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Notes from a walk through Newcastle

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The gorgeous gorge that is the Tyne valley has no shortage of winsome views, but the most beautiful, in my opinion, is that which appears to one who goes down the Side.α In the Monument’s shadow, after passing the classical columns of the Theatre Royal and descending Grey Street as it becomes Dean Street, finally taking a turn onto the Side at the bottom, the lucky traveller will find themself towered over by the behemoth that is the Tyne Bridge:

The Tyne Bridge, a soaring green arch over the river, held up by two hulking sandstone-brick towers.
Photo by Alex Liivet. Licenced under CC BY-2.0.
A rickety old set of stairs leads into an area obscured by overgrown shrubbery.
The rotting wooden stairs, as seen on Google street view.

I’m not sure any photograph can ever match what it’s like to be there under that bridge. One of the most remarkable things about this view, though, has nothing to do with the view itself, but rather what happens if one walks down the Quayside for a little while, reaches an empty brownfield plot, and clambers up a set of rotting wooden stairs to its right. Because, inexplicably, just a few metres from the most beautiful view in town, one can find the second most beautiful view in town, a glorious lookout on every bridge linking the two banks of the river.

Seven bridges across the Tyne, flanked by Newcastle’s old buildings on the right and Gateshead’s modern regeneration on the left.

We don’t deserve this city.

I had initially neglected to bring a water bottle along with me; i had only intended a quick jaunt to the centre of town and back, and the foolhardy idea of walking all the way to Wallsend came to me spontaneously. This quickly proved a bad idea, and so i made a trek up to the corner shop, who thankfully had all the bottled water anyone could ever want or need.

After leaving fully rehydrated and ready to walk back, i noticed the most wonderful little thing. A parklet, this small opening of green space with some benches and inscriptions, tucked between a housing area and a construction site. I took some pictures — i would have loved to show them to you, but alas, my phone got stolen in the intervening time between this trip and me writing this post, taking the photographs with it.

Nevertheless, if you’d like to visit (or live vicariously through Google street view), it’s that little park adjacent to 5 Belmont Street. (Google stubbornly refuses to give a proper address, but you can’t miss it!)

An *exceedingly* evil looking office building next to a gigantic white cube bearing the logo "TechnipFMC".

An account of my thought process upon seeing the above building complex:

  • That building looks exceedingly evil, but i can’t quite place my finger on why…
  • I’m going to look the company up.
  • Ah, a fossil fuel company — they are evil!

Just a few yards ahead, crossing a foot-and-cycle bridge, i happened upon some strikingly relevant graffiti, alongside some other pieces which really sum up the modern English psyche: an Extinction Rebellion poster, a crossed out “EDL”,β and a cock and bollocks.

Graffiti on a blue bridge wall. Left to right: An XR poster saying 'Act Now', 'Kyle', 'EDL' (crossed out), 'Erok', 'FLK', and a cock and bollocks.

I carried a record from HMV (the Killers’ Hot Fuss, if you must know) the whole way, and let me tell you, my arms were positively aching by the end of it! At least i had a bag…γ

To sign off, here are some photos whose stories weren’t interesting enough to make the cut, as well as a map of the journey. Thank you for reading this disjoint mess.

  • Looking down a set of steps surrounded by trees, onto the river.
Top left to bottom: A picture looking downwards from shortly after the second best view; a nice view of the AkzoNobel factory on the opposite bank of the river; some tower; and the literal wall’s end of Wallsend.

Links for the 18th of June

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Links for the 4th of June

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May 2021 recap

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So this is June
and what have you done?
Another month over
a new one just begun

Films watched

  • Guy Ritchie’s Snatch (2000) (A-)
  • Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black (1999): Ruthlessly efficient. Gets in and out in 90 minutes. (A-)
  • Dreamworks’ Shrek (2001): Watched as it was meant to be seen, in the original Polish (C+)
  • Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998): While sailing across the internet, i happened across a copy of the original draft of the script. It is so much darker, and so much weirder.
    • It’s set in a constructed version of New York City instead of a small town in Florida
    • He finds his own name in a dictionary
    • Truman threatens to kill a baby and it is played completely straight
    • Instead of ending when he disappears out the door it continues and he hijacks a tram and has a shoot-out on the roof of the studio????
    • He hires a prostitute to recreate his encounter with the girl who told him it was all a TV show
  • Anyway, the cut that got released is a very good film to show to your friends who haven’t seen it before and watch their reactions. It’s also — for me personally — one of those Back to the Future-type films, where it’s all so immaculately put together that you can watch it over and over and there’s always something new to enjoy (A+)

Top 10 most viewed pages on the site this May

  1. Index page: 219 views
  2. Linkroll: 82 views
  3. The Garden (front page): 59 views
  4. Toaster shade generator: 46 views
  5. About the author: 35 views
  6. The log of changes: 26 views
  7. Music i like: 21 views
  8. Things i would like to add to my site: 20 views
  9. What i believe: 16 views
  10. Toaster: 15 views

The rest of the “primary” pages on my site (that is, those which aren’t part of any kind of regular series) are, in decreasing order of views, The foreſt of ſhrines, My coat of arms, Discord funny moments, the Marijn van Hoorn style guide, my bucket list, ‘There Are Two Continents’, the Gender Tetrahedron, interesting Wikipedia articles, yelling into the void, Heximal, the NEOcharts (RIP), Quotes and other assorted aphorisms, a calendrical table, My vinyl record collection, s → ſ, the log of dreams, my conlangs, noughts and crosses, ‘this’ll be on my videotape’, Kunstgalerie van Hoorn, A nicer ƿaȝ of ƿriting Engliſh, the Compendium of Good Words, country counting, and songs i have cried my silly little heart out to. Zero views were received by copypastables and holocene history, which… you know, fair enough, they’re both indescribably boring pages.

