Another day of non-stop admin, except today I was exhausted because I hadn't slept very well, so I'm not sure I achieved as much as I could have done! There's not much else to say about the day other than that Nathan came back from his trip on a Latvian ferry. It seems like he's had the most amazing time. He was literally buzzing. Born to cruise, that one!
I drove to Heathrow to pick him up. The weather was very odd and went from hot sun to weird tropical gales to heavy rain to that sort of bright orange, very clean light you sometimes get on summer evenings after rain.
We had pizza for tea to celebrate Nathan's home-coming... And watched Ru Paul.
There's still a big pile of human poo in our alleyway, which still smells four days after it was deposited. Two days of solid rain has not managed to shift it. Typical, eh? The rain was forceful enough to come through our roof in three places, and yet that steaming turd was impervious to it.
I better go to bed.
Wednesday, 3 August 2016
Tuesday, 2 August 2016
The rain, the blinkin rain
Oh my God the weather today has been shitty! It has rained almost constantly. It's the sort of hot rain which gets under your skin and there comes a point at which you think you might be sweating as well as wet, but there's no way of knowing where one type of moisture finishes and the other starts. There was no breeze to cool me down, my moustache started drooping, so I've simply spent the entire day feeling utterly sorry for myself and trying not to expend any unnecessary energy. Then of course, in the street, you have to deal with the umbrellas everywhere. No one seems to want to look where they're going under an umbrella. They simply plough on. Unaware. Umbrellas pointing in front of them like polyester battering rams.
I had my hair cut earlier and the barber had to dry my face and hair with a paper towel before he could start cutting. The shame of it! Everywhere I went, I looked around me to see if anyone else was showing the signs of melting. Apparently not!
I spent the morning doing some of the painstakingly dull admin associated with releasing an album. Every single performer attached to a CD has to be registered as part of PPL, which means, if the album goes mega (which of course it won't, but if it did) all the performers would be able to collect royalties associated with tracks being played on the radio and TV. The problem is that singers don't tend to be members of PPL, and of the thirty or so that I've registered today, only one was actually a member. And because you have to be a member to collect PPL royalties, my task felt both time-consuming and pointless... Of course it's not. Because I've registered the singers, if the album does well, the singers can join PPL and get a bit of money. But what a faff! There are a million processes similar to this one, some of which I've been trying to do simultaneously so that when one becomes too dull, I can switch screens and do something equally boring, but at least different! I phoned Fiona to have a good whinge and she was very sympathetic, reminding me that a record company would have a specific person whose job it was to input all this data. Self-releasing an album is a dull old game!
I got so obsessively engrossed in my mind-numbing tasks that I quite forgot I had a lunchtime meeting with a production company. Fortunately the bloke I was seeing texted me to change the venue, so I was shaken out of my reverie with enough time to hot-foot it into Soho.
We had lunch somewhere a bit fancy. I forget that some people do okay out of the arts and can afford to eat in nice places where the lighting is low and the waiters wear waistcoats and are overly attentive! I had some lovely soup and a bowl of macaroni cheese. For some reason the vegetarian menu was separate and I had to ask for the waiter to give me a copy. It made me feel a bit odd. Like a leper. I wondered if they were going to ask me to move tables and sit with the undesirables. Surely there are quite a few meat eaters out there who might fancy a bowl of macaroni cheese? The joy about vegetarian food is that it can be eaten by anyone. I know Nathan often chooses a vegetarian option...
Anyway, I found the meeting very inspiring. I'm never happier than when throwing ideas about with someone who understands how to make good telly and challenges me to think out of the box. My tendency when making documentaries is to want to create artistic "vignettes" without too much over-arching narrative. Good programme makers like the chap I met today will always encourage me to reappraise that particular desire.
I had my hair cut earlier and the barber had to dry my face and hair with a paper towel before he could start cutting. The shame of it! Everywhere I went, I looked around me to see if anyone else was showing the signs of melting. Apparently not!
I spent the morning doing some of the painstakingly dull admin associated with releasing an album. Every single performer attached to a CD has to be registered as part of PPL, which means, if the album goes mega (which of course it won't, but if it did) all the performers would be able to collect royalties associated with tracks being played on the radio and TV. The problem is that singers don't tend to be members of PPL, and of the thirty or so that I've registered today, only one was actually a member. And because you have to be a member to collect PPL royalties, my task felt both time-consuming and pointless... Of course it's not. Because I've registered the singers, if the album does well, the singers can join PPL and get a bit of money. But what a faff! There are a million processes similar to this one, some of which I've been trying to do simultaneously so that when one becomes too dull, I can switch screens and do something equally boring, but at least different! I phoned Fiona to have a good whinge and she was very sympathetic, reminding me that a record company would have a specific person whose job it was to input all this data. Self-releasing an album is a dull old game!
I got so obsessively engrossed in my mind-numbing tasks that I quite forgot I had a lunchtime meeting with a production company. Fortunately the bloke I was seeing texted me to change the venue, so I was shaken out of my reverie with enough time to hot-foot it into Soho.
We had lunch somewhere a bit fancy. I forget that some people do okay out of the arts and can afford to eat in nice places where the lighting is low and the waiters wear waistcoats and are overly attentive! I had some lovely soup and a bowl of macaroni cheese. For some reason the vegetarian menu was separate and I had to ask for the waiter to give me a copy. It made me feel a bit odd. Like a leper. I wondered if they were going to ask me to move tables and sit with the undesirables. Surely there are quite a few meat eaters out there who might fancy a bowl of macaroni cheese? The joy about vegetarian food is that it can be eaten by anyone. I know Nathan often chooses a vegetarian option...
Anyway, I found the meeting very inspiring. I'm never happier than when throwing ideas about with someone who understands how to make good telly and challenges me to think out of the box. My tendency when making documentaries is to want to create artistic "vignettes" without too much over-arching narrative. Good programme makers like the chap I met today will always encourage me to reappraise that particular desire.
