The Professionals
by Brian Morrison
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: One mild one only.
Description: How do we protect our art treasures? Call in the professionals.
_____________________________________________________________________
Shipping magnate Sir William Burrell’s dying wish was that his extensive collection of artefacts from all over the world should be on view for the public to enjoy. He also insisted that the giant collection should be housed in a purpose built museum in Glasgow, but not in the heart of the city. His original request for the museum to be sited at least sixteen miles from the city centre, due to pollution problems, was adjusted to only three miles.
What would have been Sir William’s reaction to this adjustment? No one knows.
Thirteen miles of a difference.
Perhaps he would have taken a mega huff. Perhaps he would have returned his knighthood; told the royalty where to stick it.
Thirteen miles.
How far does pollution travel anyway? Maybe in Sir William’s day the air quality around the centre of Glasgow was poorer than it is today. Steam trains; industrial pollutants generated from the busy ship building industry on the Clyde. These are just two factors that would have affected the atmosphere around the city. Perhaps we are improving after all. Killing off the offending source of the nasty sooty pollutants that were poisoning the atmosphere and corroding the fabric of the city centre buildings.
Bravo for us!
So perhaps the thirteen mile difference is a measure of how we have progressed in the modern world. Sixteen has been reduced to three. A sixteen mile radius would have encompassed a few likely locations. East Kilbride could have been a site candidate, as could Milngavie. But these towns were hardly established in Sir William’s day. The city boundaries have expanded in all directions. So, in reality, the collection is being bombarded with modern day pollutants from outside as well as inside the city.
Rightly or wrongly, the Burrell collection is today located in the heart of the Pollok estate. The museum is a work of art in its own right. The L-shaped building nestles in the heart of the country park, with a formal grassed area to the south and woodlands to the north. The central courtyard is picturesque and airy. A sloping glazed roof captures and intensifies the sun’s rays. Its clever design creates a warm and friendly ambience. The treasures that Sir William amassed throughout his life require differing degrees of temperature and humidity control. There are a few delicate pieces in there, so even at the planning stage the architects would have been given scores of box files with essential reading. You can’t just locate a tapestry, for instance, in an area where sunlight is allowed to bleach out the colour dyes from the fabric.
A much easier consideration, which was engineered very simply and probably moved to the top of the list, was where to locate the stained glass collection; a no brainer. The collection is mounted just inside the large glazed southern façade. The colourful creations bathe the interior with a kaleidoscope of pastel hues of green red and blue.
The security system at the museum also follows simple logic. There is an absence of futuristic devices like laser controlled trip switches that initiate a rapid closer of steel shutters over all the exit doors. What is employed at the Burrell museum is a top of the range closed circuit television system. Every hidden corner is covered by a host of cameras mounted on the walls and ceilings. The images that they capture are relayed to a central security control room. Sufficient for the purpose in hand, but no more sophisticated than the security set up at your nearest ASDA superstore.
The system does require a human element. Cameras, videos and alarm systems are all well and good, but you need someone to look at them.
It was Friday afternoon. There were two security guards on duty. Their shift rota would take them from their three o’clock start all the way through to eleven. Half of their shift covered the museum’s opening hours and the other half shift called for surveillance duties throughout the empty building. The second four hours were always more relaxed as there was no need to interface with the general public.
Stevie Fitlike and Calum Brodie had just clocked in for duty at five minutes to three. The museum was at its busiest, but they both knew that the ‘quiet time’ would come along shortly after six o’clock. Stevie Fitlike was rather heavy in build. A more cruel observation would label him a ‘fat bastard’. He was forty nine years old, balding slightly from the forehead towards the crown. He had once proudly possessed a thick mane of ginger hair, but now his receding hairline was revealing more and more freckles on the slope of his head as the years rolled by. He had been used to seeing the freckles peppering his features when viewing them in the shaving mirror, but now he was discovering more and more of them in the higher regions. This was new territory for him. He didn’t even realise that they had been there for years lurking below his hair. Even though he was much too obese for his own good, Fitlike considered himself somewhat of an Adonis figure. This may have been due to a mixture of ignorance and pride; and may even have been down to warped mirrors in the family home. No one knew for sure. He loved his position as security guard. He had all the latest clothing and gadgets. Bulletproof vests were not part of the museum’s clothing issue list, but Fitlike wore one. A utility belt, wrap around designer sunglasses and a can of Mace spray weren’t required either, but Fitlike had them.
