My Late Wife
I can’t go on calling her this in this blog, especially as many of you know her real name.
So I’m going to call her C.
Liverpool Reborn
Stephen Bayley wrote an article in The Times yesterday about how inspiring architecture is creating wealth, health and happiness.
Cities are living organisms. This means sometimes they die. Pompeii is one example, although no one saw it coming. Detroit’s fate was more predictable, possibly even inevitable: Motor City is stuck in reverse and headed for oblivion.
Liverpool nearly died. Like Detroit, it fell at great speed from economic and social grace. Unesco World Heritage credentials describe old Liverpool as “the supreme example of a commercial port at the time of Britain’s greatest global influence”. It was the New York of Europe.
He talks about how good architects have rebuilt the city and made it fit for the twenty-first century, but observes that politicians in London haven’t noticed. London to me is a city of good modern architecture, but save for a couple of nice buildings, those bridges and Grainger Town, Newcastle doesn’t seem to have been improved. Surely now, in the depths of a recession, we should be encouraging good building to leave a legacy to the future and also provide the jobs and homes we need. I’m not sure you need that many more shops and offices, though.
He ends the article by asking what makes a good building. He believes it is one that makes you feel better. He is absolutely right and having created a few in my time, I like to think I know how to create them. I shall create another when I return to London. Somewhere to live and somewhere where I will probably eventually die.
But then Liverpool in the 1960s turned me from a shy young boy with ideas into a shy young man with ambition, drive and a strong belief in myself. It does that to people. Even now, I go back occasionally to make sure that I know what life is about. It is still the second city of the UK despite what others say.
I shall be buying his book. If nothing else it will give me the faith to carry on in this world.
Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster is one of these stories that refuses to go away.
Now, as the tourist season approaches the National Archive of Scotland have released documents to show that there were worries that Nessie would be hunted and shot in the 1930s.
In 1938, the chief constable of Inverness-shire raised concerns about protecting Nessie from hunters.
In a letter he wrote: “That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness now seems beyond doubt.”
I don’t believe that the monster exists.
Loch Ness has been closed off from the sea for many thousands of years, so if a monster exists it is either that number of years old or they have lived and bred happily in the Loch.
The first premise is unlikely, so there must be at least two. But then if there were only that small a number, then they would have so many genetic problems because of in-breeding. So if they were more, then surely they would have provided more evidence.
It’s a myth designed to get tourists to Scotland.
The Demise of the Nightingale
This article in The Independent blames deer for the demise of the nightingale.
Nightingales are disappearing from Britain because deer are eating the woodland undergrowth the birds need for nesting, a new study has shown. It is a significant breakthrough in understanding why numbers of the renowned songbird are rapidly falling.
It just shows that we must get a balanced view on conservation. Deer numbers have increased greatly in recent years and as they have no natural predators, this will continue unless culling is introduced.
The Castle, Newcastle
As you would expect Newcastle has a castle.
The Geordie Accent
At times walking round Newcastle city centre, I thought I was hearing some foreign language.
It wasn’t!
It was just the version of English that Geordies talk to each other.
Newcastle Cathedral
Newcastle Cathedral would not be considered a large church.
Newcastle Cathedral
I didn’t get a chance to go in as it was shut.
Outside is a typical statue of Queen Victoria.
Queen Victoria Statue, Newcastle
There seem to be lots of statues of Queen Victoria, many of which have a very similar pose. Did some sculptors do job lots?
Uniform Dating
Just seen an advert for a site called Uniform Dating on Sky!
I suspect that you don’t always find the person, you think you’re going to!
Grey’s Monument, Newcastle
I hadn’t realised how important a politician Charles Grey was until I went to Newcastle. I hadn’t realised that he had been a character in Saul Dibb‘s film about the Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the Duchess.
You can’t miss the monument erected to him in the centre of Newcastle.
I have just been talking to a friend and they put me right aboiut Grey. His 1832 Reform Act was very important and when he was Prime Minister when slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.
For trivia, Earl Grey tea was named after him and he had sixteen children with his wife and at least one other.
Around Newcastle City Centre
I walked down from St. James’ Park to the centre of Newcastle.
These days city centres look very much the same with steel and glass shopping centres, although Newcastle does have quite a lot of grand stone buildings in an area called Grainger Town.
Stone Buildings in Newcastle City Centre
This is just a side street and there are a lot of grand building still left in the area, although T. Dan Smith and John Poulson would have probably knocked the lot down if they hadn’t got charged with corruption.
Luckily sense was seen and the area is now being restored.
But that didn’t stop this hideous edifice being erected by the Co-Op.
A Hideous Edifice
Can a building like this have ever looked good? Even as a set of drawings!
Do I have one abiding memory of Newmarket City Centre?
Yes! I’ve never been to a place with so much smell of chips and burgers.
