Downright Nasty

Yesterday saw the close of the Tall Ships festivities on the Tyne as they exited into the North Sea and on to Fredrikstad. Being a hardy soul “cough” I decided to head down to Tynemouth early in the morning and stand on the North Pier to watch the parade. The plan was to meet Billy and Steph, who were also feeling enthusiastic, and take in the sites together. Well they were obviously a lot more enthusiastic than me because when I phoned at 7:30 to make arrangements they were already down there! They were waiting for me as I arrived on the Pier at 8:15 and we secured a good vantage point about 2/3 along.

The official timings for the event had the ships departing their moorings at eight and we assumed it would take about an hour for them to reach the mouth of the river. Wrong! We waited until about 10:00 before catching our first sight of sail. Now at the start of our vigil the weather whilst not being exactly tropical was tolerable. By the time we had sighted sail the wind had picked up and the rain had started to spit. An hour later had the rain was becoming more than just a hindrance to keeping my camera dry in fact it was turning downright nasty in a cold, persistent, soaking sort of way. Discretion being the better part of valour we decided to find a more sheltered vantage point and abandoned the pier.

We walked past the crowds lining the route to Collingwood’s Monument and down onto the riverside path below Knott’s Flats where we found shelter from the wind but not the rain which was getting steadily heavier. The backs of my legs where, by this point, stuck to my soaked trousers….aaaargh, I hate that! Don’t you just love English summers?

By the time we reached North Shields Fish Quay the rain had subsided and the last few ships were due. We made our way up the steep steps on the bank and up to The Wooden Doll both for a drink and the different perspective it could provide us with. We caught the last few ships passing by just as Billy and Steph’s camera ran out of charge, now there’s perfect timing for you, although I’m not sure Steph was too impressed. Food was our next major concern but a short walk along to the Magnesia Bank solved that problem. Now more of a restaurant than a pub it still manages to pour a good pint and the food whilst not cheap is very plentiful.

Billy and I brought the day to a close with a half hearted stroll around Newcastle’s Record Shops. To be honest we were too wet and had walked too far to have any real enthusiasm for it. I met Gill down at her office and I was in bed before 9, sleeping like a babe. It’s the sea air you know.

Boat on the river...as Styx would say...

...and another...

...and finally.

Lost for words.

Working as I do at the Northern Centre for Cancer Treatment you get used to death as it is a major concern for all our patients and you become somewhat immune to it’s fear factor. However when it directly affects one of your work mates that immunity can disappear and you feel the hurt more deeply than you would normally.

Today I got news that the brother of one of my colleagues had been killed in a motorcycle accident somewhere in Russia. Jon was taking part in a charity ride for Cancer Research UK from Newcastle in the UK to Newcastle in Australia and had learnt to ride especially for the journey. He was in his mid twenties, far too young for anyone to die, and leaves behind a devastated family and girlfriend to all of whom I offer my most heartfelt sympathies.

Herbal, Smoky Haze

Last night I headed down to the Ouseburn Valley in Byker to take in some of the goings on lined up by the Ouseburn Festival. The festival is an annual weekend event which, this year, had been extended to include the week of the Tall Ships Race. I was hoping to catch a gig being played at one of the outdoor stages that had been set up on local playing fields.

The band in question were Space Ritual who are made up of ex-members of Hawkwind who play a ‘best of’ selection of the ’Winds seventies classics. My second ever gig was at Newcastle City Hall to see Hawkwind in 1979 and I must have seen them over a dozen times in total, although not once in the last ten years. My memories of being a 15 year old school kid walking into the City Hall that night will stay with me for ever. I don’t think I have ever seen as many stoned people in one place in my life, there was no need for dry ice as the auditorium was filled by a herbal, smoky haze.

Back in Byker there may have been around 100 souls scattered around the playing field as Space Ritual came to the stage and tried to get a bit of an atmosphere going. To be honest the poor buggers looked like the 50-60 year olds they were but close your eyes and it could almost have been 1979 again. Almost. They played in typical Hawkwind fashion i.e. they were all over the place but it sounded like I remember from all those years ago and certainly sounded better than the real Hawkwind did last time I caught them. The audience got into it/drunker/more stoned as time went on and the exotic dancer/performance artist Miss Angel, whilst not matching Stacia, kept many entertained. Unfortunately I was neither drunk nor stoned and decided that I would have to rectify this so left just as Brainstorm was cranking up.