He envisaged himself as a Jack Reacher type of character. The extra items of clothing and hardware were purchased from his local army and navy outlet store. Fitlike was just old enough to remember Adam West’s portrayal of Batman in the television series that ran in the sixties. Batman was famed for wearing a utility belt that held every gadget under the sun. A never-ending supply of weapons, shark repellent spray and forty yards of heavy duty rope with a large grappling hook attached to the end.
Yes it was a truly magical belt.
Fitlike’s belt had a total of eight pouch pockets around its circumference; four on each hip. He didn’t own a magical grappling hook like Batman. No shark repellent either. But he did have the can of Mace spray and a set of handcuffs. The latter were difficult to procure. He had settled for a pink fluffy set that his sister had worn once on her hen night. Most of the pouch pockets on the belt were especially reserved for feeding time – which could occur at any given minute of the day. These particular pockets held such items as cans of coke (diet of course), muffins, cheese and onion crisps and packets of tic-tacs.
His shift colleague, Calum Brodie, appeared on first impressions to be a complete opposite to Fitlike. He was painfully thin; had no utility belt, and had a sallow complexion and a full head of black hair. No one, apart from immigrants in the west of Scotland sported hair as black as Brodie. So it would be prudent to guess that his black locks came from a bottle. Also, if truth be told, his sallow complexion came from a bottle too; probably purchased at the same chemist store. He was slightly younger than Fitlike; a couple of inches shorter in height, and around twenty inches thinner in girth. Brodie’s appetite was like a sparrow’s. There was no need for a utility belt packed with munchies. No one had ever witnessed Brodie eating anything of real substance. He appeared to survive on fresh air alone.
Although there was a friendship between the two guards, there was an unmistakable air of tension too. Brodie would, on occasion, pass a casual, almost unnoticed remark about Fitlike’s extra ‘baggage allowance’. Fitlike, on the other hand tended to be more upfront with his throwaway remarks. In every workplace there is the tendency to tag colleagues with pet names. Fitlike had christened Brodie with the name ‘Brad’. Calum Brodie took this to be a shortened version of his surname. He was rather irked to discover, when talking to other colleagues, that his pet name Brad was short for Bradawl. Fitlike had been quite blunt when explaining his reasoning behind this. “I call you Bradawl because you are a small boring tool,” he had said. And so it went on.
The pair usually patrolled separate rooms during the first part of the shift, and paired up for the second four hours.
Fitlike began his shift by lurking around the general area of the museum’s gift shop near the main entrance. He had recently been giving himself extra leg work by revisiting the gift shop area on a regular basis. The reason for this was simple. He fancied the girl behind the gift shop counter. She stood around five foot three, medium build, with a two-toned hairstyle. She was ash blonde for the most part, but with a brunette layer underneath; the shorter brunette tint probably being her natural colouring. Her name was Alice and the attention that she had been receiving from Fitlike hadn’t gone unnoticed by her. But she didn’t show any outward sign of it.
She was attending to a middle-aged woman at the counter. There was a young boy of around five years of age by her side. The young lad was tearful. Fitlike watched with interest. There were no danger vibes coming from a five year old. It wasn’t as if he was going to run off with a priceless artefact. He was, however, holding in his hand a replica of a Chinese Iohan Buddha.
Alice dealt with the young boy expertly. She said, ‘Listen, wee pal, your gran is right. That thing isn’t a toy. You would be much better off with one of the soft toys from the display. A stuffed Tutankhamun, or a wee cuddly dinosaur.’
