Amen Arwen

Ouseburn above the Culvert 11th December 2022

Storm Arwen created havoc in the weeks before Christmas leaving death and destruction over several northern European countries. Damage around and about Battlefield as I saw was mostly limited to fallen roof tiles and, particularly, up rooted trees. Some along the steep sides of the Ouseburn culvert beside 'battlefield' came down blocking paths that took time to clear; many busier places had to be attended to first.

It may look sad to see some fine trees blown over; years of growth swept away and gaps opened where there was once a view enhanced by a tracery in winter or foliage in summer. But that's just us. Nature has a few tricks up her sleeve and these events, gales blowing down trees are perhaps a way of bringing about change. For these gaps and openings in the canopy will allow an understory, less towering vegetation, more earth bound, to develop and in turn have one of those beautiful circular relationships that Nature brings. More sunlight, more plants. More plants, more insect life. More insect life, more birds. The fallen wood, left in place, decays naturally and becomes a home for more life forms such as fungi and wood boring insects.

A passer by I met on my visit to watch the tree surgeons at work told me some of the neatly sliced up wood had been recovered by a local wood worker who intends to make furniture from it.

In Nature nothing is wasted. Photographic slideshow here (off site link).

Happy New Year

 Let us hope next year will see the end of the present half life we have all been leading in 2021.

Meanwhile, I forget who said this last century but sadly it has proved to be a very apposite description that applies to every issue of the Council's uber up beat City News propaganda sheet:

'The only way to understand Newcastle City Council is that it hates Newcastle'

More dross is being smeared over what's left of the city centre. Already over supplied with empty offices more and bigger ones are coming, designs that make the average budget hotel chains effort or cut price supermarket look like a Mies van der Rohe masterpiece. 

Sadly, more next year if I have the strength.

In the time of Pandemic

Near Pelaw. The Wardley pit looking towards Pelaw Metro

A theme that emerged from many casual conversations, reading articles and blogs devoted to different topics by many hands, and my own experience, in this time of pandemic and restrictions unlike any of us have known before, has been the one of access to green space. For the vast majority, that access has to be local parks and places close to our own front doors. People had to get outside, for more than exercise; it became something vital to their mental well being. It was as if enforced curtailment drove many to recover something that was significantly beyond the reach of warnings and incipient fears. The reassurance of nature, even the trimmed grass and evenly spaced trees of public parks. Something beyond four walls and a window onto sky.

I have noticed this in myself. I needed something I have been doing as part of my life for ages, walking through landscapes, more than ever before. An hour or so litter picking around 'battlefield' produced something inexplicable but felt in myself. I felt normal.
The Guardian has a good article about this here (off site link). It's worth reading. It is a report about one sdmall example of what has been I imagine is a more widespread experience, some of this in groups but more I suggest individually. Many realise the part nature plays in their lives – or sense it even when they haven't sat down and spent time forensically examining themselves. A 'good feeling' most times is best unexamined. It is there to be enjoyed.

As someone I met on my ramble said, 'You look around and it could anywhere out in the countryside'.

Since the Covid-19 restrictions have varied according to infection spread, I have travelled to one or two sites further away but not more than the regulations allowed. I turned my attention to a few places that are in easy reach. All are re-claimed sites, previously coal mines, now landscaped and gradually shrugging off the manicure that replaced pit heaps and shunting yards forty years ago. These are complex places to 'read'. Plantations of mixed trees vie now with uninvited shrubs and 'garden escapes' and a sort of curious experiment and unofficial 're-wilding' is happening by stealth and positive neglect. What fascinates me, all this is happening on people's doorsteps; these are places alongside new and older housing estates, bisected by the odd busy road or Metro line. It's not what the purists mean when they bang on about 're-wilding' – this is for the many not the few.

A photographic record of wandering around what was for me a newly discovered site here (off site link). Spot the dragonfly!

A tree

 The rise of Urban Green was not something I welcomed; it seemed like a hand off to a commercial enterprise. Besides, I know Newcastle City Council ...

However, it seems my fears were misplaced. There is still no assurance that the City Stadium site (a.k.a. "Battlefield') is really safe from some gimcrack scheme. I have seen nor heard of any proposal to give this increasingly important 'green space' some official designation, but can it be delayed forever?

Meanwhile, along with some other specimens around and about, a tree I have watched with some curiosity spring up besides a motor car show room across from my Battlefield has soared ahead of itself as 'blow in' – I cannot see how anyone could have planted it where it is today. 

Trees are a promise to the future.

Window Dressing

Old Eldon Square almost completely demolished despite public protests

Terry Farrell has made a bequest to his old alma mater, Newcastle University, in the form of a shop. Farrell is donating some of his extensive plans and project proposal documents to this enterprise and hopes to make the planning process that baffles many and seems artfully constructed to achieve this end, more transparent. It might be something to welcome, particularly as the site of the shop is slap opposite the Civic Centre. I have my doubts. For one, Newcastle University has been part of the cabal of local 'interests' and behind the scenes actors that included Newcastle and Scottish Breweries (R.I.P.) and the Freeman in carving up the city as it suited them(1). Skullduggery over Leazes Park was exposed only by diligence by a few private individuals led by the late Dolly and Cliff Potter and a brazenness on the part of the main schemers who had the local media in their pocket and left a trail of slime behind them anyone over five years of age could follow.

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has killed millions world wide and caused great suffering so it might seem an insult to turn ones gaze to seemingly more mundane outcomes; however, we must somehow re-create something like a confident society out of these troubling times. One aspect of the pandemic has been the acceleration of certain trends that were slowly changing our towns and cities before that fateful year; the decline of shopping per se, the rise of the internet marketplace not just in household and clothing but food deliveries and bought in meals. These latter enterprises actually expanded as most had to stay indoors for much longer than perhaps anytime in our modern history. The future of our living spaces and work patterns is already being discussed in ways that are speculative as much as innovative. The High Street and the Shopping Mall are seemingly at the end of a road. Pity then so much of what once once fine and inspiring (shorn finally of its mere privileged pretensions post 1945, post 1963 even) was pulverised by numerous councils of every stripe around the country, and most notoriously here in the capital of the north east(2).

Surplus to requirements: Nottingham Shopping Mall due to come down.
The similarity of all our city Shopping Malls is striking – but never in a good way.

Can one have any hope for the future? Yes has to be the answer but judging by the past and very recent past, don't bank on it.

The Farrell story in full from The Guardian here.

(1) The historic Haymarket public house that must have once been the watering hole for generations of people bringing produce, some of it on four legs, to the bustling markets was knocked down swiftly by Newcastle University and afterwards described by Vice Chancellor and outspoken Cold War warrior Professor Laurence 'personally I think there is a case for the neutron bomb' Martin, as a haunt of undesirables, including the present author apparently.

(2) Eldon Square, Grade II Listed was flattened almost completely for a hotel that never materialised only to be replaced by 'Eldon Square' Shopping Mall. Eldon Square's financial future looks uncertain. Around the country cities are demolishing such places either in whole or part. So something that today would not have looked out of place in any grand European city was laid waste for what? Shoe shops and a gymnasium.