Rain and filming
I've had a bit of a headache today, which I sincerely hope is not me coming down with the dreaded lurgy that my godson and Meriel had on holiday!
Today has been spent travelling up and down London on tube trains. First up was the osteopath. After last time's less-than-satisfying session with a female osteopath, I had a chat with the receptionist and we decided it wasn't sexist or misogynist of me to request a male osteopath in future. When I said I needed someone who wasn't sacred to pummel me, she said she knew exactly who to suggest, and, today, I was greeted by a 6'6" Bulgarian man mountain who went by the name of Ivan. Ivan had hands like upholstered metal deckchairs, and a steely blue-eyed air of menace. You would not want to come across Ivan in a dark alley, or on a rugby pitch. I bet Ivan doesn't cook the meat he eats... Or hear the cries of his patients. Ivan is fabulous! I emerged from the session cross-eyed, with tears streaming down my face from giggling like an imbecile whilst he used his elbow to literally squeeze the air from my body. I walked past the receptionist on the way out and got the knowing look of someone who knew I'd been Ivan'd!
From Borough, I went back up to Kentish Town to visit the gym and then the dentist who told me she'd seldom seen teeth as good as mine. She said she felt it must be a good diet mixed with the fact that I neither drink nor smoke. They might be gargantuan in size, but they're apparently made of strong stuff. I felt pathetically proud as I walked to the tube and immediately texted my mate, Raily, who never misses an opportunity to tell me I eat too many sweeties!
I went from Kentish Town back to south London, this time to meet a lovely lady from the Lesbian and Gay switchboard. We met in an "Eat" by the side of the Thames. Eat, it turns out, has a very poor selection of vegetarian sandwiches. Had I not been so hungry, or busily talking to Nathan (who's in some Lithuanian town) I might have had a word with the staff. But then, what would they have been able to say? The meeting went well. It was really just a "hello" and a bit of an explorative chat. I've got an idea for a film which I'm tentatively trying to work up into a pitch. As with all of these things, it's unlikely to come to fruition, but if I thought this way about everything I did, I'd never achieve anything!
It started raining in the afternoon. Really horrid, non-stop pissy rain, which made the tubes hum and steam.
I had a few hours at home in Highgate to do some frantic admin, and then jumped in the car to drive through heavy rain down to Peckham where I met the lovely Jana from the Rebel Chorus. We were filming her singing a few lines from the Pepys Motet for the video we're making to accompany the album's release. She looked fabulous in a shiny, figure-hugging dress, but, by the time we'd started filming, the rain was bucketing down, so we filmed her in her coat! Candles, cameras, electronic equipment and rain on a dodgy street in Peckham late at night are not the best combination. Heaven knows what we've managed to capture! Rain is a double-edged sword on a film shoot. It can look incredibly atmospheric, and it reflects light in a magical way, but it means everything has to be done repeatedly, and, of course, you run the risk of destroying your kit!
Still we got there, and I was safely home before midnight.
It continued to rain long into the night and I fell asleep with the sound of water dripping into pans in the sitting room and loft...
Today has been spent travelling up and down London on tube trains. First up was the osteopath. After last time's less-than-satisfying session with a female osteopath, I had a chat with the receptionist and we decided it wasn't sexist or misogynist of me to request a male osteopath in future. When I said I needed someone who wasn't sacred to pummel me, she said she knew exactly who to suggest, and, today, I was greeted by a 6'6" Bulgarian man mountain who went by the name of Ivan. Ivan had hands like upholstered metal deckchairs, and a steely blue-eyed air of menace. You would not want to come across Ivan in a dark alley, or on a rugby pitch. I bet Ivan doesn't cook the meat he eats... Or hear the cries of his patients. Ivan is fabulous! I emerged from the session cross-eyed, with tears streaming down my face from giggling like an imbecile whilst he used his elbow to literally squeeze the air from my body. I walked past the receptionist on the way out and got the knowing look of someone who knew I'd been Ivan'd!
From Borough, I went back up to Kentish Town to visit the gym and then the dentist who told me she'd seldom seen teeth as good as mine. She said she felt it must be a good diet mixed with the fact that I neither drink nor smoke. They might be gargantuan in size, but they're apparently made of strong stuff. I felt pathetically proud as I walked to the tube and immediately texted my mate, Raily, who never misses an opportunity to tell me I eat too many sweeties!
I went from Kentish Town back to south London, this time to meet a lovely lady from the Lesbian and Gay switchboard. We met in an "Eat" by the side of the Thames. Eat, it turns out, has a very poor selection of vegetarian sandwiches. Had I not been so hungry, or busily talking to Nathan (who's in some Lithuanian town) I might have had a word with the staff. But then, what would they have been able to say? The meeting went well. It was really just a "hello" and a bit of an explorative chat. I've got an idea for a film which I'm tentatively trying to work up into a pitch. As with all of these things, it's unlikely to come to fruition, but if I thought this way about everything I did, I'd never achieve anything!
It started raining in the afternoon. Really horrid, non-stop pissy rain, which made the tubes hum and steam.
I had a few hours at home in Highgate to do some frantic admin, and then jumped in the car to drive through heavy rain down to Peckham where I met the lovely Jana from the Rebel Chorus. We were filming her singing a few lines from the Pepys Motet for the video we're making to accompany the album's release. She looked fabulous in a shiny, figure-hugging dress, but, by the time we'd started filming, the rain was bucketing down, so we filmed her in her coat! Candles, cameras, electronic equipment and rain on a dodgy street in Peckham late at night are not the best combination. Heaven knows what we've managed to capture! Rain is a double-edged sword on a film shoot. It can look incredibly atmospheric, and it reflects light in a magical way, but it means everything has to be done repeatedly, and, of course, you run the risk of destroying your kit!