The boy’s gran, encouraged by Alice’s words, chipped in, ‘You see, son, I told you that it was a bad idea.’
Alice said, ‘That thing is a replica of a Buddha statue that we have here in the museum. It’s an ornament; far too heavy for a wee man like you to play with. You would be much better off spending your pennies on something softer that you can throw about. That thing would give you a really sore foot if you dropped it.’
The little boy sniffed and rubbed at his eye with a balled fist. He said, ‘But it isn’t for me. I want to buy it for my mummy. It’s her birthday next week.’
After a moment of hesitation, Alice glanced towards the older woman. They seemed to read each other’s thoughts. ‘Wee soul,’ said Alice.
‘Aw that’s nice, son; thinking about your mummy like that. Of course you can buy the ornament for her,’ said the older woman.
Alice said, ‘You don’t see that happening every day.’
The cash exchanged hands and the little Buddha replica was carefully wrapped, bagged and handed over. Fitlike watched from the sidelines and nodded slightly towards Alice. Not that she needed it, or indeed asked for it.
At the end of her shift, Alice removed the drawer from the cash register and logged off the computer. Her money counting chores, her paperwork and her receipts had all been attended to. Stevie Fitlike – it was always Stevie Fitlike – stood patiently at the end of the gift shop counter display. He leafed through the brochures and souvenir postcards; tidying up the display whilst doing so. He had recently combed what was left of his hair, gargled with some fresh mint mouthwash and was sucking on a boiled menthol sweet, just to be sure. Alice would be handing him the cash register drawer at any second. Fitlike always tried to make this little transfer as intimate as possible. He was never stuck for a quirky remark or a phrase that was designed to strike up a conversation with her. The reason for this was obvious. He rehearsed the moment over and over in his mind between the hours of five and six.
It was also pre-arranged that Brodie would remain elsewhere, so that he could work his ‘magic’. Sadly, though, Alice wasn’t interested in Fitlike. At twenty eight years of age, she was way too young for him. Their interests were poles apart. Fitlike had used every trick in his book to secure an invite to Alice’s flat or to enjoy a quiet drink with her somewhere in the city on her day off. But Alice was way too cute for him. She knew how to fend off his advances. The real truth remained a secret. She didn’t divulge it to Fitlike, because she felt that it was really none of his business, but Alice already had a romantic partner. Her name was Charlotte; a twenty three year old nurse at the Western Infirmary.
‘You handled that situation with the wee boy very well,’ he commented as Alice approached from the other side of the gift shop counter.
‘What situation?’
‘The situation with the wee boy who wanted to buy the ornament for his mother. You were so natural looking with him. You would make a fantastic mother. Have you never thought about having kids?’ Fitlike was really pushing the boat out.
‘Me? Oh no. I could never see that happening, Stevie.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well I suffer from a rare genetic disorder.’
‘Really?’ said Fitlike, arching an eyebrow and striking a thoughtful pose.
‘Yes,’ said Alice, lying through her teeth, ‘it’s called “Charlotte Syndrome”. It would actually be a miracle if I ever conceived at all.’
‘That’s too bad,’ said Fitlike, ‘I always had imagined that we would . . . that you would make a terrific parent. Are you seeing someone in hospital?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, I am never away from the Western Infirmary. I am seeing someone there on a regular basis.’ She handed the cash register drawer to Fitlike. Their fingertips touched for the briefest of moments. Fitlike’s pulse raced.
‘I hope you have a good time tonight, Alice. Are you doing anything special?’
‘No, not really,’ she sighed, ‘just chilling out – up in my wee flat all by myself.’ With that final tease she turned and walked towards the main entrance door. Calum Brodie had arrived to lock up behind her and arm the alarm system.
‘Seeing Charlotte tonight?’ he said.
‘Aye, as always,’ she replied with a wink.
Swearwords: One mild one only.
Description: How do we protect our art treasures? Call in the professionals.
