Dereliction. Why is that bad, exactly?

I am being a bit contentious (again). There is just something that I find in the run down and less favoured places that attracts me. Neat, orderly and hygienic has its place: It's called suburbia. One of the attractions of neglect is that there was, after all, something which to neglect.

I wandered about Shieldfield, adjacent to my 'Battlefield' the other day and tried to make some sense of what is happening; the variety of spaces, types of buildings and that remarkable effect, how one kind of new building suddenly, unexpectedly sets one looking again at another, familiar and yet completely transformed by this new association.

Behind Shieldfield next to the, as yet still unredeveloped, old paint factory site, something remarkable is happening. The newly built student 'halls of residence' (as they are not called nowadays) has brought something to the area that threatens to make it one of the most interesting in the city. It vies, it grows and contradicts. What was once derelict and marginalised has been given new life – because to one with a trained and unprejudiced eye, it was always there.

Ernest's Bistro Café thrives; small businesses (vintage furniture, a gym, furniture maker, and a trade supplies outlet) are being jostled by a new music venue. The Biscuit Factory building, old and magnificent is a feature; wonderfully, this is now a place to be and exist. What was simply once a 'threatening' area indeed, is now teetering on becoming 'somewhere'.

A new identity or a resurrected one?

Shieldfield November 2013

Remembrance Sunday 2013

Sunday 10th November was sunny. The sky was a cloudless blue, cold and high and the sun shone at an intimidating angle through the trees.

I went for a walk along Ouseburn and up into Heaton Park. People came and went, young and old, some cycling or running. Somethings are still free. We will remember them.

Heaton Park 10.11.13

One for Christmas Reading

I know it is bit early (though the shops are full of Christmas items despite there being still green leaves on the trees) but some exciting news this weekend from The Observer. A new book on architectural critic and contrarian writer Ian Nairn is published and a programme on BBC Television Four in the offing.

Nairn will just not go away.

Ian Nairn 1930-83

A devoted if small number of admirers have never quite let his memory fade after he he died in 1983 just short of  the young age of 53 (from alcoholism); thereafter he turned up infrequently in short tributes or asides in other people's broadcasts.

Nairn's grasp of the importance of the built environment and the curse of modern 'planning' could be wilful but always large and wholehearted. He taught me as a teenager half a century ago reading his pieces (in The Observer), to look, to note and appreciate what was there, existing and real, the accumulation of buildings, artefacts, roofs and pavements that makes a place a place; the then often unappreciated and neglected, carriers of stories we should and must (for his was a moral concern at its core) attend to, letting it inform our lives, and by so doing give significance to the meaning of living.

Please read The Observer's Rowan Moore review of Nairn's life and influence here (off site link).

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

Teri Tynes: An appreciation

I came across 'Walking off the Big Apple' by complete chance, as one does on the internet, some years ago searching for something else. From then on it was a delight to turn away from 'wars and the rumours of wars' to read something gracious, enthusiastic, informed and spiritually generous once in a while. The site was run (single handedly at that) by Teri Tynes, a New Yorker from Texas.

Subtitled 'A strollers guide to New York City', Tynes recorded her walks around Manhattan Island (and occasionally beyond), illustrated with her own superb photographs, the sheer delight city life could bring to the observant and curious mind. However, 'All life is here' wouldn't be true of 'Walking ...'. Tynes left out the soiled and gruesome to elevate her gaze just so far, far enough. Of smart restaurants and snob pleasures there were few mentions, if only to highlight the self imposed chasm that separates those whose money insulates them from experience. Her aspiration was to re-invent the 19th century flanneur, the ironic, knowledgeable and essentially sympathetic wanderer, able to delight in all the inconsequential details of modern urban life; for most of us on this planet now, this is life. She succeeded.

Her energy was prodigious; the site developed and grew in scope; the Internet add-ons (that defeat me) she had a plenty; slideshows and maps, calendars of forthcoming art exhibitions and film reviews (Tynes is an accomplished film critic); historical detail and observations on architecture and eating out; all this combined to provide a user's guide to New York City like nothing else I have seen, since it was essentially the unique product of a single mind, a particularly fine one. She even found time to encourage your humble servant.

Earlier this year the steady steam of postings declined and then halted. Now Ms Tynes has issued a post on the site to announce her retirement. Many followers have added their thoughts to her comments thread, thanking her, regretting the passing of what was, for many, an essential recreational delight. The news came with evident sadness. Reflecting on this news afterwards, I was reminded of some lines by Keith Douglas (1920-44) –

the specimens, the lilies of ambition
still spring in their climate, still unpicked:
but time, time is all I lacked
to find them, as the great collectors before me.


But she had found much, shared much. Tynes' achievement is and remains wonderful, an exemplar. My own sadness is eased by the knowledge that much of what she wrote and photographed will remain up on the Internet. Who knows someone might produce a e-book of her postings. One thing is for certain, Teri Tyne's achievement will not be soon matched nor forgot.