The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

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Nee heb je, ja kun je krijgen

¡ Tagged as Dutch, language, Wayne Gretzky ¡ Leave a comment

We have a saying in the Netherlands: “Nee heb je, ja kun je krijgen.” It translates to something like you’ve already got a no; you might as well try for a yes — it’s always better to ask rather than stay silent.

There’s a few English phrases that are similar. Up north, shy bairns get nowt is a common instruction from parents; across the pond, hockey player Wayne Gretzky contributed the saying you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take to the local lexicon in a 1991 interview.

Are there any similar sayings in your neck of the woods, or your language? I’d love to hear.

Hallowe’en

· Tagged as family, Hallowe’en · Leave a comment

It was in the evening, just before the sun fell and dusk set in, that i packed my bags and went. A short jaunt to the cemetery, to see some old friends.

I never knew my great-uncle and -aunt, but their name still holds some worth; their middle name and surnames i was bestowed at birth. I searched fruitlessly through the old graves, filled with fallen war-time knaves, but finally, by a bench and basket of waste, i found the couple’s resting place.

I didn’t think it would affect me so much, but just at the sight i felt the touch of a salty trickle running down my cheeks. I knelt and felt i could weep for weeks. As evening turned to dusk and dusk turned to night, i jotted down the words inscribed in white: 

We often think of bygone days when we were all together
The family chain is broken now but memories live forever

Rest in peace, Tim and Annie. Happy Hallowe’en.

Letter of recommendation: Censor

¡ Tagged as films, horror, letters of recommendation, Prano Bailey-Bond ¡ Leave a comment
A film poster split into two parts by a VHS ripple effect ; the top, a conservatively-dressed woman in 80s style, the bottom, a madwoman holding an axe. The film is called "Censor", starring Niamh Algar.

I recently had some downtime and, since ’tis the season, watched Censor, a small British horror film about a film censor during the “video nasty” panic who investigates a strangely familiar scene.

It’s tense, stylish, and scary — all the more impressive coming from its first-time director, Prano Bailey-Bond — becoming more and more surreal the further it progresses. Give it a watch, why don’t you?

Some nice local businesses at Ponteland market

¡ Tagged as food, life, Northumberland, Ponteland, shopping ¡ 1 comment
A table filled with alkin goods and crafts

The family and i went to a local food-and-craft market at Ponteland’s garden centre this morning. I thought i’d send letters of recommendation for some of the stalls.

Urban Bakery, from Gateshead, make the most decadent cinnamon buns i’ve ever had.

The Alnwick Soap Company produce wonderful soaps inspired by the scents of rural Northumberland. I plumped for the ginger-and-grapefruit and cedarwood-and-juniper myself.

Mrs B’s Kitchen, from Durham, sells jams, conserves, chutneys, honey, sauces — all the things you ever need in the top drawer of your fridge. (I got the rhubarb and raspberry.)

Hops and Dots, of Bishop Auckland, make “accessible craft beer” with Braille on the labels.

Wilde Farm, of Ponteland, are ostensibly running the whole thing, and sell... you know, farm things. Carrots, veg, burgers, sausages, turkey — you get the idea. They’re currently taking orders for the winter holidays.

White walls, grey sofas, potted plants

¡ Tagged as design, home, minimalism ¡ 1 comment

When i was just a bairn, my oma was an avid scrapbooker and collage-maker. Dotted around the walls, alongside the paintings, antique cupboards, and kitschy statues of dogs, were little collaged images of every important moment in her life — and mine.

Just by looking around her house, you could instantly get a sense of who she was, and what she cared about. (Her dogs. She cares a lot about her dogs.) It was disorganised, it was a wee bit cluttered — but it was hers.

Today’s trends are rather different. Some time after the great recession (when it became, understandably, somewhat gauche to display how much Stuff you owned), the style du jour turned to blank, white walls, with spare tables and maybe (if you were lucky) the occasional potted plant. As this bareness took over, i can’t help but feel something was lost.i

The top results for “minimalist living room” on Google Images, for example, tell you almost nothing at all about the person who might be living there:

A selection of spare, white-walled rooms, with the occasional grey sofa and chair strewn in.

Compare with these more cluttered affairs, filled with alkin books, rugs, photos, and the like, and the difference in the amount of personality that shines through is like night and day:

Several clujttered rooms of various colours, books filed high to the ceiling, chairs everywhere, tapestry rugs...

