubble.
We often hear about defunct things being assigned to the “garbage heap of history”, but the truth is history itself is one giant dustbin. We needn’t look to the far future to find striking examples of ruin, only to the past. All over the world there are structures abandoned or doomed to unfinished states. Take Hashima Island, perhaps most well known for its appearance in the James Bond film Skyfall. Commonly known as “Battleship Island”, the place was a centre of industrialisation (and forced labour) until its closure in the 70s. Other ghost towns like Varosha, an abandoned seaside quarter in the Cypriot city Famagusta, Fordlândia in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, and even Pripyat – a place we’re all exceptionally familiar with – show us what might be left behind when disaster strikes. We might also cast our eyes towards more modern ghost cities. Much has been made of places like Ordos, a modern metropolis that seemed to suddenly spring up from the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia. Similarly, drone footage of incomplete luxury housing developments in Turkey, and the unfinished tower blocks of Iran’s Pardis (Paradise), are all evidence of the physical effects of ongoing economic crises.
As we hurtle towards the future, civilisation will no doubt accumulate even larger piles of physical rubbish. Our leftovers are already considerable, and we need never look far for it. There are abandoned pockets and ruined zones in each and every city in the world. And with evidence of the apocalypse all around us, it’s no wonder games both highlight this damage as well as take things to their logical extreme, where capital cities are entirely emptied and the planet is irreversibly scarred.
from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/the-video-game-apocalypses-are-already-here/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-video-game-apocalypses-are-already-here
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One year later: London Recommendations
I’ve had a number of friends ask me for recommendations for a few days in London. It feels strange to be writing this almost one year after leaving, but I have time at the moment and it was lovely remembering it. I genuinely loved living there.
This list is purely for people who are visiting, whereas I probably would have a completely separate post for those who are staying long term (i.e., fave brunch/coffee shops, the bermondsey beer mile, pubs/watering holes, east end vs west end, parks, etc.)
Without further ado....
Things to do:
The best way to see London is by foot, and if you have to take public transit, take a bus (which are much cleaner and reliable than the ones in the States). I used to live in Shad Thames, near Tower Bridge on the east end, so our usual walking loop included...
Starting at our flat in Shad Thames (its rich in history and architecture, see post here), walk on the Queen’s Walk along the south bank of the Thames west all the way down to Westminster Bridge. Along here, you’ll see Tower Bridge, Tower of London (across the river), City Hall, London Bridge, Borough Market, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, the Tate, the Millennium Bridge, the National Theater, Waterloo Bridge, and the London Eye.
Suggested stops: Borough Market, and take at least 30 minutes to walk through and sample all of the food. Alex's favorites were the lamb box or salt beef bagel, and mine was the Ethiopian food or the paella/Malay curry combo. You can also drink publicly in Europe, so stop by the beer shop or get a wine spritzer from the spot next to it for your walk.
If you want to grab a pint at a pretty authentic pub, The Anchor is a sneeze away from the Globe Theater and you can also grab a fish and chips there too.
Cross Westminster bridge and pass Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, then head right to go north on Whitehall Road to pass 10 Downing Street, the Churchill War Rooms and Trafalgar Square
Suggested stops: Big Ben is under construction for a few more years, so unfortunately you won't be able to hear it ring (albeit out of tune anyways, there's a massive crack in it. Same bellmaker as the American Liberty Bell, which also had a massive crack in it. Seriously, they had one job.)
Churchill War Rooms: WWII is a lot more tangible and explicit in Europe for obvious reasons. The US likes to magnify its role in it, but in many places across Europe, there is still shrapnel on the buildings and political regimes that are the remnants/ripples from the war. If you have an extra 1.5 hrs, the War Rooms are the perfectly preserved headquarters of the British head offices, from the dormitories to the actual war room where the pencils/notebooks are exactly as they were on Victory Day. They built this enormous bunker to hide Churchill and protect him from the daily blitzkrieg, but the maniac liked to stand on the roof and watch the bombs get dropped. If you like history, this is a great spot. Make reservations, as they have timed entries.
Make a left at Trafalgar Square through the “Mall”, stroll through St James Park to Buckingham Palace. Once you’re done there, head straight north through Green Park, and once you hit the main road (Picadilly) make a right until you hit Piccadilly Circus.