_____________________________________________________________________
Shipping magnate Sir William Burrell’s dying wish was that his extensive collection of artefacts from all over the world should be on view for the public to enjoy. He also insisted that the giant collection should be housed in a purpose built museum in Glasgow, but not in the heart of the city. His original request for the museum to be sited at least sixteen miles from the city centre, due to pollution problems, was adjusted to only three miles.
What would have been Sir William’s reaction to this adjustment? No one knows.
Thirteen miles of a difference.
Perhaps he would have taken a mega huff. Perhaps he would have returned his knighthood; told the royalty where to stick it.
Thirteen miles.
How far does pollution travel anyway? Maybe in Sir William’s day the air quality around the centre of Glasgow was poorer than it is today. Steam trains; industrial pollutants generated from the busy ship building industry on the Clyde. These are just two factors that would have affected the atmosphere around the city. Perhaps we are improving after all. Killing off the offending source of the nasty sooty pollutants that were poisoning the atmosphere and corroding the fabric of the city centre buildings.
Bravo for us!
So perhaps the thirteen mile difference is a measure of how we have progressed in the modern world. Sixteen has been reduced to three. A sixteen mile radius would have encompassed a few likely locations. East Kilbride could have been a site candidate, as could Milngavie. But these towns were hardly established in Sir William’s day. The city boundaries have expanded in all directions. So, in reality, the collection is being bombarded with modern day pollutants from outside as well as inside the city.
Rightly or wrongly, the Burrell collection is today located in the heart of the Pollok estate. The museum is a work of art in its own right. The L-shaped building nestles in the heart of the country park, with a formal grassed area to the south and woodlands to the north. The central courtyard is picturesque and airy. A sloping glazed roof captures and intensifies the sun’s rays. Its clever design creates a warm and friendly ambience. The treasures that Sir William amassed throughout his life require differing degrees of temperature and humidity control. There are a few delicate pieces in there, so even at the planning stage the architects would have been given scores of box files with essential reading. You can’t just locate a tapestry, for instance, in an area where sunlight is allowed to bleach out the colour dyes from the fabric.
A much easier consideration, which was engineered very simply and probably moved to the top of the list, was where to locate the stained glass collection; a no brainer. The collection is mounted just inside the large glazed southern façade. The colourful creations bathe the interior with a kaleidoscope of pastel hues of green red and blue.
The security system at the museum also follows simple logic. There is an absence of futuristic devices like laser controlled trip switches that initiate a rapid closer of steel shutters over all the exit doors. What is employed at the Burrell museum is a top of the range closed circuit television system. Every hidden corner is covered by a host of cameras mounted on the walls and ceilings. The images that they capture are relayed to a central security control room. Sufficient for the purpose in hand, but no more sophisticated than the security set up at your nearest ASDA superstore.
The system does require a human element. Cameras, videos and alarm systems are all well and good, but you need someone to look at them.
It was Friday afternoon. There were two security guards on duty. Their shift rota would take them from their three o’clock start all the way through to eleven. Half of their shift covered the museum’s opening hours and the other half shift called for surveillance duties throughout the empty building. The second four hours were always more relaxed as there was no need to interface with the general public.
Stevie Fitlike and Calum Brodie had just clocked in for duty at five minutes to three. The museum was at its busiest, but they both knew that the ‘quiet time’ would come along shortly after six o’clock. Stevie Fitlike was rather heavy in build. A more cruel observation would label him a ‘fat bastard’. He was forty nine years old, balding slightly from the forehead towards the crown. He had once proudly possessed a thick mane of ginger hair, but now his receding hairline was revealing more and more freckles on the slope of his head as the years rolled by. He had been used to seeing the freckles peppering his features when viewing them in the shaving mirror, but now he was discovering more and more of them in the higher regions. This was new territory for him. He didn’t even realise that they had been there for years lurking below his hair. Even though he was much too obese for his own good, Fitlike considered himself somewhat of an Adonis figure. This may have been due to a mixture of ignorance and pride; and may even have been down to warped mirrors in the family home. No one knew for sure. He loved his position as security guard. He had all the latest clothing and gadgets. Bulletproof vests were not part of the museum’s clothing issue list, but Fitlike wore one. A utility belt, wrap around designer sunglasses and a can of Mace spray weren’t required either, but Fitlike had them.