Top 5 most read entries on The Garden

  1. Welcome to the new Garden
  2. 7AM puzzles
  3. Site statistics for April 2021
  4. ‘Testing, testing… If this goes through, this should be my first successful blog post made from my phone.’
  5. Links for the 22nd of May

Top 10 countries where most people are reading from

  1. The United States
  2. The United Kingdom
  3. Canada
  4. France
  5. India
  6. New Zealand
  7. Sweden
  8. Germany
  9. Hong Kong
  10. Brazil

Links for the 26th of May

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Lady Waterford Hall

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I don't know how some people do it, posting almost every day. I suppose my life just isn’t interesting enough for this sort of thing!

Anyway. I was going to write up a full post about a recent jaunt to Lady Waterford Hall, but my memory is awful and i’m not sure that it would be very interesting. Instead, here are some photos from the trip:

The inside of a small church hall, the upper heights of its walls covered in glorious paintings of Biblical scenes, the lower halves painted white and covered in smaller, framed paintings. The floor is riddled with chairs, information stands, cabinets, and other such auxiliaries. In the back of the shot, two people browse the store shelves, while two others work at the reception desk.
Pointing towards the gift shop.
A pre-Raphaelite painting on a wooden panel adorns the walls of the previously depicted church hall. On it, a golden-haired boy in a tunic holding a staff, David the Shepherd, stands proud, herding his flock of sheep as mountains recede in the background. He is depicted within a triangular frame, the top two edges inscribed with Biblical verse, the bottom edge blaring, in all capital letters, "David. The. Shepherd." Around the frame, two more portraits are inscribed in smaller circles, while the rest is painted with bright green leaves and vines.
A framed painting from the gallery. A blonde-haired student in a red shirt hunches over a vast tome resting on piles of yet more books, his head illuminated only by a lamp as he writes. Over him, in the grim darkness, watches the Grim Reaper, toyingly placing a halo above his heat. In the top left corner, the only other source of light streams in, a view of a dark cityscape at midnight.
“The Student”. This photo’s a bit more potato-y than the rest, because it was behind a glossy frame…

(If you’d like to visit, admission is free with a suggested donation of £3, and the place is wheelchair-accessible.)

Thoughts on Eurovision

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It’s one in the morning and we just got done with watching the Eurovision. I’m still processing all of that, so this post isn’t the most structured thing in the universe, but here’s what i thought of it:

  • Justice for James!! That man was just happy to be here and they gave him zero points. Criminal!!
  • (Can we not just force Dua Lipa to do it next year?)
  • My top six, in rough 1–6 order: Ukraine, Iceland, Bulgaria, Norway, Russia, San Marino. (“Comedy value” is a factor on the score card…)
  • I really must add “the voting spokesperson sings” to the drinking game next year…
    • Also: “Previous Eurovision winner appears” and “ludicrous musical instruments”?
  • On that note about the score card — the score card we use for our annual Eurovision party has five categories:
    • The song itself (out of 20)
    • Vocals (out of 10)
    • Visuals, staging, and dress (out of 10)
    • Je ne sais quoi (out of 10) — basically a measure of charisma, or how much you can tell they’re just happy to be there
    • Comedy value (out of 10)
    • My highest- and lowest-scoring this year were Ukraine (with 51 out of 60) and Germany (with negative 14 out of 60), respectively. Yes negative values are allowed if they’re bad enough
    • Apparently some family friends have included “sex factor” on their scorecards. Might consider adding that for next year…
  • Notes on the individual entries:
    • Cyprus: “Mum can we have Lady Gaga?” “We have Lady Gaga at home”
    • Israel: We decided that, yes, “what are they wearing” also includes “what are they hair-ing”
    • Russia: That dress!
    • Malta: “We have Lizzo at home”
    • Portugal: Nice and understated, by Eurovision standards
    • United Kingdom: Good heavens, we sent one that wasn’t shit!
    • Greece: Wow this must have looked awkward in the arena
    • Moldova: Made us seasick. The entire watch party was also in agreement that the backup dancers looked like Agent Smith from a poorly produced porn parody of The Matrix
    • Germany: In the “notes” section i just have “why” written in giant letters
    • Finland: Kidz Bop Linkin Park
    • Lithuania: It felt like that guy was trying to flirt with the entire arena and i was very uncomfortable
    • Ukraine: She looked a bit like she would try to poison you with a potion of frog’s legs
    • France: Go back to 1930, this is Eurovision
    • San Marino: Flo Rida definitely 100% knows where he is and is not confused at all
  • The interval act wasn’t horribly boring this time! That’s an achievement!
  • The audience were so nice this time around. Cheering for Iceland when they couldn’t make it, then for the UK when they got nul points
  • Oh and apparently Italy did a cheeky line of coke in the green roomÎą and then sang the version of their song with swears in in the reprise when they won? Legends

Links for the 22nd of May

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