Suggested stops: If you're lucky enough to come in August, this is the only month that the Queen leaves London for her summer palaces (as one does) and Buckingham Palace is open for visitors. It's beautiful and worth a visit if you again have a spare 1.5 hrs and time it perfectly with your reservations.
Trafalgar Square is the heart of London. Its where all public gatherings, protests and festivals end. If you google London, the pin drops you here. The National Gallery bookends it on the north side, and its a free and excellent art museum.
Also, watch out for the swans in St James Park. They're beautiful but aggressive. I think just last month, a swan attacked and killed a little dog. If you go through behind the war rooms and skip Trafalgar Square, look out for the gamekeeper's hut, which is adorable and reminds me of Hagrid.
Once you're on the main road towards Piccadilly Circus, you can keep an eye out for Fortnum and Mason. Its where supposedly the queen gets her groceries. I never had an interest in going in, but to each their own. They sell their teas and biscuits at the airport dutyfree if you want to get gifts for friends, they won't be able to tell where you bought it.
End at Oxford Circus - I like to schedule lunch at Carnaby Street Dishoom so I’m properly hungry and the timing is usually about right.
This whole walking route will take a few hours, if you’re not stopping at any of the suggested spots. See here for the route on google maps.
OTHER SUGGESTIONS:
Harrods is always good for a stop. I usually go right past the makeup/accessories on the ground floor to the Food Hall, which is my favorite part. Take the Egyptian Staircase up to the furntiure/tech rooms too, which are fun to check out. Otherwise the apparel assortment is not dissimilar to a Bergdorfs. They’re famous for catering to the whims of the ultra rich; available on request are exotic animals and helicopters. The previous owner’s son Dodi is famous for being Princess Diana’s last lover and partner.
Almost ALL museums in London are FREE. It's a beautiful thing and a great way to spend a rainy day. There are a few right across from Harrods. The only one I didn't get to visit (with regret) is the V&A, which is NOT free but very much worth it from what I've heard. The Natural History Museum in London swaps their giant dinosaur/whale skeletons entry hall with its cousin in New York on occasion.
Sky Garden is the rooftop public garden on top of the "walkie talkie" building on Fenchurch street. It's def worth a visit, and its free (part of the negotiations for the property owners when they built it, since it was buying out public space). You do need a reservation which opens up 2 weeks prior.
Aquashard/Hu Tong at the Shard. Pay 15 quid to go to the top of the Shard, or pay 15 quid for a cocktail with similar views just a few floors down? I know I have my answer. Entry is towards the southern entrance of the Shard, you'll see a separate revolving door to the right with an awning that says AQUA. Go to the bathroom for fun views while you use the lavatories.
Markets are fun and everywhere in Europe. Here are some good ones in London, in order of personal preference;
Borough Market, as mentioned above. You can't come to London and not visit. Also lots of famous films have taken place here, including Harry Potter.
Maltby Street market. A lot smaller and more local, I'm biased because I used to come here with a 10 mins walk from my flat. St Johns bakery is here, you should definitely get a donut. But honestly its quite tiny compared to the bigger name brand markets mentioned in this list, so go if you have spare time.
Notting Hill/Portobello Road. Even though it takes a little while to get there, its adorable and you get to see a more residential side of London. Go any day but Sunday. Check out the shopfronts too. The Churchill Arms pub is nearby, and known for its explosion of greenery.
Spitalfields/Brick Lane Sunday market. Spitalfields is a permanent market, and a great central location. If it happens to be Sunday, you can hop over to the divier and more eclectic Brick Lane to check out vintage and consignment shops. Ignore the hecklers trying to get you to go in for a curry. Keep an eye out for the incredible street art, this area is known to be a tagging haven.
Columbia Road Flower Market. You have to time it perfectly to see it at its best, but its not a far detour if you're in the Shoreditch area (which is kind of the Brooklyn/Lower East Side of London). You can skip it if you're touring around, since you'll likely not be buying any flowers.
Things to Eat:
I cannot emphasize this enough: INDIAN FOOD is the best food in London. And the best/most reliable place to get it is:
Dishoom. There are a few locations; our favorite is Carnaby Street, followed by Covent Garden. Def get the Pau Bhaji and Ruby Chicken. We also love Bhel, Lamb Biryani and Samosas. Other people swear by the black daal. Get a colaba colada or mango lassi to wash it down.