I don’t know. Maybe i’m just grumpy and nostalgic. What do you think?

Walking the Blyth and Tyne, part two: Oh, Delaval is a terrible place

¡ Tagged as Northumberland, transport, visits, Walking the Blyth and Tyne ¡ 1 comment

Last time on The Garden: A strip mall turns out to be a place of immense historical curiosity, i am interrupted by a rude troupe of boy racers, and find myself caught up in the lyrics of a pro-union folk song.

Leaving Seghill, going past a house with a conspicuous Northumbrian flag, the landscape once again slips swiftly back into ruralia — a common occurrence on this leg of the journey. No sooner had i left behind the station house than i found myself on a dirt path which i wasn’t quiiiite sure i was meant to be on.

This was the small hamlet of Mare Close, essentially a farmhouse surrounded by a few cottages. I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone living there has been friends since primary school, though i'll never know for sure. Opposite the cottages, by the next leg of my route, lay a small village church and graveyard which i dared not enter. Onwards.

Seaton Delavalα sits at the heart of the valley. Turning one way, there lies a charming local coöperative store, a genuine lordly manor (owned by the town’s namesake De la Val family, who came over after 1066), the previously-blogged village of Holywell, and, eventually, the seaside settlement of Seaton Sluice.β Unfortunately, we’ll be turning the other way, by where once stood a colliery.

The former site of Delaval’s station can hardly be considered a sight for sore eyes. Cars and lorries pass by, horns blaring, trying to weave their way between those turning into the nearby petrol station.γ The location of the station itself is an uninspiring gravel pit on one site with an overgrown nettle-filled path on the other; next door is a chain pub whose car park will be getting embiggened to accommodate the extra traffic once the railway reopens.

It doesn’t get much better. A few interesting-looking eateries (a grimy-looking café called “Only Fools and Sauces”, a venue by the name of the Secret Gardenδ with a wonderful hand-painted sign) added some initial spice, but soon i was back to the same industrial wasteland: Auto recycling! Furniture wholesalers! Caravan storage! Chemical producers! The works!

...I said something about a colliery, didn’t i?

16 January, 1862. It’s half past ten — or, at least, it might be. You’ve been labouring away in the coal pit since two in the morning, and you’ve not seen the sun since. The shift is almost over, and it’s time to swap over with the next group.

One by one, your comrades file in line to get out. A huddle of people enter the rusting lift. The familiar ketter-ketter-ketter shudders through the cave — but then, for a fraction of a second, all falls silent.

Your heart races. A drop of water falls from the ceiling. Nobody makes a sound.

And then, all of a sudden, it is as though Thor’s hammer has crashed into the ground. The earth around you shakes in terror, lets out what can only be described as an otherworldly scream, as ten tonnes of blood-red steel smash into the floor.

This was the Hartley Pit disaster, and its shockwaves can still be heard across town.

Just across from the telltale jackhammers and yellow tape of a housing estate so new Google Maps hasn’t caught up yetε sits a lovely memorial garden, explaining the story of the tragedy, with a poem to contemplate as you ramble along the path.

In terms of stations, the town has had two — Hartley and Hartley Pit — both right next to each other, and neither seeming to have any chance of reopening.

I was a bit anxious about continuing on, because there were several serious-looking men in hard-hats and high-vis jackets, but they didn’t seem to mind. They really, really should have tried to stop me from going to where i was going next.

Coming up on The Garden: your author tries not to disturb some horses, desperately tries to avoid going to fucking Blyth, and accidentally sneaks in a brief trip to Durham. I promise, it makes sense in context.

Mx van Hoorn’s link roundup, Volume I

· Tagged as links, Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup · Leave a comment

I figure over time dates will get ambiguous — it’s time to start numbering these bad boys, from the top. Five for your perusal this time around…

Washington­Wormhole

¡ Tagged as Alex Kansas, links, videos, Washington, DC ¡ Leave a comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFHVc-ypS44

Look — reader, i understand this about as much as you do. It just popped up in my recommendations one day. I watched the entire series of videos this is apparently a part of, and i still don’t feel like i get it. Something about James Dean and evil national landmarks?

This is one of the better-done things in the recent wave of “analogue horror” that has been circulating the interwebs — short, spooky videos taking inspiration from late-night public television or other media of the past. I just think it's neat. Anyone else want to go through the WASHINGTONWORMHOLE?