I was with my friend and fellow real ale lover Billy and we decided to head down to the Free Trade Inn further down the valley. Not only do they serve great beer but it has the best beer garden in Newcastle and would be the ideal location to catch the fireworks planned for later in the evening. However several hundred other people had had the same idea and the queue for a drink stretched out of the door and up the bank. So on to plan B and back up the bank to the Cumberland Arms where the queue was of much more manageable proportions and the beer garden only slightly less impressive. A further drink in the Cluny followed from where I decided to meet with Gill who had planned to watch the fireworks from her office on the quayside and Billy headed back to the Free Trade to meet up with his girlfriend Steph and her family.

The fireworks were a bit of a disappointment in that there were not enough of them, you can never have too many fireworks, and the organisers had tried to choreograph them together with music and other visuals. Whilst some of the visuals looked quite impressive (acrobats on the side of the Baltic) the music sounded like it was being played through a £5 cassette player after the tape had been given to a 2 year old to play with. Still it gave me a chance to play around with a couple of the settings on my new digital camera as evidenced below.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Oooooooooooooo!





















Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Dream on.....

This afternoon one of the most recognisable figures in the North East rock scene will be buried. Jeffrey Thomas Rowe or Little Jeff as he was known to all died last week in Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital after a long illness.

I first met Jeff at a rock club called Mingles in Whitley Bay when I was a fresh faced teenager; I guess I must have been about 16 or 17 and to be honest I couldn’t have put an age on Jeff if my life had depended on it. Jeff was DJ at the club and had a great eye/ear for what tunes were likely to fill the admittedly tiny dance floor. The rock scene even back at it’s height of popularity in the late seventies and eighties was small enough for you to be able to recognise and put names to most of the regulars at clubs nights and gigs. As such you could quite happily turn up somewhere by yourself and know that there would be several people you could have a good chat with. Jeff was nearly always there and I spent many a night chatting to him about new records we had bought and gigs we had attended.

Now I would never claim to be close to Jeff, I don’t think too many people really were despite what they might say, but we got on well. He worked at many venues through the years including Walkers and the Mayfair, the biggest and best(?) rock club in Newcastle and he became a very recognisable figure around the North East. Strange as it might seem but there was even a cult like adoration starting to grow around him and he gained several hangers on who would follow him like puppy dogs. I think Jeff even started to believe some of his own hype and we drifted apart somewhat during his tenure at the Mayfair.

Jeff once told me that he appreciated he could ask me something and he would get a straight answer and I would not worry about offending him. Now Jeff and I were totally different personalities and my answers were often not what he wanted to hear and, though they were honest, they did in the later years cause friction between us. The last time we spoke would have been about six months ago when we bumped into each other whilst walking through Newcastle city centre. He was walking ahead of me in obvious discomfort from his hips which had been degenerating for a number of years and as he stopped for a rest on a nearby bench I bit the bullet and plonked down next to him. At this time we had been on non speaking terms for a couple of years, I don’t think either of us could have told you why this situation arose but both being stubborn the situation continued and worsened. The conversation was uneasy to say the least initially but as time went on it warmed and you may have even taken us for friends by the end. He told me that the pain in his hips was becoming almost unbearable and was almost totally disabling but that he was in line for a hip replacement and he hoped this would ease many of his problems. We parted on good terms and with a greater appreciation of each other. I never saw Jeff again and he died before receiving his hip replacement.

I think the record he played as the last ever song at the Mayfair is quite suitable here so Jeff from me to you: Dream on…..

'The Beast'

Yesterday I watched history in the making, history that is likely never to be rewritten, as Lance Armstrong secured his 7th consecutive Tour de France title. My first exposure to the Tour came in the seventies when ITV’s World of sport carried ½ hour reports madmen with nicknames like ‘The Beast’ pushing themselves to breaking point over the highways and byways of France. Even at that young age I was in awe of the repeated physical effort these men were required to put their bodies through in order to complete this totally illogical event. Let’s face it unless you win one of the prize jerseys what fun could you possibly have racing for several thousands of kilometres through all weathers and over all terrains?

The pressures on the riders to get their sponsors name on TV by winning a stage or being involved in a breakaway attack is immense and has often led to illicit means to improve performance being employed. Perhaps the most famous recent incident of a rider being caught cheating is that of Marco Pantani winner of the last pre Lance era Tour in 1998. During the following years Giro de Italia Pantani was well on the way to victory when he was disqualified for having an excessively high red blood cell count, indicative of EPO use. Pantani only raced sporadically after this and was constantly dogged by rumours of further drug use and he never reached his previous level of success. In 2003 Pantani checked himself into a clinic in an attempt to overcome clinical depression and on February the 14th 2004 his body was found in a hotel room in Rimini, he had taken a huge overdose of cocaine.

