Battlefield at the end of Summer

The schools went back; then the migrant birds left to go south for the winter and students arrived back all over the city. So it is the end of the summer. 2013 was a fine one – at the finish. Trees and shrubs reflect this in prodigious amounts of berries and fruits produced. Slowly some of the trees are being to change colour and more and more leaves find their way to the ground.

I am stunned to see how much the year has added in growth all round Battlefield (the name I have given this plot of green space). Trees particularly have grown well.

The old paint factory site lingers on as waste ground. Meanwhile two new blocks have sprung up on Portland Road when once we were promised offices, offices the city patently did not need. Another mini-supermarket has opened its doors locally, hoping to capture the increasing student market share. The economic prosperity of this fair city, like some others around the U.K., is now 'down to them'; the cash injection must be tens of millions annually, bigger than ship building was on the Tyne in the past glory days, so I was told. What though, if the bubble also bursts? No one is thinking of that, or, if they are, they are keeping it to themselves.

Newcastle is now something of a big building site, with more projects underway than for some time past. The area in front of John Dobson's iconic Central Station is having another town planners fantasy frontage cum facelift, the third I can recall in my forty years living in this city. This one has one of those 'Kiss of Death' names attached to it: 'Central Gateway' (possibly, 'The Central Gateway').

But my thoughts on this building boom can wait another posting to come; meanwhile here are some photographs. (Off site link.)

End of Summer