Autumn

¡ Tagged as autumn, life ¡ Leave a comment
A small covered shelter in a park surrounded by auburn-leaved trees.
Jesmond Dene in the autumn, courtesy of Newcastle Libraries.

It often feels like, as soon as the calendar ticks over from 22 to 23 September, that autumn, having hidden its face for months upon months, all of a sudden decides to come out all at once. Auburn leaves begin to fall, telling the time until winter like an hourglass; the days get shorter and the nights come earlier, the air gets that particular autumn crispness, and, of course, it begins to rain.i

Not that i’m complaining. Autumn is, in my view, the most wonderful season of the year: yes, summer is nice and warm, and winter is the time for comfort and gezelligheid with family and friends, but autumn is when our festivities are perhaps the closest to how they were millennia ago. Echoes of the last harvest festivals of the year still ring (school assemblies for the young, pumpkin spice for the jaded), and whatever you want to call it — Hallowe’en, All Hallows’ Eve, Samh­ain, Day of the Dead — the atmosphere about that midautumn celebration beats even Christmas for the best time of the year; for a whole month, the western world lets itself get a little morbid for a changeii, and the celebrations have the good sense to get out of the way quietly once November shuffles along.

So. Happy autumn, everyone! Enjoy it while it lasts.

Links for the 27th of September

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It's been far too long, hasn't it? (Rest assured, i have been continuing my walk along the Blyth and Tyne railway — just at a rather glacial pace…)

Walking the Blyth and Tyne, part one: Northumberland Park to Seghill

¡ Tagged as Northumberland, transport, Tyne and Wear, visits, Walking the Blyth and Tyne ¡ 1 comment

Last time on The Garden: the axe falls on the Blyth and Tyne line, and i foolhardily decide to walk its length…

A modern looking metro station divided into two platforms, opening up to the sky above.

Our journey begins at North­um­ber­land Park, in North Tyneside. Though it’s the first station we’ll be visiting, it was the last to be constructed, having only opened in 2005 — and it’s quite easy to tell, even after sixteen years of wear and tear; the place is outfitted with modern amenities, lifts, ticket machines flush with the wall, and, more lately, pandemic-themed graffiti opposite the platform. This unassuming metro station will, according to the county council’s plans, serve as the interchange between the old and new lines, heavy rail and metro meeting one last time before splitting apart and going their separate ways.

A colourful graffito of the word "Pandemik", spelt with a K for reasons unknown.
A modern car park with frosted glass panels juts into the cloudy sky.

Setting off from there, the first thing that caught my eye were twin giants: a frosted glass-covered car park and a red-brick Sainsbury’s, unexpected icons of the modern British condition. It didn’t get much better from there; down the road lies an American-style strip mall lined with bookmakers trying to get people to piss away all their money.

A shopping trolley lies half submerged in a sorry looking scummy stream.
This sorry-looking trolley was, i presume, abandoned from the local Sainsbury’s.

This southernmost tip of North­um­ber­land is criss-crossed by innumerable public footpaths, cycle paths, bridleways, and other routes for non-metal-box-related transport; ducking onto one of the reclaimed “waggonways” once used to transport coal, i found myself on the site of the second station on the list.

Twin rail tracks stretch into the background.

The leafy suburb of Backworth has a habit of burying its history. A hoard of offerings from Roman times was found underground in the 1810s, the last vestiges of the colliery that once was are long gone, and the tale of this sorry ex-station is rather similar. Opened in 1864 to replace a nearby station closing the same day, Back­worth station served its community for over 100 years, surviving the Beeching cuts. But when the Tyne and Wear Metro was announced to come to town, the old station finally closed… for good. It wasn’t until the opening of North­um­ber­land Park that there would be a replacement.

As i wandered through the village's verdant streets, i couldn’t help but think of its resemblance to the straight, cycle-friendly streets of my old hometown. A little greenery can go a long way.

Behind wire fences and train tracks, a van belonging to Network Rail is visible.
A jet-dark pedestrian underpass, its entrance covered in graffiti.
The graffiti reads “Monty Brown is a grass”. I would never say such unkind things about Mr Brown.

Network Rail were hard at work at the site of the aforementioned original Back­worth station, whose plot of land now sits vacant, marking the city’s last hurrah; the further i walked along the dirt back roads, the further the sounds of bustling cars receded, until, ducking under a shady underpass, i found myself utterly alone amongst pastoral fields (and the overwhelming scent of manure).

Hay bales cover a rolling field of wheat.

