just a couple of things

I’ve been meaning to mention:

After writing about station bars a few weeks ago, I felt compelled to visit the one at Manchester Victoria for old times sake. The view above eye level was just how I remembered it. Below, though, I encountered the evil Pumpkin. When I asked the barman if he had any ale on draught, he rolled his eyes and pointed to the bottles of Newky Brown in the fridge. Oh dear. The Centurion this was not. Thankyou, Lisa, for the link to this article, which sums up the sad situation in this beautiful space.

Also, following on from my chat with the marvelous Mrs Sew and Sew, I had to show you this fabric design I discovered in Drucilla Cole’s 1000 Patterns book. Look closely: those ’66’s refer to the annual ration allowance of clothing coupons, and the numbers beside each garment (ostensibly) refer to their respective coupon-cost. If the design is from the ’40s (as a reference in Cole’s book suggests) then this jolly fabric would itself have carried a cost in coupons . . . Cole doesn’t say much about it (her very good book is mostly an exposition of pattern design) and I am very intrigued by this fabric. If anyone knows anything at all about it, I’d be very interested to hear.

Thanks for all your entries in the bee-bag giveaway — I was particularly excited to see the comments of those who actually keep bees. How I wish they allowed hives on the allotment . . .

seeing the light in a station bar*

(Newcastle Central)

Tom and I were talking about station bars the other day and discovered that as teenagers, living many miles apart in Stretford and Rochdale, we both liked to hang around the one at Manchester Victoria. This had, before it fell victim to nailed-down chairs and the homogenising effects of Travellers Fayre (shudder), a marvellous, atmospheric and (to our teenage selves) immensely exotic interior: all stucco, coloured glass, and plush upholstery. (I’ve not been there for quite some time, so have no idea of its more recent fate). Anyway, our conversation turned on how station bars form a particular genre of British pub: how they are purportedly spaces of transition, of waiting, and therefore never a destination in themselves. But then we changed our minds and decided, that precisely because of their liminal status (being the place you go to before you get to where you were going; neither one place or another) station bars really are distinct destinations: in-between spaces, half-way places, purgatories of refreshment.

(Halfway hoose)

It then occurred to me that, largely because of my own transitional existence between two cities, I am a regular in two great examples of the genre: The Centurion in Newcastle Central and The Halfway House, just a stone’s throw from Edinburgh Waverley. Both serve a good range of ales (always a bonus); both are superlative station bars, and they both celebrate their particular in-between-ness in very different ways. The Centurion does so in a manner entirely in keeping with its surroundings in the grand Victorian sweep of John Dobson’s Newcastle Central station.

(The bar at The Centurion)

The bar pumps, which happily dispense a swift half of Rivet Catcher or Old Kiln Ale to me after a long day’s teaching, nestle behind glorious late nineteenth-century columns decorated in this stately and very excessive manner. Some of the tiles are exuberantly suggestive of fin-de-siecle train travel along the East Coast mainline: of steam, sunrise, and the view crossing the Tweed near Berwick:

The Centurion sits in what was, in the 1890s, the station’s first-class lounge. But, by the 1960s, it was frequented not by well-heeled passengers but disgruntled prisoners, after it was transformed into holding cells for the British Transport Police. British Rail then apparently did their best to destroy the tiles with a bucketload of paint, before the interior was finally restored to its former glory in 2000. Now The Centurion’s fabulous interior and fine ales can once again be enjoyed by travellers through the station, as well as all the good folk of the toon, (including a well-known group of knitters).

(Dear man who also likes The Centurion’s interior: thankyou for being in my picture)

The Centurion’s real showpiece has to be this mural which displays for North-bound travellers their promised destination: all dappled braes and rocky shores, green and gold and . . . rhododendrons. After looking at it many times, I think the landscape must be meant to suggest a view across Loch Lomond from the East shore (which of course became a popular tourist destination in the 1800s, largely because of train travel). It’s such a luridly late-Victorian highland fantasy, and I absolutely love it.

The interior of The Halfway House (HWH) also celebrates trains and transition, but in a rather different way.

While The Centurion is the epitome of opulence, with its high ceilings, elaborate decor, and luxurious surroundings, the Halfway House is all about being snug. This is the smallest and cosiest pub in Edinburgh. Within seconds of your train arriving, you can step out of Waverley Station, walk a few steps up Fleshmarket Close, and be in the welcoming interior of the HWH, enjoying a very reasonably priced lunch of hot stovies or cullen skink, and (oh joy of joys) a well-kept pint of Bitter and Twisted.

(HWH bar)

The pub is stuffed with railway paraphernalia, chief among which are posters and postcards celebrating the destinations one might reach on the old LNER.