Tayyabs. More on the grill/Middle Eastern range of the food map, but this place is known for kebabs and BYOB. My first company party was here, and it was rowdy and fun. Like korean bbq, expect for your clothes to smell afterwards. It's on the east end near Aldgate, and there's not much near here so its kind of out of the way. Londoners love this spot though.
Padella. On the fringes of Borough Market near the tube station, this place is known for affordable and beautifully handmade pasta. Don't be afraid to order 2 pastas/person. Also, queue at least 25 mins before it opens. By the time 15-to arrives, the queue will have snaked around 3 times.
St Johns. The original and legendary creative mastermind of second-wave British cuisine, this is true farm to table, nose to tail dining by Fergus Henderson. Not for vegetarians.
Ham Yard Hotel is my favorite spot for high tea. Skip the prissy ones where the waitstaff is in tails and you feel like you can't slouch, and come here for super chic, beautifully done tea in a central location. You might spot a celebrity. There's a bowling alley "speakeasy" in the basement. We take all our guests here.
Dinerama in Shoreditch - you may have to pay an entry fee, but this is a bustling market with lots of food and cocktail stands where desk jockeys and the cool kids of shoreditch mingle. We loved coming here for happy hour/nibbles on a friday or saturday before going out in Shoreditch. Get a gin and tonic (they make excellent ones in the G&T stand, which was near the pizza spot if I remember correctly).
Duck and Waffle is gorgeous dining and open 24 hrs (some like to drunkenly come here at 3am for 5-course meals). Beautiful penthouse views of the city, but definitely have to make reservations.
OVERALL TIPS:
Download the citymapper app. This is by far the most reliable and accurate app for public transport in London, gives you down to the position on the train and live arrival times.
If you have contactless credit cards/Apple pay/Samsung pay, don't bother purchasing an Oyster card. Unlike the US, contactless payment is accepted everywhere in Europe, even the bus/tubes/ferries. I still get annoyed when someone forces me to use a chip because they're not sure if the terminal works with contactless payment in NYC, when I can get around with just Apple Pay in Bruges which is literally a town made of stone.
Make reservations. London lives off reservations, and you'll be hard-pressed to find anything if you just walk in. Brits in general are "planners". Unfortunately this doesn't leave much room for spontaneity but you can plan around areas and food resos, and explore the neighborhoods before/after. I like to bookmark all the spots I'm interested in on google maps so I can see at a glance what's nearby.
UBER, don't take a cab. The black taxis are adorable but nauseatingly expensive. Uber will get you there in 1/3 of the price.
When in doubt, Bus over Tube. You'll get to see a lot more of the city this way, its cheaper, and will take close to the same amount of time.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any specific questions!
xx M
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Sir John Kirk and the Resonance of Slavery
Slavery as a tangible fact is not something one would particularly associate with Angus, more than any other part of the British Isles, though the county of course had its connections with that trade. Interesting and little-known material about the decent and doubtless God-fearing lairds who quietly owned slaves far away, back in the day, can be unearthed through web sites like Legacies of British Slave Ownership, and though it may seem churlish to name and shame those associated with that business after all these years (people who in themselves doubtless led complex and rich lives), it can still be instructive as an eye-opener.
Among the interesting data is that concerning former slave owners who claimed compensation from the British government when slavery in the British Empire was abolished and they were financially disadvantaged. A cursory search through the records reveals the follows Angus folk as former slave owners: David Langlands of Balkemmock, Tealing, Alexander Erskine of Balhall, David Lyon of Balintore Castle, George Ogilvie of Langley Park, James Alexander Pierson of The Guynd, Thomas Renny Strachan of Seaton House, St Vigeans, Mary Russell of Bellevue Cottage, David McEwan and James Gray of Dundee, the 7th Earl of Airlie.