Still we got there, and I was safely home before midnight.
It continued to rain long into the night and I fell asleep with the sound of water dripping into pans in the sitting room and loft...
Monday, 1 August 2016
Colsterdale Pals
Today started very early at the Youth Hostel. We knocked back a quick breakfast and then it was very much home James and don't spare the horses. A five and a half-hour drive is always tackled sooner rather than later.
On our way back down the A1, I managed to fulfil the ambition of visiting the beautiful Colsterdale Moor, home to the Leeds Pals monument, which marks where that particular battalion trained for a year and a half before heading off to France. It's the monument which the Pals themselves wanted, and attended on November 11th every year until there were none of them left. One assumes they weren't interested in a monument at the spot where many of them had died. They wanted to gather at the place where they'd lived: the last place they'd all been together. And it's really very moving to think about it in those terms.
The monument itself is very lovely. Gleaming and white and, today, stretching up into a sky so blue it looked almost purple. Colsterdale wraps itself around the monument in a most pleasing manner. The fields looked like a patchwork quilt, and I stood for sometime, somewhat transfixed by the shadows of clouds in the sky chasing sunlight across the fields.
More moving than the monument, however, were the ruins in the field opposite of the buildings the men had built and lived in. This is where the Pals slept, endlessly practiced military manoeuvres and bayonet drill, and transformed themselves from citizens into soldiers. It was the remnants of the old wash houses which Sam and I found most moving. The area is nothing but a few foundations these days, some broken porcelain pipework and a few ancient plug-holes with butterflies darting about, but it was somehow enough. I think we both imagined the men lined up in rows, quickly washing their faces in the bitter cold of winter. The moor is plainly not a place anyone would want to live in during heavy wind, rain or snow.
Our companion throughout most of the journeys this week has been the voice from Google Maps' satnav system. She can be really rather insistent bordering on irritating. Sam thought it might be nice to humanise her by giving her a name, so, somewhere on the Northumbrian cost, "Chlorrhoea" was born, and for the next few days she took us on many adventures and always delivered us safely... Until today.
Today Chlorrhoea failed us spectacularly! Chlorrhoea obviously thought we might like to end our lovely holiday by utterly trashing the car. She took us down a dirt track. It was terrifying. It got worse and worse, and then the bottom of the car started banging, scraping and sounding like a layer of metal was being peeled off. We had no option other than to turn back. Sam got out of the car so there was less weight inside and I reversed, constantly repeating a mantra to myself: "please let this be okay... Please let this be okay..." At one point I passed through a massive cloud of flies, many of which flew into the car. It was absolutely hideous.
Back on sturdy Tarmac we checked the car, and it looked okay, and got us back to London well enough. Just to add something surreal to the mayhem of the day, as we finally made it onto a proper country lane, a number of very fluffy black kittens ran across the road in front of the car. They looked like weird teddy bears. They must have been wild cats. There wasn't a house in sight.
As we passed through Bedfordshire, I noticed they were tearing down the caravan behind the "Adult Pit Stop" which I visited a number of times when I was making A1: The Road Musical. The caravan belonged to a 90 year old woman who had run the Happy Eater in the building where the roadside sex shop now stands. She was a brilliant old bird who told me that the cafe had once been a brothel for American soldiers in WW2, so she was not at all phased about the fact that it had become a sex shop. The knocking down of her home tells me that she must have finally shuffled off to the Happy Eater in the sky, and that there's another reason to assume that the A1 has become a shadow of its former eccentric self. Back in North Yorkshire we saw that they'd also knocked Quernhow Cafe down, which was a proper trucker stop with a great deal of character. It's where we filmed a lad called Wayne talking about the death of his brother Danny on the road. It's also where my cameraman went off to explore and found 100 dead rabbits strung up in a nearby barn!
I got home at about 5.30pm. It apparently took Sam a further 2 1/2 hours to get himself back to South London. He must have wanted to curl up and die.
My day wasn't over, however, as I had a date to meet Christopher from the Rebel Chorus, down on the beach by the Tower of London to film him singing a sequence from the Pepys Motet for our little film. We were really very speedy. He was well prepared, and, because it was just me, him, a candle and a torch, there was a limit to what we could achieve. After he'd finished, I took myself on a little walk around the city of London, filming a few cutaways to represent what Pepys' London looks like today. I had a lot of fun at the sign for Pudding Lane...
I got back to find someone (a human being) had laid a steaming turd in our alleyway. A wholly unacceptable end to a throughly pleasant day.
On our way back down the A1, I managed to fulfil the ambition of visiting the beautiful Colsterdale Moor, home to the Leeds Pals monument, which marks where that particular battalion trained for a year and a half before heading off to France. It's the monument which the Pals themselves wanted, and attended on November 11th every year until there were none of them left. One assumes they weren't interested in a monument at the spot where many of them had died. They wanted to gather at the place where they'd lived: the last place they'd all been together. And it's really very moving to think about it in those terms.
The monument itself is very lovely. Gleaming and white and, today, stretching up into a sky so blue it looked almost purple. Colsterdale wraps itself around the monument in a most pleasing manner. The fields looked like a patchwork quilt, and I stood for sometime, somewhat transfixed by the shadows of clouds in the sky chasing sunlight across the fields.
More moving than the monument, however, were the ruins in the field opposite of the buildings the men had built and lived in. This is where the Pals slept, endlessly practiced military manoeuvres and bayonet drill, and transformed themselves from citizens into soldiers. It was the remnants of the old wash houses which Sam and I found most moving. The area is nothing but a few foundations these days, some broken porcelain pipework and a few ancient plug-holes with butterflies darting about, but it was somehow enough. I think we both imagined the men lined up in rows, quickly washing their faces in the bitter cold of winter. The moor is plainly not a place anyone would want to live in during heavy wind, rain or snow.