Though the HWH is meant to be a stop-off point, a waiting room, a resting place between places, I am most fond of it because for me it is my final destination (and not purgatorial at all). I frequently meet Tom in there for a pint at the end of the working week, and I look forward to that pint immensely. Cheers.

Where are your favourite station bars?

*apologies to Nick Drake

debris

They are demolishing — sorry — developing part of the university. This is what I saw through the wreckage this morning.

familiar paths

(March 13th. Familiar path)

Time for some observations on my 2009 walking project. Since the days have happily become lighter, I have been clocking up around 40 foot-miles per week. This has had some interesting effects. 1) I have calves of oak 2) I no longer make time to go swimming. 3) I have ceased to wear shoes with any kind of heel. This last makes me a little sad, as I dearly love shoes with an elegant heel, but I have found my attitude to them has drastically shifted. I now look at my available pairs and ask: can I walk in you at 4.5 miles per hour? If the answer is no, then they are no good to me. But it was still with some regret that I purchased yet another pair of comfortably cushioned Clarks ‘airs’ yesterday. I saw a certain something flicker in the shop assistant’s eye. Yes, I do walk quite a lot. But perhaps I’m also getting on a bit.

(March 6th. Fish supper)

Tom and I often talk about our radically different attitudes to walking and running. He finds it remarkable that I enjoy traversing the same paths over and over again. For him, today’s path will never be the same as yesterday’s. Variety is, of course, an integral aspect of his running training, but for him, there is also a pleasure in finding new or different trajectories. Now, it is not that I don’t like to explore. But I do love to run and walk along familiar paths. For the familiar path has a mental as well as a physical geography which I particularly enjoy. To me, these walks are not repetitive, but accretive: each one contains the memory or trace of those that went before. And those traces are not just about location, but about the remembrance of encounter: it looked like this when; today I feel like this; how very different this day is to that day. There is also the human weirdness of these familiar walks, in which daily path-crossings swiftly become relationships with coercive aspects–that is, with rules: today I said good morning to this person, I must speak to them again tomorrow, and every subsequent day. For me, there is always a niggly something, reminiscent of Nabokov’s Pnin in these exchanges. But I have also discovered that they are curiously important to me, and that I must embrace their vague discomfort.

(Feburary 17th. Lost cat)

For me, my daily walk is not the same walk. It is a different iteration of the same walk. The joy of traversing the familiar is similar to the one I feel when reading the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth or Gilbert White: in both, there is the pleasure of observing the wonder and ordinariness of a closely-known world, with all its transformations. Such transformations can be subtle. . .

(February 18th. Bruntsfield Links.)

. . . but quite amazing at the same time. And there is always something good about viewing the known from a different angle.

(February 16th. Feet).

. . .or just finding it mildly amusing.

(February 24th. Both sterile and jolly)

happy birthday, Doris

Doris is one year old tomorrow. She has really made my day. Thankyou, Doris, for providing these lovely, sunny pictures which will illustrate the imminent owlet pattern. And hearty thanks, too, to Abi and Alby who were kind enough to pop out and meet me this lunchtime. These photographs were taken in the small pavilion that forms part of the Queen Mother’s Memorial in Edinburgh’s Botanical Gardens. I love this tiny grotto-like building, and in this instance, my fondness for shell-lined interiors supersedes my antimonarchical tendencies. The pavilion is built of Caithness stone and while its interior walls are lined with mussels, scallops and spoots, the ceiling is decorated with highland fir-cones. It is a very beautiful and distinctly Scottish space.

Many happy returns to Doris, and many thanks, again, to Abi!

coast

We were down in St Annes for the weekend. While Tom ran the Blackpool half-marathon in a speedy personal best, I spent my time as I like to do on the Fylde coast — pootling about, camera in hand. Not to big up my photographic skills, or anything, but I am quite pleased with the pictures I took this weekend, and particularly like the image at the top of this post. For me, it captures the essence of St Annes: stark light, Lancashire red brick, and a strangely unforgiving landscape, all salt, starr-grass and wind. While taking these pictures, I had a sort of revelatory moment when I realised that the best way to photograph the Fylde was not to photograph it, or rather, not to photograph its more obvious landmarks directly, but to allow them to be (as they are in reality) integral to the landscape, and its bigger picture. On previous occasions when I’ve photographed the Lytham Windmill, for example, I’ve been bothered by the presence of the adjacent car park — which seemed to interfere with the subject of the image I was after. But this weekend I felt just as keen to photograph the car park – - which is, after all, as much a part of Lytham’s visual feel as its windmill. Perhaps this just means that I’ve been to Blackpool, Lytham and St Annes so many times that I’ve finally stopped taking pictures like a tourist. Or perhaps I’m just being over analytical. Either way – I am quite pleased with these photos.