There is more information surrounding the Cruickshank family, who lived at Keithock House, Stracathro House and Langley Park. Alexander Cruickshank of Keithock was born in 1800 and married his cousin, Mary Cruickshank of Langley Park (formerly Egilsjohn or - colloquially - Edzell's John). In the middle of the 19th century Alexander unsuccessfully attempted to claim compensation for the loss of slaves owned on the Langley Park estate on the island of St Vincent. The whole family's fortunes were inextricably linked with slavery. Patrick jointly owned the estates of Richmond, Greenhill and Mirton in St Vincent with his brother James who was compensated £23,000 by the government following slavery abolition in 1833. The St Vincent estates had more than 800 slaves. Originally from Wartle in Aberdeenshire, the money to buy the Egilsjohn estate in Angus came from a fortune made in the Caribbean; its name was even changed to commemorate the St Vincent estate name of Langley. The Angus estates of Stracathro and Keithock followed. But we are told (Baronage of Angus and Mearns, p. 64) that Alexander Cruickshank's 'affairs eventually got embarrassed - and he returned to Demerara, where he shortly afterwards made his demise, leaving a son and daughter.'
Emigration to the colonies was by no means a passport of quick riches to those who went there with slender means to begin with. John Landlands, son of a tenant farmer from Haughs of Finavon, went to Jamaica in 1749 and found that his promised employment did not exist, though he was helped to secure another post at the vividly named Treadways Maggoty estate. In time he acquired his own coffee plantation, complete with valuable slaves. On his death he provided for his mistress/housekeeper and his natural son born to her, but the estate of Roseberry was burdened by debt and had to be disposed of by his cousin back home in Angus.
There was less known commercial speculation in the slave trade in Angus ports than in other places, though there are records held in Montrose Museum of a business deal from 1751 concerning the ship Potomack, whose master Thomas Gibson struck a deal with merchants Thomas Douglas and Co to travel with cargo to Holland and thence to west Africa and there pick up slaves for the North American market. Researchers reckon that some 31 Montrose vessels were engaged in human slave trafficking, though records survive for only four ships (the other three being the Success, the Delight, and the St George).
One Montrose family of the 18th century who went on to great things financially were the Coutts family, ancestors of the private banking dynasty which migrated to London later and dealt with the fortunes of royals and the nobility. John Coutts (born 1643) was Lord Provost of the Angus burgh five times between 1677 and 1688 (having been made a councillor in 1661). the family were involved in the Virginia tobacco trade and doubtless incidentally involved to some extent in slave ownership. John's third son Thomas went to London and was one of the promoters of the 'Company of Scotland, trading to Africa and the Indies', better known as the company who initiated the doomed Darien Scheme. A grandson of the first John Coutts was another John (son of Patrick), among those in the family who left Montrose for business opportunities further south.
John Kirk - Doctor! Botanist! Knight! Our Man in Zanzibar!
There were few places as strange to the intrepid foreigner in the mid 19th century as Zanzibar, even in an age when the whole continent of Africa held a jewel-like fascination for Europeans. The island was just off the continental coast but was truly a place apart. It had in effect been colonised and annexed before any Western interest in the place by an Arab dynasty from the north. The ruler of Oman, Seyyid Said, made the African island his capital in 1838 and brilliantly maintained his power through diplomacy with the British East India Company and a cannily managed business acumen. The Arab management of African slaves more than matched the newer European-sponsored slave trade operating in west Africa. Throughout Seyyid Said's rule it continued unabated and Zanzibar was its unashamed fulcrum, dispatching human cargo and attendant misery across the Indian Ocean. Alastair Hazell states that the mid-19th century population of the island was possibly 100,000, or which around half were slaves. Said had personally transformed his new centre of operations 'from a mere backwater, a slave market with a fort, to the largest and most prosperous trading city of the western Indian Ocean'.
Gold, ivory and gum copal were other products which flowed out of the continent via the island, but it was the process of the oldest institution on Zanzibar, the slave market outside the Customs House, which was the most outstanding element of that market place to outsiders; here described by the English traveller Sir Richard Burton. It was a place, he said:
where millions of dollars annually change hands under the foulest of sheds, a long, low mat-roof, supported by two dozen tree-stems... It is conspicuous as the centre of circulation, the heart from and to which twin streams of blacks are ever ebbing and flowing, whilst the beach and waters opposite it are crowded with shore boats.