Our companion throughout most of the journeys this week has been the voice from Google Maps' satnav system. She can be really rather insistent bordering on irritating. Sam thought it might be nice to humanise her by giving her a name, so, somewhere on the Northumbrian cost, "Chlorrhoea" was born, and for the next few days she took us on many adventures and always delivered us safely... Until today.
Today Chlorrhoea failed us spectacularly! Chlorrhoea obviously thought we might like to end our lovely holiday by utterly trashing the car. She took us down a dirt track. It was terrifying. It got worse and worse, and then the bottom of the car started banging, scraping and sounding like a layer of metal was being peeled off. We had no option other than to turn back. Sam got out of the car so there was less weight inside and I reversed, constantly repeating a mantra to myself: "please let this be okay... Please let this be okay..." At one point I passed through a massive cloud of flies, many of which flew into the car. It was absolutely hideous.
Back on sturdy Tarmac we checked the car, and it looked okay, and got us back to London well enough. Just to add something surreal to the mayhem of the day, as we finally made it onto a proper country lane, a number of very fluffy black kittens ran across the road in front of the car. They looked like weird teddy bears. They must have been wild cats. There wasn't a house in sight.
As we passed through Bedfordshire, I noticed they were tearing down the caravan behind the "Adult Pit Stop" which I visited a number of times when I was making A1: The Road Musical. The caravan belonged to a 90 year old woman who had run the Happy Eater in the building where the roadside sex shop now stands. She was a brilliant old bird who told me that the cafe had once been a brothel for American soldiers in WW2, so she was not at all phased about the fact that it had become a sex shop. The knocking down of her home tells me that she must have finally shuffled off to the Happy Eater in the sky, and that there's another reason to assume that the A1 has become a shadow of its former eccentric self. Back in North Yorkshire we saw that they'd also knocked Quernhow Cafe down, which was a proper trucker stop with a great deal of character. It's where we filmed a lad called Wayne talking about the death of his brother Danny on the road. It's also where my cameraman went off to explore and found 100 dead rabbits strung up in a nearby barn!
I got home at about 5.30pm. It apparently took Sam a further 2 1/2 hours to get himself back to South London. He must have wanted to curl up and die.
My day wasn't over, however, as I had a date to meet Christopher from the Rebel Chorus, down on the beach by the Tower of London to film him singing a sequence from the Pepys Motet for our little film. We were really very speedy. He was well prepared, and, because it was just me, him, a candle and a torch, there was a limit to what we could achieve. After he'd finished, I took myself on a little walk around the city of London, filming a few cutaways to represent what Pepys' London looks like today. I had a lot of fun at the sign for Pudding Lane...
I got back to find someone (a human being) had laid a steaming turd in our alleyway. A wholly unacceptable end to a throughly pleasant day.
Saturday, 30 July 2016
A sunset adventure
It's been the last full day of our holiday and, all day, I've been gearing up for a return to London. I did some admin in the youth hostel this morning whilst everyone wafted about around me. I've officially reached the place now where I need a bit of space away from noise. I adore young people, but, after a while, their boundless energy can drain me of mine.
After lunch, we were met by a few old friends of Raily's and we all went off to the place where we'd found the amazing network of natural stepping stones underneath a bridge in a local ravine. It was a brilliant decision. Everyone had a great adventure, inching ever-further along the river, daring each other to jump onto stones which seemed preposterously small, or slippery or were balancing beneath fast-moving water. It was like a lottery. One wrong step and you're on your arse in a pool of water!
The sun came out and shone on the river like a spot light wrapped in a straw gel. The water surging over the stones was brown. So brown, in fact, that the kids called it the Coca-cola river. The sun caught the surface of the water and it suddenly looked as though someone had sprinkled Jersey Milk bottle tops everywhere. A foamy sediment had gathered in some of the slower moving sections of the river and I was instantly reminded of a Coke Float from the Wimpy in 1981!
From the river we headed to Allen Banks, which ought to have been a walk along another river but, due to winter erosion, all the paths had been rerouted into the hills and we didn't get to go anywhere near the river itself which we could hear roaring along in the valley below us. I'm not altogether surprised about the winter erosion thing. When I made 100 Faces back in 2012, we used to drive along the A69 from Newcastle to Carlisle. I remember looking down from the road onto the very river where we were today and thinking how swollen, angry and terrifying it looked. The lack of river walk wasn't a big deal today. We've walked along a lot of rivers on this holiday and I t was great to stroll beneath the dark pines. Rather fortunately, we were under the trees during the one rain storm that briefly came our way.
We picked wild raspberries and then headed back home. One wonders how raspberries end up growing by a river in Northumberland!
This evening Tanya and Paul cooked an early curry for tea which we managed to finish eating by about 7pm. At that point, a little group of us jumped into two cars and sped up to Sycamore Gap, which I think has officially become my favourite place in the North of England with the possible exception of Spurn Point. It had been my plan all week to kidnap Hilary (who'd always missed going there on our previous trips) and take her to he magical place as the sun went down. The heavens were providing us with a glorious treacly light that I felt certain was going to sink into a glorious sunset. I was right.
We walked all the way along the top of the cragg where Hadrian's Wall travels majestically in the direction of Newcastle. The light was beautiful: yellow, then orange, then red. The grasses on the top of the wall were glowing like little flecks of fire.
Sycamore Gap is a thirty-minute walk up and down the ridges, and we arrived there as the sun was about to set. It looked rather stunning against the darkening sky, and I took photos of everyone silhouetted like little Lowry matchstick figures. The sun seemed to go down rather rapidly, and we watched it disappearing behind a hillside from underneath the tree and then again from the top of the hill next door, racing up the steep footpath like maniacs to catch the last red rays for a second time.