He envisaged himself as a Jack Reacher type of character. The extra items of clothing and hardware were purchased from his local army and navy outlet store. Fitlike was just old enough to remember Adam West’s portrayal of Batman in the television series that ran in the sixties. Batman was famed for wearing a utility belt that held every gadget under the sun. A never-ending supply of weapons, shark repellent spray and forty yards of heavy duty rope with a large grappling hook attached to the end.
Yes it was a truly magical belt.
Fitlike’s belt had a total of eight pouch pockets around its circumference; four on each hip. He didn’t own a magical grappling hook like Batman. No shark repellent either. But he did have the can of Mace spray and a set of handcuffs. The latter were difficult to procure. He had settled for a pink fluffy set that his sister had worn once on her hen night. Most of the pouch pockets on the belt were especially reserved for feeding time – which could occur at any given minute of the day. These particular pockets held such items as cans of coke (diet of course), muffins, cheese and onion crisps and packets of tic-tacs.
His shift colleague, Calum Brodie, appeared on first impressions to be a complete opposite to Fitlike. He was painfully thin; had no utility belt, and had a sallow complexion and a full head of black hair. No one, apart from immigrants in the west of Scotland sported hair as black as Brodie. So it would be prudent to guess that his black locks came from a bottle. Also, if truth be told, his sallow complexion came from a bottle too; probably purchased at the same chemist store. He was slightly younger than Fitlike; a couple of inches shorter in height, and around twenty inches thinner in girth. Brodie’s appetite was like a sparrow’s. There was no need for a utility belt packed with munchies. No one had ever witnessed Brodie eating anything of real substance. He appeared to survive on fresh air alone.
Although there was a friendship between the two guards, there was an unmistakable air of tension too. Brodie would, on occasion, pass a casual, almost unnoticed remark about Fitlike’s extra ‘baggage allowance’. Fitlike, on the other hand tended to be more upfront with his throwaway remarks. In every workplace there is the tendency to tag colleagues with pet names. Fitlike had christened Brodie with the name ‘Brad’. Calum Brodie took this to be a shortened version of his surname. He was rather irked to discover, when talking to other colleagues, that his pet name Brad was short for Bradawl. Fitlike had been quite blunt when explaining his reasoning behind this. “I call you Bradawl because you are a small boring tool,” he had said. And so it went on.
The pair usually patrolled separate rooms during the first part of the shift, and paired up for the second four hours.
Fitlike began his shift by lurking around the general area of the museum’s gift shop near the main entrance. He had recently been giving himself extra leg work by revisiting the gift shop area on a regular basis. The reason for this was simple. He fancied the girl behind the gift shop counter. She stood around five foot three, medium build, with a two-toned hairstyle. She was ash blonde for the most part, but with a brunette layer underneath; the shorter brunette tint probably being her natural colouring. Her name was Alice and the attention that she had been receiving from Fitlike hadn’t gone unnoticed by her. But she didn’t show any outward sign of it.
She was attending to a middle-aged woman at the counter. There was a young boy of around five years of age by her side. The young lad was tearful. Fitlike watched with interest. There were no danger vibes coming from a five year old. It wasn’t as if he was going to run off with a priceless artefact. He was, however, holding in his hand a replica of a Chinese Iohan Buddha.
Alice dealt with the young boy expertly. She said, ‘Listen, wee pal, your gran is right. That thing isn’t a toy. You would be much better off with one of the soft toys from the display. A stuffed Tutankhamun, or a wee cuddly dinosaur.’
The boy’s gran, encouraged by Alice’s words, chipped in, ‘You see, son, I told you that it was a bad idea.’