Lance Armstrong himself has often been accused of cheating; after all how a cancer survivor could possibly win the world’s most arduous event more times than anyone else in history is surely suspicious? Nothing has ever been proved against Armstrong and he has never failed a drugs test despite being tested more than any other rider over recent years, yet still the rumours persist. I hope the history books never require a rewrite and that Armstrong’s record stands as a testament to a great mans strength and courage through adversity.

Next year will be the beginning of a new era for the Tour and its result may be the most unpredictable ever with anything up to 15 possible winners out of the 180 strong field. It will be, like this year’s race, more than just about the victor and I have every bit as much admiration for Iker Flores the Spaniard who finished 155th and last some 4h 20m 24s behind Armstrong and without whom, and riders like him, Armstrong wouldn’t have had a race to win.

When the Boat Comes In

Newcastle is currently working itself into something of a frenzy over the 2005 Tall Ships race which it is hosting this year. This would be the third time the race has started from Newcastle; the previous two times were back in the nineties. Everywhere you go lampposts and walkways are draped with banners informing the population of the impending arrival of the ships and the some 3000 youngsters from around the world crewing them. So, not being adverse to a bit of frenzy myself, I headed down to Newcastle’s quayside yesterday evening to get a closer look at the half dozen or so ships that had already made the journey up the Tyne.

Accompanying me on this little trek were my good lady wife Gill and Graeme, ex flat mate and friend of many years. As with all such expeditions preparation is key so we convened in the Crown Posada for some refreshment…2 pints of Jennings Bitter and a packet of Pork Scratchings in my case. The Crown is one of the few remaining real pubs in Newcastle and it is always a pleasure watching the faces of punters entering for the first time wondering if they have passed through some sort of time warp.

The first thing I had noticed when walking down to the Crown were the large number folk headed in the same direction and the number of eateries that had invested in some B&Q patio furniture in the hope of fostering a continental feel for their establishments. This effect was somewhat countered by the decidedly uncontinental grey skies overhead and the Geordies seeming reticence to sit outside because ‘people can watch you eat’. Whatever, there were only about a dozen people braving the elements and stares of passers by.

There were only about half a dozen ships moored up as we strolled along the quayside, well short of the 100 anticipated for Monday, but he crowds were out in force. The crews were spending their time either busily fixing fairy lights to the hulls and masts or just leisurely lounging around on deck ignoring the passing gawpers. The smaller vessels were generally out of bounds but a couple of the larger ones were allowing public access so we dutifully waited in line then ascended the gangplank. Now when I say ascended I mean ascended, these things are huge standing several meters above quay level.

Huge mast...























Even bigger mast?...

It was nice to get a chance to view the vessels with only relatively small crowds getting in the way. I imagine that once Monday rolls along you will be reduced to pacing yourself to the crawl of the masses and won't be able to get within decent view of the ships without a fight.

It’s not the beginning, but it is a beginning…

OK, so here goes…

I’ve never been one for keeping a diary apart from a couple of dismal attempts in my teens so this could prove to be something of a short lived experiment. I guess that bar a couple of vague notions I have no real idea where I want to take this blog so things could change fairly regularly before they settle into some sort of format, you’ll just have to bear with me.

I might as well get some house rules laid down from the start…

• I don’t do spelling…never could…still can’t, even with a checker.
• I don’t do grammar…never could…still can’t, even with a checker.
• I barely passed my English Lang. 'O' Level so don’t expect wonderfully florid prose.
• I always get pulled up for poor time management in my appraisals at work so don’t expect me to be any better here. I won’t be posting daily.

I was going to add a few more to that list but I thought I might like to keep a few of you interested enough to pop back so I’ll save them for later. I bet you can’t wait.

I’ll skip the usual this is who I am and this is what I do introduction because I’ll need something to write about in future posts and I’m also a bit of a tease. The sort of stuff you might find posted here will cover a multitude of topics but mainly music, sports and alcohol…Lord I sound like your average Geordie bloke, lets hope the stereotype doesn’t stick, we’ll see.

To get an idea of what I’m trying to produce here you may like to check out Sid Smith’s Postcards From The Yellow Room. He is of course very talented but that would be no excuse for reading his stuff and not mine…well, OK, it would but don’t let that stop you.