As we walked back to the car park, Nathan phoned from Riga in Latvia. It seemed so strange to me that I'd walked down that very path with him less than a week ago, and, whilst for me very little has changed, he's been back to London on a train, taken a plane to Paris and then flown to Latvia! The world we live in gets smaller by the minute, doesn't it?
At the bottom of the cragg, there's an amazing echo. The kids had a fabulous time shouting, and Hilary sang some opera...
Little Tomas and Lily were immensely keen to see bats for the first time and we were utterly blessed with a proper fly by when we arrived at the car park. I swear one bat was looping the loop for us! The kids got very excited. I don't know whether there are more bats about these days. As a child I was absolutely desperate to see a bat and never caught one flapping about.
It was the journey home, however, which got the kids almost hysterical with excitement. We went across the moors and must have done an emergency stop for almost every animal in carnation. I think the end tally was several rabbits, a silly number of hares, two lambs, three pheasants, a weird bird which seemed to be nesting in the middle of the road, a sheep and a hedgehog! We were screaming with laughter by the time we pulled up outside the Youth Hostel. I'm proud to say I didn't hit a single animal.
After lunch, we were met by a few old friends of Raily's and we all went off to the place where we'd found the amazing network of natural stepping stones underneath a bridge in a local ravine. It was a brilliant decision. Everyone had a great adventure, inching ever-further along the river, daring each other to jump onto stones which seemed preposterously small, or slippery or were balancing beneath fast-moving water. It was like a lottery. One wrong step and you're on your arse in a pool of water!
The sun came out and shone on the river like a spot light wrapped in a straw gel. The water surging over the stones was brown. So brown, in fact, that the kids called it the Coca-cola river. The sun caught the surface of the water and it suddenly looked as though someone had sprinkled Jersey Milk bottle tops everywhere. A foamy sediment had gathered in some of the slower moving sections of the river and I was instantly reminded of a Coke Float from the Wimpy in 1981!
From the river we headed to Allen Banks, which ought to have been a walk along another river but, due to winter erosion, all the paths had been rerouted into the hills and we didn't get to go anywhere near the river itself which we could hear roaring along in the valley below us. I'm not altogether surprised about the winter erosion thing. When I made 100 Faces back in 2012, we used to drive along the A69 from Newcastle to Carlisle. I remember looking down from the road onto the very river where we were today and thinking how swollen, angry and terrifying it looked. The lack of river walk wasn't a big deal today. We've walked along a lot of rivers on this holiday and I t was great to stroll beneath the dark pines. Rather fortunately, we were under the trees during the one rain storm that briefly came our way.
We picked wild raspberries and then headed back home. One wonders how raspberries end up growing by a river in Northumberland!
This evening Tanya and Paul cooked an early curry for tea which we managed to finish eating by about 7pm. At that point, a little group of us jumped into two cars and sped up to Sycamore Gap, which I think has officially become my favourite place in the North of England with the possible exception of Spurn Point. It had been my plan all week to kidnap Hilary (who'd always missed going there on our previous trips) and take her to he magical place as the sun went down. The heavens were providing us with a glorious treacly light that I felt certain was going to sink into a glorious sunset. I was right.
We walked all the way along the top of the cragg where Hadrian's Wall travels majestically in the direction of Newcastle. The light was beautiful: yellow, then orange, then red. The grasses on the top of the wall were glowing like little flecks of fire.
Sycamore Gap is a thirty-minute walk up and down the ridges, and we arrived there as the sun was about to set. It looked rather stunning against the darkening sky, and I took photos of everyone silhouetted like little Lowry matchstick figures. The sun seemed to go down rather rapidly, and we watched it disappearing behind a hillside from underneath the tree and then again from the top of the hill next door, racing up the steep footpath like maniacs to catch the last red rays for a second time.
As we walked back to the car park, Nathan phoned from Riga in Latvia. It seemed so strange to me that I'd walked down that very path with him less than a week ago, and, whilst for me very little has changed, he's been back to London on a train, taken a plane to Paris and then flown to Latvia! The world we live in gets smaller by the minute, doesn't it?
At the bottom of the cragg, there's an amazing echo. The kids had a fabulous time shouting, and Hilary sang some opera...
Little Tomas and Lily were immensely keen to see bats for the first time and we were utterly blessed with a proper fly by when we arrived at the car park. I swear one bat was looping the loop for us! The kids got very excited. I don't know whether there are more bats about these days. As a child I was absolutely desperate to see a bat and never caught one flapping about.
It was the journey home, however, which got the kids almost hysterical with excitement. We went across the moors and must have done an emergency stop for almost every animal in carnation. I think the end tally was several rabbits, a silly number of hares, two lambs, three pheasants, a weird bird which seemed to be nesting in the middle of the road, a sheep and a hedgehog! We were screaming with laughter by the time we pulled up outside the Youth Hostel. I'm proud to say I didn't hit a single animal.
Lindisfarne
We went to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne today which has to be one of the most magical places in the world. I first went there in about 1985, when I was ten, which is the age of my Godson Will who was with us today. It had a massive impact on me back then and I fought incredibly hard to get the entire group to brave the long drive to come there with me today. 31 years ago, my family stayed in a guest house on Lindisfarne and I was really inspired by the idea of a causeway from the mainland disappearing into the sea at high tide and creating an island.
It was a long old drive from our youth hostel and we decided to break the journey at Bamburgh, which was a revelation to us all. Mile upon mile of white sandy beach and stunning grass-covered sand dunes underneath a perfectly preserved Norman castle. It's very difficult to imagine anything more perfect if I'm honest! The kids had a whale of a time surfing the waves and building enormous sand castles. Will and Tomas dug a very deep hole which they named the "Pit of Doom."