Alice said, ‘That thing is a replica of a Buddha statue that we have here in the museum. It’s an ornament; far too heavy for a wee man like you to play with. You would be much better off spending your pennies on something softer that you can throw about. That thing would give you a really sore foot if you dropped it.’
The little boy sniffed and rubbed at his eye with a balled fist. He said, ‘But it isn’t for me. I want to buy it for my mummy. It’s her birthday next week.’
After a moment of hesitation, Alice glanced towards the older woman. They seemed to read each other’s thoughts. ‘Wee soul,’ said Alice.
‘Aw that’s nice, son; thinking about your mummy like that. Of course you can buy the ornament for her,’ said the older woman.
Alice said, ‘You don’t see that happening every day.’
The cash exchanged hands and the little Buddha replica was carefully wrapped, bagged and handed over. Fitlike watched from the sidelines and nodded slightly towards Alice. Not that she needed it, or indeed asked for it.
At the end of her shift, Alice removed the drawer from the cash register and logged off the computer. Her money counting chores, her paperwork and her receipts had all been attended to. Stevie Fitlike – it was always Stevie Fitlike – stood patiently at the end of the gift shop counter display. He leafed through the brochures and souvenir postcards; tidying up the display whilst doing so. He had recently combed what was left of his hair, gargled with some fresh mint mouthwash and was sucking on a boiled menthol sweet, just to be sure. Alice would be handing him the cash register drawer at any second. Fitlike always tried to make this little transfer as intimate as possible. He was never stuck for a quirky remark or a phrase that was designed to strike up a conversation with her. The reason for this was obvious. He rehearsed the moment over and over in his mind between the hours of five and six.
It was also pre-arranged that Brodie would remain elsewhere, so that he could work his ‘magic’. Sadly, though, Alice wasn’t interested in Fitlike. At twenty eight years of age, she was way too young for him. Their interests were poles apart. Fitlike had used every trick in his book to secure an invite to Alice’s flat or to enjoy a quiet drink with her somewhere in the city on her day off. But Alice was way too cute for him. She knew how to fend off his advances. The real truth remained a secret. She didn’t divulge it to Fitlike, because she felt that it was really none of his business, but Alice already had a romantic partner. Her name was Charlotte; a twenty three year old nurse at the Western Infirmary.
‘You handled that situation with the wee boy very well,’ he commented as Alice approached from the other side of the gift shop counter.
‘What situation?’
‘The situation with the wee boy who wanted to buy the ornament for his mother. You were so natural looking with him. You would make a fantastic mother. Have you never thought about having kids?’ Fitlike was really pushing the boat out.
‘Me? Oh no. I could never see that happening, Stevie.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well I suffer from a rare genetic disorder.’
‘Really?’ said Fitlike, arching an eyebrow and striking a thoughtful pose.
‘Yes,’ said Alice, lying through her teeth, ‘it’s called “Charlotte Syndrome”. It would actually be a miracle if I ever conceived at all.’
‘That’s too bad,’ said Fitlike, ‘I always had imagined that we would . . . that you would make a terrific parent. Are you seeing someone in hospital?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, I am never away from the Western Infirmary. I am seeing someone there on a regular basis.’ She handed the cash register drawer to Fitlike. Their fingertips touched for the briefest of moments. Fitlike’s pulse raced.
‘I hope you have a good time tonight, Alice. Are you doing anything special?’
‘No, not really,’ she sighed, ‘just chilling out – up in my wee flat all by myself.’ With that final tease she turned and walked towards the main entrance door. Calum Brodie had arrived to lock up behind her and arm the alarm system.
‘Seeing Charlotte tonight?’ he said.
‘Aye, as always,’ she replied with a wink.
About the Author
Born in Saltcoats, Brian Morrison has a day job at the Hunterston Power Station. But in his other life he is well known as a caricaturist and comedy sketch writer. More recently, he has become a novelist and a writer of children's stories. His dark comedy, Blister, is available on Amazon.