Bank Holiday Monday morning and I’ve got a wee something I want to share. Nothing big, nothing major, just an observation. A traffic cone.
Yes, a traffic cone. Not just any traffic cone, oh no, only the best for my readers: I give you a famous traffic cone, at least from a Glaswegian perspective. Let me introduce you to a bronze horse’s backside and the cone in combination with the doomy gloom Scottish weather that manages to shade everything a Mordor grey, even when there’s a bit of blue sky about.
Enough said. Here’s the image:
The statue of the 1st Duke of Wellington, erected in 1844, has since the 1980s been capped by a traffic cone. Why? Nobody knows. Just one of those ‘Glasgow things’. Now, it’s a permanent fixture and even features on postcards of the city. The police used to remove the cone. I guess, at some point over the decades, they’ve just accepted that a cone will always re-appear on the bronze head of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. As if by magic.
I like it. There’s even a Wikipedia entry on the traffic cone on Wellington’s head. I don’t normally condone vandalism. Here, however, I have to admit that I love, love, love the result. It has turned a run of the mill scultpure of a military figure into something ‘other’. People stop, chat, take pictures. Most importantly: they smile.
That, I class as victory.
Why do I ramble on about it? Well, I went to the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art yesterday for a workshop and the statue is situated outside the main entrance. So as you leave the museum, you see a horse’s behind and a traffic cone. Makes sense. In Glasgow.
In case you’re wondering what the workshop was all about, here’s the link: https://oddsends707138946.wordpress.com/2023/05/08/shiny-thing-by-britta-benson/
Happy Monday to you all, and I’ll see you here tomorrow, if you wish!
Britta's Blog - Letters from Scotland 
I love this –
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Thanks, Beth. Much appreciated. The traffic cone on the statue is one of my favourite Glasgow things and it does look really good. I can’t imagine the Duke of Wellington without his cone hat!
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Das ist wirklich sehr lustig. Besonders, weil er öfter verschiedene Pylonen ‘auf hat
-:)
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Ja, die Pylonen werden oft als politische Message benutzt. Mir gefaellt der Duke of Wellington mit Hut!
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Wonderful!
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Thanks, Peter. Much appreciated.
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You’ve just given me a great idea.
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Oh, I’m curious…
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I was just thinking of a statue of Andrew Jackson here in Jackson County, Missouri where said Mr. Jackson could use some alternative head gear. Something brightly colored that would lend an air of distinction besides the fact that he never set foot in Jackson County, was a slave owner, and that he was in favor of “Indian removal” when it was determined that indigenous Americans were standing in the way of the U.S.’s mission to occupy the continent.
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Sounds like something brightly coloured would indeed be advisable… That’s probably a good way of dealing with problematic public sculptures from history. There’s plenty of them kicking about!
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