The end of the Year of Covid or just Part One? Time and vaccines will tell.
Meanwhile, I doubt if my reader needs to dwell on what has been a very strange year in flashbacks. I worry more about the future of the the small enterprises that have made new from old so interesting in the various approach roads to the Battlefield. Who will still be there next spring?
I took my last walk of 2020 around this patch of the green space recently. I walked from the White Bridge in Jesmond Vale alongside the swollen Ouseburn. I had a sighting of a Dipper standing on a rock poking up out of the milky coloured water, tweeting its chipper song, holding territory for breeding early next year hopefully. Then uphill past the roadway over the former dene and onto the flattened space of the City Stadium (a.k.a. Battlefield to me). Damp after much rain and the sky thin and watery still, but brighter. The threat to Battlefield has faded to almost nil. Urban Green, the stand alone charity that now runs (with what? Money is desperately short still) Newcastle's parks and gardens has said some encouraging things. It seems not to be a ruse for commercial interests to take over the city's green spaces and turn them into 'profit centres' as I and others feared. I hope my trust is not misplaced.
Photographic record here (off site link)
So another year comes to an end and its time to wish anyone who stumbles into this blog –
A VERY HAPPY HOLIDAY AND VIRUS FREE NEW YEAR 2021!
