Southerners Up North: Really North.

Newcastle: Social Anthropology

Well, my reservations about being in Newcastle on a Saturday night were slightly asuaged by the actuality that our middle-aged anoraked appearance rendered us invisible to the hoards of separate male and female groupings, who were too busy drunkenly displaying to each other to register our presence.

Basically, to Newcastle, Viz comic is a documentary.

Right before our feet we watched as a mini-skirted inebriate repeatedly grazed her knees as she failed to upright herself, yet continued propelling herself forward whilst expertly holding a kebab aloft whilst vomiting. And that takes practice.
Newcastle is a town without coats, half pint glasses or self-awareness, and is proud of it.

(Wednesdays are little better. I sat in a bar watching the play-offs, whilst a miasma of fart-gas wafted over from the lads welded to the bar)

Baltic Gallery: Great Lifts, Good Views of the City.

Unfortunately the curators of the Baltic are unable to find the sign that reads "Closed Until Further Notice", and have been forced to cobble together a tragic collection of tat that would shame a provincial art school end of term show.

And somebody take the camera away from Patti Smith and tell her to stick to being a one-album has-been. (Very small out-of-focus non-descipt photos aren't art, they're small pointless wastes of good gallery space).




Northumberland: Tourist Trail.

Yeh, worth it, but we felt very middle-aged and middle-class, trudging around those castles.

However, any region that has retained its combined tobacconist/confectionary shops, twenty years after everywhere else succumbed deserves a pat on the back. It also boasts independent butchers, fishmongers, haberdashers and pubs which give each high street a unique look, the way all English towns looked different from each other before the tories surrendered them to the supermarkets.

And hats off to The Barrels in Berwick, a great pub with an actual landlord, who is running the pub the way that he wants it.



Anyway
Whilst I was away, I dreamt that I was witnessing a scrap between Bono and the Pope, during which the Irish showman was shouting "You're just a political appointee, my power comes from on high!" And I'm inclined to believe that's what he WOULD say.