I am intrigued by these iron columns and do not know what their purpose is or was. They stand in a bit of fenced-off waste ground behind the carpark at Fairhaven Lake. Are they remnants of some long-gone bandstand? Functionless pieces of Edwardian civic street furniture? What? Any information gratefully received.

monday’s walk

. . . was of the best kind. To meet with a friend . . .

(Felix)

. . . enthuse about objects and ideas . . .

(cherry pi. Thankyou, Felix)

. . . and enjoy the evening light.

(Quayside)

jubilee bees

Just a quick post. After reading Lara’s comment about the Halloween Bee, and her sister’s ‘bee night’ (amazing!) I hope you will excuse my showing you this. Here are myself and my sister dressed as Jubilee Bees in 1977 (the year of Queen E’s silver jubilee). I am the bee on the right. Clearly this picture was taken prior to the rabid anti-monarchical feeling I developed in later life.

I still think our bee costumes are fantastic, and perhaps their red-white-and-blue theme explains my fascination with the Whitworth bee. As kids, we were forever coming home with fancy dress prizes, and this was due to the winning combination of my Dad’s amazing design ideas and Ma’s sheer crafty brilliance. The year after this photograph was taken, I attended a school fancy dress competition dressed as Inflation (it was the 1970s, remember). I was wearing a spherical suit in which I could not sit down, and a sort of helmet to which several balloons were attached. We wore (or perhaps were forced to wear — damn that inflation suit!) several other costumes combining wit with social commentary — most notably The Tory Cabinet and (perhaps my Dad’s most inspired, but difficult to execute idea) The Shrinking Pound. I leave our appearance to your imagination. . .

PS: Hearty thanks to everyone who knit the owl sweater, and entered the Parliament. The pictures really are amazing! The winners will be announced on Saturday.

walking into 2009

Grainger St, Newcastle. January 26th. 5.5 miles

I am feeling rather sombre this week. I think this may be partly to do with the dark. Though my feet have covered the equivalent of a marathon in the past few days, and though I am really enjoying both the walking and the thinking about the walking, my journeys mostly occur in the hours before dawn, and those after dusk. In order to take any sort of photograph of my walking day, I’ve had to seek out the light of illuminated places: bus stations, platforms, stores.

Haymarket Bus Station, Newcastle. January 27th. 4.5 miles.

The other reason I am feeling sombre is the hypocritical and obfuscatory response I received from the BBC to my complaint about their refusal to broadcast the appeal from the Disaster Emergency Commission, who are co-ordinating the important work of supplying aid to to Palestinians whose homes, lives, and livelihoods have been destroyed in the recent bombardment. I imagine some of you may have complained about the BBC’s decision as well, and will have received exactly the same message. After reading their blithe and unapologetic email, I walked home, stopping to pick up a pint of milk in Tesco, where I saw hordes of shoppers stuffing cellophane-wrapped salads and herbs labelled Produce of West Bank into their baskets. These apparently innocuous packets of basil have their origin in occupied land. They are grown in the settlements that the UN, and every other nation in the world apart from Israel have condemned as illegal. I left without buying my milk, and walked home. In the dark.

Princes St, Edinburgh. January 29th. 4 miles.

Eldon Square war memorial, Newcastle. January 28th. 4.5 miles.

owl release

It is curious what mist can do to one’s sense of place. A little cloud descends, and familiar hills one has climbed many times before are transformed into strange, alien moonscapes. The whole narrative of the landscape suddenly becomes lost in its details.

Having missed our Highland walking with Felix because of seasonal colds (bah! boo!) it was very nice to get out into the Pentlands this morning. A good walk really is the best way to break in the new year.

And if you are thinking that the sweater on my back looks a wee bit familiar – yes – it is indeed the Owls. The poor beasties were well-nigh frozen up there in the foggy, frosty hills — but they certainly kept me warm.

They were very nearly snowy owls as that haze of moisture began to turn to ice.

Since Hannah’s impressive and speedily knitted Owls appeared over at Ysolda’s, lots of you have been asking about the pattern. It is imminent! I promise! I’m away for the next few days in a wonderful place without computer access, but shall release the owls as soon as I return. The pattern will be free, and I’ll stick it up on Ravelry, as well as emailing those of you who left a comment on the original post. And I should also mention that myself and these lovely people are now developing a kid’s version of the pattern which will be available in kit form.

Happy 2009 everyone!