That peace and quiet was swiftly interrupted by a troupe of boy racers on motorcycles and quad-bikes, but you can’t win them all, you know?

The border between Northumberland and North Tyneside is highlighted in the middle of an unmarked dirt path.
After the county borders were hacked up in 1974, this line became the divider between rural Northumberland and ostensibly-urban Tyne and Wear.

The (post-1974) border town of Seghill occupies only the tiniest fragment of the collective English consciousness, popping up briefly in an anti-scab miners’ folk song called “Blackleg Miner”:

It’s in the evening after dark,
when the blackleg miner creeps to work
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt
there gans the blackleg miner!

[...]

So, divvint gan near the Seghill mine
Across the way they stretch a line,
to catch the throat and break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner

[...]

So join the union while you may
Divvint wait till your dying day,
for that may not be far away,
you dirty blackleg miner!

A corner shop by the name of "Station House Stores"

For our purposes, it’s chiefly notable for the fact that it’s the first disused station on the list whose buildings are still intact and in use, this time as a corner shop, from which i of course bought a copy of the local rag — prominently including a Q&A about the restoration of service on the line, which i thought a fitting reminder of why i set out on this silly old journey in the first place.

After getting some well deserved rest, i headed on off towards the next town over, awaiting what fresh stories i would find...

Next time on “Walking the Blyth and Tyne”: your author is reminded of her own mortality, finds himself in the company of a noble family, and shudders at the thought of having to go to Blyth, of all places on Gods’ green Earth

Walking the Blyth and Tyne: an introduction

¡ Tagged as Northumberland, transport, visits, Walking the Blyth and Tyne ¡ Leave a comment
A montage of scenes around Northumberland, with the caption: "Walking the Blyth and Tyne (a railway odyssey on foot)"
Photo credits: Martin Beek, Reading Tom, bazzadarambler, yellow book

It’s March of 1963. The island of Great Britain is in the throes of its coldest winter in two decades, senior frontbench MP Harold Wilson was recently handed the reins of the Labour party, the Beatles have just released their debut album, and, somewhere in the bowels of Whitehall, Dr Richard Beeching is writing a report that will change the country’s connecting tissue forever.

Dr Beeching, you see, is the chairman of British Railways, the state-owned company in charge of rail transport, and they’re in a spot of financial trouble. British Railways are in charge of running fifteen thousand miles of track shuttling between about four and a half thousand stations, and the only way they can do that is via generous subsidies from Her Majesty’s Government — something which the governing Conservatives, as a rule, are never too happy about.

So, pen in hand, he takes a metaphorical axe to the network, marking about half of the island’s stations for closure. It’s not pleasant, but it has to be done — and, after all, people can just take the car to their nearest station if their town’s is shut.i I’m sure it won’t be too bad.

An old map displaying the former lines of the Blyth and Tyne Railway, along the coast of southern Northumberland

That's how, a year later, the last passenger trains ran along 5,000 miles of railway across England, Scotland, and Wales, including those connecting the mining heartland of industrial Northumberland. The Tyne and Wear Metro, opened in 1980, allowed some of these lines to reopen in Newcastle’s suburbs and (relatively) affluent coastal communities. But just a few miles north, the former Blyth and Tyne Railway has lain dormant ever since the axe fell… until now.

In recent years, the stars have aligned, and both the county council and Westminster have agreed to reopen the line, finally bringing these proud towns back together. The Blyth and Tyne Railway, now rechristened by the more attractive name of the Northumberland Line, is set to reopen by 2024. To celebrate this historic moment, i thought i’d see what has become of the stations and towns that were. I’ve identified fourteen stations, past, present, and future, along the line, and i’ll be walking between each of them in turn, seeing what stories they tell. The list includes:

  • Northumberland Park, the metro station ready and waiting to become the new line’s interchange
  • Backworth (the second)
  • Backworth (the first), already long closed by the time the axe fell
  • Seghill
  • Seaton Delaval, planned for reopening
  • Hartley Pit / Hartley, two old stations just metres apart
  • Newsham, planned for reopening
  • Blyth, on an old branch line
  • Blyth Bebside, planned for reopening
  • Bedlington, planned for reopening
  • North Seaton, now subsumed within Ashington’s town area
  • Ashington, planned for reopening
  • Woodhorn, listed on early plans for reopening but mysteriously disappeared since
  • Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, no longer in existence but with the route there safeguarded just in case

Won’t you join me?