The slave market was in the centre of town and here every year many thousands of bagham, untrained slaves, were tethered and publicly auctioned. In the mid-1850s, Hazell tells us, able-bodied young men could be bought for $4-$12 - 'about the prince of a donkey'. Girls and women were sold for sex, passed on many times via different owner/abusers. A premium was paid for 'exotics' from India or fair haired unfortunates from as far afield as the Caucasus.
The Boy from Barry
Step up John Kirk. The latest biographer of John Kirk - Alastair Hazell - makes the fundamental mistake of stating that Kirk was born in Barry, in Fife! This is a shame because his book, The Last Slave Market, is a well-researched account of this important figure who did much personally to end the intolerable anomaly of Zanzibar's slaving in a time when many cynically turned a blind eye to it. John was the third of his name in succession, following his grandfather (a baker) and father, who was born in St Andrews in 1795 (which perhaps explains Hazell's error). The Rev. Kirk was appointed minister of Barry in June 1824 and transferred to nearby Arbirlot in 1837. In the religious turmoil of the times he joined the Free Church and was minister of the Free Church in Barry from 1843 until his death in 1858. The minister was 'a man of cultivated mind, of a deportment becoming his high calling, and of a conversation that savoured of the things of Christ'. His wife was Christian Guthrie, daughter of the Rev. Alexander Carnegie, minister of Inverkeilor.
John Kirk as a young doctor.
The youngest John was he second of four children, born 19 December 1832 and must have inherited much of his iron-clad morality from his parents. The only other sibling who seems to have attained any prominence was his elder brother, Alexander Carnegie Kirk, born in 1830. He became a noted naval engineer, but unlike John did not take part in any kind of public life, dying in Glasgow in 1892.
The explorer's eldest brother.
Early Career and Into Africa
Kirk qualified as a doctor and went on to serve in the Crimea War in 1855. (His interest in botany was evident in Edinburgh, where he studied in the faculty of arts at first before switching to medicine.) Learning Turkish, he travelled widely in the Middle East, mainly pursuing botanical interests. His most significant appointment was that of a naturalist accompanying the famous David Livingstone on an expedition to east Africa in 1858. This second expedition of Livingstone's, exploring the Zambesi region, did not go entirely smoothly. Livingstone was no great communicator and preferred either his own company or that of native Africans. His brother Charles was also part of the party and was a more petty character than David, arguing with colleagues and dismissing some of them. Kirk generally got on tolerably well with Livingstone - both were doctors and of course Scots - and also accepted his plans and decisions even when these looked ill-judged and even foolhardy. But Livingstone, driven by instinct and his own demons, was at times looked upon as a madman by his younger colleague. On 18 April 1874 he was one of the pall-bearers who carried Livingstone's coffin into a funeral ceremony in Westminster Abbey. (This was despite the fact that Livingstone's chief mythologiser, Henry Morton Stanley, tried his damnedest to blacken's Kirk's name on the false basis that the doctor had not done all he could to assist the great man in his last expedition.)
John Kirk returned to Britain in 1863, but three years later he was back in a different part of Africa, appointed as a medical officer in Zanzibar. He soon became Assistant Consul and then Resident. He had been appointed Consul in 1873, succeeding Henry Adrian Churchill, who had been actively working towards the abolition of the slave market on the island. Churchill's health broke down to such an extent that Kirk advised him to return to the U.K. in 1870.
The final defeat of the slave trade in the island was accomplished by Kirk's astonishing guile and nerve. While the years in which he served primarily as a doctor in the consulate were quiet and he took no active part in public life or against slavery, there was one incident which marked him out as a risk taker. This was in 1866 when he joined in the successful attempt to smuggle the sultan's sister out of the territory. Seyidda Salme had become pregnant by a German and was at risk of death if she had remained in Zanzibar. For much of the time, Kirk pursued his own interests in Africa, collecting information about botany, trade, slavery, in an even handed and non-judgemental fashion. More of a pragmatist than the strange visionary Livinstone, he was caught between the rock and hard place of the British government and the East India Company, which often had differing ideas about slavery and much else. In 1873 he was put in an invidious position of receiving two contradictory instructions from London. The first ordered him in no uncertain terms to give the Sultan the ultimatum that he should close the slave market and cease all trade in slaves, or else the British government would blockade the island. The second order warned Kirk that no blockade was to be enforced, for fear that it would drive the territory to crave the protection of the French. Kirk only showed the first communication to the Sultan, with the result that Barghash caved in within two weeks and the slave market was closed forever.