The Northumbrian coast in that part of the county feels incredibly isolated somehow. I can't really explain why. The North Sea is never more than a few miles from the A1 road, but visiting any of the little villages scattered along its intricate inlets and headlands is like stepping back to the 1980s. As a result, it seems to attract a rather genteel type of tourist. The parking is free, the shops are curiously old-fashioned and the beaches are largely empty.
Driving a car across the causeway to Lindesfarne was every bit as exhilarating as it was in 1985. I still felt that frisson of fear, wondering if the tide times were wrong and my car was likely to be swept away into a tidal abyss. I'm pretty sure, when I came here as a child, rusty cars and vehicles were strewn along the side of the road, left, perhaps, as a warning to have-a-go-hero drivers that the tides move in very fast. If deserted cars WERE there back in 1985, they weren't there today, but there were posters all over the place displaying the image of a half-submerged Land Rover with massive letters spelling out the words, "check the tide times!"
We parked up and bought lollipops from an ice cream van in the corner of the car park. Meriel noticed that he sold cups of tea, and, because she was feeling a bit car sick and frozen solid from her swim in the North Sea at Bambrugh, asked if he sold mint tea. It was one of those cringingly middle class requests, and it fell on rather dead ears: "look, love, I'm an ice cream man stuck in the corner of a field on Holy Island... Now what do you think the answer to that question is?!"
I was instantly reminded of the occasion I took my celiac, somewhat brassy American friend to a greasy spoon in Leeds and was forced to hide behind a pillar whilst she brusquely asked "what have you got that is wheat free and dairy free?" The question was answered with a long pause and two simple words, "chips, love."
At 3pm, I left everyone at the priory on Lindesfarne and drove Hilary to a dentist in Berwick-Upon-Tweed for an emergency appointment. Her tooth has been killing her since we arrived and, as she arrived at Bamburgh this morning and knocked back a pain killer like some sort of addict, I could tell she'd reached the end of her tether. I spent an hour or so phoning round dentists in the area, begging them to offer us an emergency appointment.
It's funny how, when you reach Berwick, you suddenly start hearing those wonderful Scottish accents, despite technically still being in England. The woman in the pharmacy was particularly chirpy and sounded like something from Balamory, or Lorraine Kelly on helium: "have you got a wee abscess?" She asked. "Now I'm only going to give you enough of these for three days as they can get a wee bit addictive..." Like a little bird, she was.
By the time we'd arrived back in Holy Island the majority of tourists were leaving, so I encouraged everyone to come down to the castle with me, and we hung about for some time as the light faded, sitting by the crab nets, and clumps of poppies and houses made out of upturned boats in a somewhat rundown little harbour. It was a really still, peaceful moment. I looked around at the kids playing on the mud flats and wondered how many of them would take the memory into their adult years. A number of similar long summer evenings from my childhood have lodged themselves very firmly in my brain.
We went home via the wonderfully named seaside village of Sea Houses, which I kept wanting to call Sea Horses. All of us sat on the harbour wall eating chips from Pinnacles, which the Hairy Bikers have apparently hailed as the best chippie in the UK. A rather brave baby starling and a gaggle of seagulls watched us eating and waited for the leftovers.
We drove home along the A1, past signs for the unfortunately-named village of Shilbottle, which some local comedian had doctored to read "Shit Bottle." As we drove, we became aware of an astounding sunset brewing and, over the course of about half an hour, and with the aid of a little rain and a strategically-placed hot air balloon, the sky went from impressionist through Turneresque to apocalyptic! As we turned onto the A69 at Gateshead the entire experience became mesmeric. We were listening to the Concerto for a Rainy Day from ELO's Out of the Blue album and it was as though the sound track and visuals had been edited together for some kind of Hollywood epic. At one stage Sam gasped, "oh my God, there's a rainbow" and, sure enough, behind us, a giant golden rainbow was filling the sky. And when I say golden, I mean golden. The sun by this stage was crimson red and so the rainbow appeared in sepia. The only thing that was more perfect than the symbiosis of music and sunset was Sam's running commentary describing, in deeply florid terms, what he was looking at: "It's like lilacs softly blushing," he said at one point, and then later, "it's a burnished bronze..."
It was a long old drive from our youth hostel and we decided to break the journey at Bamburgh, which was a revelation to us all. Mile upon mile of white sandy beach and stunning grass-covered sand dunes underneath a perfectly preserved Norman castle. It's very difficult to imagine anything more perfect if I'm honest! The kids had a whale of a time surfing the waves and building enormous sand castles. Will and Tomas dug a very deep hole which they named the "Pit of Doom."
The Northumbrian coast in that part of the county feels incredibly isolated somehow. I can't really explain why. The North Sea is never more than a few miles from the A1 road, but visiting any of the little villages scattered along its intricate inlets and headlands is like stepping back to the 1980s. As a result, it seems to attract a rather genteel type of tourist. The parking is free, the shops are curiously old-fashioned and the beaches are largely empty.
Driving a car across the causeway to Lindesfarne was every bit as exhilarating as it was in 1985. I still felt that frisson of fear, wondering if the tide times were wrong and my car was likely to be swept away into a tidal abyss. I'm pretty sure, when I came here as a child, rusty cars and vehicles were strewn along the side of the road, left, perhaps, as a warning to have-a-go-hero drivers that the tides move in very fast. If deserted cars WERE there back in 1985, they weren't there today, but there were posters all over the place displaying the image of a half-submerged Land Rover with massive letters spelling out the words, "check the tide times!"
We parked up and bought lollipops from an ice cream van in the corner of the car park. Meriel noticed that he sold cups of tea, and, because she was feeling a bit car sick and frozen solid from her swim in the North Sea at Bambrugh, asked if he sold mint tea. It was one of those cringingly middle class requests, and it fell on rather dead ears: "look, love, I'm an ice cream man stuck in the corner of a field on Holy Island... Now what do you think the answer to that question is?!"
