As reported in Issue 244, the former call centre at 52-52A Annandale Street is to be replaced by housing.
Demolition has already begun, and the current absence of wall at one end affords the nosey passer-by an intriguing glimpse into Standard Life management culture.
The poor drones who formerly worked there – shackled to telephones like so many galley slaves – were evidently bombarded with improving corporate messages aiming at better service and the satisfaction of customers.
There is about these murals an odd, pointed emphasis upon the female breast.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. As we shall see, Standard Life has form.
The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins concerns five young women who, unlike their five unwise peers, prudently bring along extra lamps to a wedding procession which is unforeseeably delayed. In the New Testament, the implication is that thoughtful people think ahead, modify their behaviour and prepare their souls for the Day of Judgment.
To the mind of an investment giant, however, this translates as: the thoughtful person thinks ahead and takes out an insurance policy. Hence the appearance of wise virgins on so many of Standard Life’s letterheads from the 19th century onwards, and in John Steele’s pediment sculpture on the company offices at No. 1 George Street.
Next door, we find Gerald Laing’s reinterpretation of the same theme dating from 1975. A little unexpectedly, he shows the well-prepared individuals as all looking exactly alike: slack jawed and underdressed for the Scottish climate. Keen eyed observers will note the frieze’s unnecessarily detailed intimation of chilliness.
And those are elbows.
Compare the unwise virgins. Rather than falling asleep and missing the party, they seem to have been struck by unfortunate afflictions: infected ear piercing ...
terrible fringe and no bra ...
expulsion from RADA ...
looking for the loo at night in a power-cut ...
hair on fire, one hand missing, and no bra.
Even more surprising than Laing’s fascination for bad luck and the balcon is his inclusion of a Classical palindromic 'sator square'.
Readable up and down and backwards and forwards, it translates from the Latin as: The farmer Arepo employs a plough for work.
In other words, it makes hardly any sense whatsoever. Probably more important are the magical applications of the square. Fishwick mentions:
The later history of the charm spans the sixth century to the nineteenth and embraces the continents of Europe, Africa, and America. In France the earliest example occurs in a Carolingian Bible of 822, originally the property of the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Près. In the twelfth century it is inscribed on the masonry of the Church of St. Laurent near Ardèche and in the keep of Loches, while in the thirteenth century parchment of Aurillac it apparently intercedes for women in labour. By the fifteenth century it has become a touchstone against fire in the Chateaux of Chinon and of Jarnac and in the courthouse of Valbonnais; but it is not until the sixteenth century that its efficacy as a cure for insanity and for fever is described in two early books, De Varia Quercus Historia, by Jean du Choul (Lyons 1555), and De Rerum Varietate, by Jérôme Cardan, a medical astrologer, (Milan 1557).
Maybe Laing included it as a way of helping his unwise virgins in their hours of need, a kind of New Age alternative to the equally unreliable, good-value, easy-to-access, feel-good financial instruments of more recent times.
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Rebecca Bridgland I know it's tongue in cheek, but Standard Life is a great company to work for, and, technically, the George St office is Standard Life Investments. Spurtle loves a pedant.
@theSpurtle Also by Laing for Standard Life, Axis Mundi (Apotheosis of the Wise Virgins) at Tanfield House (not sure if still there?)
@theSpurtle I think must have taken it back to Kinkell when Standard Life left Tanfield. George St frieze is a less
successful work!!
@theSpurtle the first of those foolish virgins is Patti Smith, see her Radio Ethiopia album cover. She'd annoyed Gerald.
Broughton Spurtle @theSpurtle
@papawasarodeo I thought you were joking in a deadpan way. Then looked and then checked. Gobsmacked. Don't suppose Sherlock is David Bowie?
@GASPurves @theSpurtle as much I'd like to say I spotted it I heard Laing tell the tale on a visit to Kinkell.
@GASPurves @papawasarodeo @theSpurtle What a great thing to learn! I worked across the road from that frieze four years and had no idea.
Michael MacLeod Standard Life is such an uninspiring name for a company.