Despite the best efforts of Kirk and his successors, slavery actually surreptitiously survived the closure of Zanzibar's public slave market. Special Commissioner Donald Mackenzie visited the island and its neighbour Pemba in the last decade of the 19th century and found that slavery was still flourishing in the agricultural estates:
In Zanzibar a good many people had been telling me how happy and
contented the Slaves were in the hands of the Arabs; in fact, they would
not desire their freedom. At Chaki Chaki I walked into a tumble-down
old prison. Here I found a number of prisoners, male and female,
heavily chained and fettered. I thought surely these men and women
must be dreadful criminals, or murderers, or they must have committed
similar crimes and are now awaiting their doom. I inquired of them all
why they were there. The only real criminal was one who had stolen a
little rice from his master. All the others I found were wearing those
ponderous chains and fetters because they had attempted to run away
from their cruel masters and gain their freedom— a very eloquent commentary on the happiness of the Slaves!
The British Consulate, Zanzibar.
Kirk's Later Years and Legacy
Kirk returned to Britain finally in 1886, settling in Kent. His awards included the K.C.M.G., G.C.M.G., K.C.B., plus the Patron's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. The welfare of Africa still concerned him and in 1889-90 he attended the Brussels Africa Conference as British Plenipotentiary. In later years John Kirk grew progressively blind but he maintained his interest in the natural world. He died at the age of 89 and was buried in St Nicholas's Churchyard in Sevenoaks. Among the tributes paid to him was one by Frederick Lugard, Governor General of Nigeria: 'For Kirk I had a deep affection which I know was reciprocated. He was to me the ideal of a wise and sympathetic administrator on whom I endeavoured to model my own actions and to whose inexhaustible fund of knowledge I constantly appealed.'
Substantial records survive concerning Kirk, including the journals he kept on the expedition with Livingstone, Apart from that there are his contributions and discoveries in zoology, biology, a substantial corpus of photographs(over 250). He maintained close connection with Kew Gardens until his death. The Kirk Papers have been secured for the future in the National Library of Scotland. As far as I know, there is no memorial to Sir John Kirk at Barry, but if not, there definitely should be.
Sultan of Zanzibar, Sayyid Sir Barghash bin Sa'id (ruled 1870-1888).
Selected Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirk_(explorer)
John Langlands: An Aberlemno Slave Owner
C. F. H., 'Obituary: 'Sir John Kirk,' Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygeine, volume 15, issue 5-6 (15 December 1921), p. 202.
Hazell, Alastair, The Last Slave Market: Dr John Kirk and the Struggle to End the African Slave Trade (London, 2011).
Low, James L., Notes On The Coutts Family (Montrose, 1892).
MacGregor Peter, David, The Baronage of Angus and Mearns (Edinburgh, 1856).
Mackenzie, Donald, A Report on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Zanzibar, Pemba, and the Mainland Protectorates of East Africa (London, 1895).
McBain, J. M., Eminent Arbroathians (Arbroath, 1897).
Scott, Hew, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae (volume 5, new edition, Edinburgh, 1925).
Wild, H., 'Sir John Kirk,' Kirkia, volume 1 (1960-61), pp. 5-10.
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Keep Calm and Get Kinky
Late update! The next couple of updates will probably be late ones as I’m spending as much time as I can with Daniel!
So, today we got up early to head over to the volunteer spot. I wish I could have gotten a bit more sleep, but I must have slept pretty soundly because I didn’t wake up at all when my roommates came back from partying.
Anyway, we all got up and headed downstairs to meet everyone and head over to the tube station. However, as I met up with everyone in the lobby I was attacked by a fierce opponent! My time in the Assassins game has come to an end. Casey was quite determined.
I managed to pull myself together and we headed off. The tube ride was a long one, which makes sense considering we were heading out of the proper city. We got to Greenwich and went to the ecology park, which was absolutely fantastic! It was like a mini-Huntley Meadows, in the city and everything! It was this very cool marshland, home to a wide range of different creatures. They’ve discovered three new species of bees! How cool is that?