I was instantly reminded of the occasion I took my celiac, somewhat brassy American friend to a greasy spoon in Leeds and was forced to hide behind a pillar whilst she brusquely asked "what have you got that is wheat free and dairy free?" The question was answered with a long pause and two simple words, "chips, love."
At 3pm, I left everyone at the priory on Lindesfarne and drove Hilary to a dentist in Berwick-Upon-Tweed for an emergency appointment. Her tooth has been killing her since we arrived and, as she arrived at Bamburgh this morning and knocked back a pain killer like some sort of addict, I could tell she'd reached the end of her tether. I spent an hour or so phoning round dentists in the area, begging them to offer us an emergency appointment.
It's funny how, when you reach Berwick, you suddenly start hearing those wonderful Scottish accents, despite technically still being in England. The woman in the pharmacy was particularly chirpy and sounded like something from Balamory, or Lorraine Kelly on helium: "have you got a wee abscess?" She asked. "Now I'm only going to give you enough of these for three days as they can get a wee bit addictive..." Like a little bird, she was.
By the time we'd arrived back in Holy Island the majority of tourists were leaving, so I encouraged everyone to come down to the castle with me, and we hung about for some time as the light faded, sitting by the crab nets, and clumps of poppies and houses made out of upturned boats in a somewhat rundown little harbour. It was a really still, peaceful moment. I looked around at the kids playing on the mud flats and wondered how many of them would take the memory into their adult years. A number of similar long summer evenings from my childhood have lodged themselves very firmly in my brain.
We went home via the wonderfully named seaside village of Sea Houses, which I kept wanting to call Sea Horses. All of us sat on the harbour wall eating chips from Pinnacles, which the Hairy Bikers have apparently hailed as the best chippie in the UK. A rather brave baby starling and a gaggle of seagulls watched us eating and waited for the leftovers.
We drove home along the A1, past signs for the unfortunately-named village of Shilbottle, which some local comedian had doctored to read "Shit Bottle." As we drove, we became aware of an astounding sunset brewing and, over the course of about half an hour, and with the aid of a little rain and a strategically-placed hot air balloon, the sky went from impressionist through Turneresque to apocalyptic! As we turned onto the A69 at Gateshead the entire experience became mesmeric. We were listening to the Concerto for a Rainy Day from ELO's Out of the Blue album and it was as though the sound track and visuals had been edited together for some kind of Hollywood epic. At one stage Sam gasped, "oh my God, there's a rainbow" and, sure enough, behind us, a giant golden rainbow was filling the sky. And when I say golden, I mean golden. The sun by this stage was crimson red and so the rainbow appeared in sepia. The only thing that was more perfect than the symbiosis of music and sunset was Sam's running commentary describing, in deeply florid terms, what he was looking at: "It's like lilacs softly blushing," he said at one point, and then later, "it's a burnished bronze..."
Friday, 29 July 2016
Durham
We went to Durham today. It's about an hour away from where we are. Everything seems to be about an hour's drive away from where we are. This is because we are very much in the middle of nowhere, which is something I discovered to my great chagrin when I ran low on petrol this afternoon and discovered the nearest petrol station was 20 miles away! Flying. By. The. Seat...
It's rained through most of the day today but it turns out that Durham in the rain is not such bad place to be. There are plenty of shops and covered markets to duck into, and the mother of all cathedrals to shuffle around.
We spent some time in the Woolley Workshop, Durham's premiere yarn store. Nathan chatted to the lovely owner and we asked if she had many male customers: "Oh yes!" She said proudly, "we have a lot of students. In fact, one of our regulars is a maths PHD student." My mind instantly did a shedload of processing. "Is his name Matthew?" She looked confused, "yes..." "does he knit animals?" "Yes, he knitted the spider hanging above your head..."
Matthew Elliot-Ripley was in the first cast of Brass. I knew he was a PHD student at Durham, and a very keen knitter, so I instantly Facebooked him a photograph of the spider and asked if he could think of anyone warped enough to knit it! He immediately responded, "are you in Durham?" And to cut a long story short, he dropped everything, met us for lunch and it was incredibly lovely to see him...
Lunch was at the Jumping Bean vegetarian Cafe. I had a toasted sandwich with veggie sausages, Marmite and cheddar cheese. Looking through a menu in a veggie restaurant is always catastrophic if you're vegetarian and not used to any form of choice. The words start swimming about on the page as you try to locate the little green v sign, and when you realise there isn't one, because everything on the menu is fair game, there's nothing for it but meltdown!
We walked along the west side of the river, deep in the ravine underneath the castle and the cathedral. It's such an extraordinary place. The river flows over a weir and then gently meanders around the castle mount. It's so still and green down there and today, perhaps because of rain, huge fish were jumping clean out of the water, diving back in and creating enormous ripples which stretched in ever-increasing circles all the way to the river banks.
We crossed the ancient foot bridge to the castle side of the river, and wound our way up the cobbled streets to the Cathedral, which is an utterly stunning building.
I was very moved to see the "Butte de Warlencourt" Battlefield crosses, which date from November 1916. The three crosses are made from wood and were placed on one of the Somme battlefields to mark the spot where 200 members of the Durham Light Infantry were killed. The crosses were brought home in 1926 when the Commonwealth Grave Committee standardised the way that the graves of those who had fallen in the Great War were presented. One went to Durham, one to Bishop Auckland and one to Chester-le-Street but they were brought back together in Durham Cathedral for the 100th anniversary of the Somme.
I think we were all a little surprised to find the Venerable Bede's tomb in the cathedral. I was so surprised, in fact, that I decided to light a candle to his memory. I wish I hadn't bothered, really, because in the process of doing so, I managed to drop mine on the floor, and put several other candles out. It was really very embarrassing. I felt like Terry from Terry and June.
