But, as I strolled I saw that many things have happened since my last visit, last year around autumn. So I took more photographs, ones that would not sit so well with my original theme, distracting perhaps.
Now I've had time to produce another slide show of my walk.
What I once feared (well, hardly, it was such a racing certainty given who was in charge) would happen to the gloriously inchoate accretion of the Lower Ouseburn, that particular crumminess that immediately makes me feel at home, was happening, even extending.
Some of the new build I welcome; the Housing Association flats being constructed alongside the Byker Bridge (it's not as bad as it sounds) is an interesting, potentially energising initiative. The site has been imaginatively carved out of the steep, well wooded dene. It is also social housing rather than the kind of developments favoured by the over promoted estate agents who run development agencies.
Other sights were far less encouraging.
Whoever thought stainless steel 'street furniture' was a good idea? The Toffee Factory (oh, why do they dream up these stupid names for offices? Is anyone taken in?) has a 'courtyard' lined with tasteful machined cobbles that will never feel a horse's hoof and given a sort of Mr Teasie Weazie vintage quiff of landscaping (nothing is straight), lined with seats no one uses, stainless steel bollards and hand rails (that don't grip when wet) and mediocre garden 'features'. They know their target audience.
More of this smarming to come one fears. The grasp of the Council, Development Corps and their henchmen in Corporateland is tightening round the throat of Lower Ouseburn …
But not quite, and at least, not yet.
I found relief from the embalmers art in piles of fly tipping as I never thought I would, the defiance of it spoke to me. I hate graffiti art, but somehow here I wanted to kiss those who have fought back against this tide of 'taste' washing away history, atmosphere and imagination. Like the landscape artist John Constable (1776-1837), it's the muck I want; reactionary old East Anglian he was, but he spoke truth about Nature. It needed, he said, no varnish to make it beautiful.
"…the sound of water escaping from mill dams … willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things."
Precisely what the Ouseburn had and will one day, lose.
If you have any questions about these images, please drop me an e-mail and I'll try my best to answer.
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