So, we broke up into different teams to do different projects around the marsh. I got to wear steel-toed boots in order to hammer spikes into the ground! We also had to take thatches of this long weed-grass and make a fence with it. During all this, we found a great deal of little creatures. We found little newts, snails, these huge spiders! At the end of the day we saw a fox wandering around! And a heron! It felt like I was back in home, amongst the wildlife of suburbia.
And the guys who work there were really cool and funny and told us about how they’re being threatened to shut down with all the apartment buildings being built up and stuff like that. So he gave us this email where we can get in touch with people campaigning for the ecology park, and I’m definitely going to do it!
Once we finished up with our volunteering, I rushed off almost right away! I ran onto the tube and took the long journey back into the city. I got off at Tottenham and headed over to the flat, thinking Daniel could meet me there. But he then told me he was still over at Westminster Abbey. So I walked all the way down to Holborn and had to change trains a few times to get over there. Long story short, if I had just stayed at Tottenham and taken a train from there, I could have gotten to Westminster a lot easier/faster.
But I still got there and met Daniel! It was so much fun! We were both rather giddy at first, just with the idea of both of us being in Europe at the same time! He’d finished up a tour of Westminster, which I’m so glad he did because it’s such a good tour.
We were both hungry, so we walked up to Trafalgar Square and went to Wagamama for lunch. I felt so cool, knowing a restaurant for us to eat at that I’d already been to a number of times. We had lunch and talked extensively of our different times in our different programs.
After lunch (which ended at like four, so it was a very late lunch), we walked around for a bit and stopped by the Adelphi theatre, where Kinky Boots is being performed. We asked what the cheapest tickets were for tonight’s performance, and found pretty decent seats for only thirty pounds! So we took the tickets and had plans for the evening! I was so excited, knowing we’d be seeing a show that I know very little about. Usually I know the songs or the plot for a show before seeing it, but in this case I knew nothing about it. Definitely a change for once.
Once we got the tickets, we walked back to Bloomsbury and I showed him my area and the flat. We walked past The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where Daniel knows one of the students there (of course he does). Then I walked us down Shaftesbury Avenue, so Daniel could see where a lot of the shows and theatres are. By the time we reached Leicester Square, we had another hour until the show.
So we went to the Picturehouse Cinema and Cafe, which is a cinema I’d been to with my film class. It’s a super cute little cafe and we shared a flapjack, which isn’t a pancake here but this kind of oat cake. And it’s not nearly as horrible as it sounds. It was actually really good and moist.
We hung out there for a bit and then walked back over to the theatre. Our seats were actually pretty decent ones, right in the middle of the upper circle. And the show! Oh, the show was absolutely incredible! It was super fun and upbeat, and the story was simple but still really well put together. For those who don’t know (like I didn’t before seeing it), it’s basically about a guy named Charlie who takes over his late-father’s shoe business. But the business is failing and he nearly sells it, until he meets a bunch of drag queens and sees that they’re wearing women’s heels that break because they can’t support a full mans weight. So he risks it all, along with the head of the drag queen’s Lola (whose actor was absolutely incredible!), in order to save the company by making these “kinky boots” that can support a man’s weight but still look amazing. It’s a lot of fun and definitely deserved to win the Tony in 2013.
After the show, we went to get some dinner (at 10:00 at night, his Spanish ways are getting to me). We went to a little fish and chips place. He got fish and chips, and I got some chips and calamari. Probably not the best choice, so late at night (I am a gremlin, as Sean would say), but Daniel seemed to like it. Now he’s actually had fish and chips, so he’s more authentic than I am.
We were both fading fast at this point, so we got to the nearest tube station and went our separate ways with a plan for what we were going to do the next day (today as I type this, so I’m trying not to get confused). It felt very dramatic, saying goodbye in a tube station. Where’s my movie deal?
I got back to the flat and took a shower, which felt very nice after having worked at the volunteer thing. I stayed up a little later than that, but only long enough to figure out if there’s a changing of the guard today. There’s not, so we’re going to do some other things instead. We are going to Abbey Road, which was on my unofficial bucket list! I can’t wait!
Steps/Miles: 27,090/10.75 miles
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