Down behind the alter was a very stirring wooden sculpture called The Pietà by Fenwick Lawson. I didn't know the word Pietà , but I think it's a thing which has something to do with Mary the Muv, and her son, Jesus after he'd be brought down from the cross. The sculpture was enormous and very definitely carved from two simple tree trunks. I wasn't that fussed about the Christ, but the Mary figure was incredibly moving. It had that somewhat crude, 1970s primitive vibe which I've always rather enjoyed. And if that sounds pretentious, I apologise. I can't think of another way to describe it. Anyway, it turns out that the sculptor is the godfather of one of Sam's friends, so I was rather please to be able to report that it had moved me so much.
The sculpture was apparently in York Minster when it went up in flames in the mid 1980s, and it got spattered with molten lead. I think everyone was a little surprised when the sculptor said he felt that the disaster had added something quite important to the piece.
At just before 5pm I drove Nathan to the train station where he headed back to London. He's singing on a cruise ship next week and had to get back home to sort things out. I keep calling the cruise ship a ferry by mistake. I'll confess: I didn't much like saying goodbye to him. I'd like him here for the rest of the holiday, please.
Sam and I drove back to Nine Banks together, which was when the petrol incident happened. It was also when I ran over a pheasant. They are, without question, the stupidest creatures. As we drove up to the hostel, one of the silly things flew up from the road and proceeded to fly just in front of the windscreen for about 50 meters, seemingly not at all aware that if it flew just a metre higher, it would be out of our way. It was royally shitting itself out of fear as it flew. A desperate, somewhat tragic sight!
It's rained through most of the day today but it turns out that Durham in the rain is not such bad place to be. There are plenty of shops and covered markets to duck into, and the mother of all cathedrals to shuffle around.
We spent some time in the Woolley Workshop, Durham's premiere yarn store. Nathan chatted to the lovely owner and we asked if she had many male customers: "Oh yes!" She said proudly, "we have a lot of students. In fact, one of our regulars is a maths PHD student." My mind instantly did a shedload of processing. "Is his name Matthew?" She looked confused, "yes..." "does he knit animals?" "Yes, he knitted the spider hanging above your head..."
Matthew Elliot-Ripley was in the first cast of Brass. I knew he was a PHD student at Durham, and a very keen knitter, so I instantly Facebooked him a photograph of the spider and asked if he could think of anyone warped enough to knit it! He immediately responded, "are you in Durham?" And to cut a long story short, he dropped everything, met us for lunch and it was incredibly lovely to see him...
Lunch was at the Jumping Bean vegetarian Cafe. I had a toasted sandwich with veggie sausages, Marmite and cheddar cheese. Looking through a menu in a veggie restaurant is always catastrophic if you're vegetarian and not used to any form of choice. The words start swimming about on the page as you try to locate the little green v sign, and when you realise there isn't one, because everything on the menu is fair game, there's nothing for it but meltdown!
We walked along the west side of the river, deep in the ravine underneath the castle and the cathedral. It's such an extraordinary place. The river flows over a weir and then gently meanders around the castle mount. It's so still and green down there and today, perhaps because of rain, huge fish were jumping clean out of the water, diving back in and creating enormous ripples which stretched in ever-increasing circles all the way to the river banks.
We crossed the ancient foot bridge to the castle side of the river, and wound our way up the cobbled streets to the Cathedral, which is an utterly stunning building.
I was very moved to see the "Butte de Warlencourt" Battlefield crosses, which date from November 1916. The three crosses are made from wood and were placed on one of the Somme battlefields to mark the spot where 200 members of the Durham Light Infantry were killed. The crosses were brought home in 1926 when the Commonwealth Grave Committee standardised the way that the graves of those who had fallen in the Great War were presented. One went to Durham, one to Bishop Auckland and one to Chester-le-Street but they were brought back together in Durham Cathedral for the 100th anniversary of the Somme.
I think we were all a little surprised to find the Venerable Bede's tomb in the cathedral. I was so surprised, in fact, that I decided to light a candle to his memory. I wish I hadn't bothered, really, because in the process of doing so, I managed to drop mine on the floor, and put several other candles out. It was really very embarrassing. I felt like Terry from Terry and June.
Down behind the alter was a very stirring wooden sculpture called The Pietà by Fenwick Lawson. I didn't know the word Pietà , but I think it's a thing which has something to do with Mary the Muv, and her son, Jesus after he'd be brought down from the cross. The sculpture was enormous and very definitely carved from two simple tree trunks. I wasn't that fussed about the Christ, but the Mary figure was incredibly moving. It had that somewhat crude, 1970s primitive vibe which I've always rather enjoyed. And if that sounds pretentious, I apologise. I can't think of another way to describe it. Anyway, it turns out that the sculptor is the godfather of one of Sam's friends, so I was rather please to be able to report that it had moved me so much.
The sculpture was apparently in York Minster when it went up in flames in the mid 1980s, and it got spattered with molten lead. I think everyone was a little surprised when the sculptor said he felt that the disaster had added something quite important to the piece.
At just before 5pm I drove Nathan to the train station where he headed back to London. He's singing on a cruise ship next week and had to get back home to sort things out. I keep calling the cruise ship a ferry by mistake. I'll confess: I didn't much like saying goodbye to him. I'd like him here for the rest of the holiday, please.
Sam and I drove back to Nine Banks together, which was when the petrol incident happened. It was also when I ran over a pheasant. They are, without question, the stupidest creatures. As we drove up to the hostel, one of the silly things flew up from the road and proceeded to fly just in front of the windscreen for about 50 meters, seemingly not at all aware that if it flew just a metre higher, it would be out of our way. It was royally shitting itself out of fear as it flew. A desperate, somewhat tragic sight!
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