Baby's first meme

A feature in Saturday's Guardian asked six artists about their favourite part of Britain. Antony Gormley replied:

Best view: Looking out to Lindisfarne over the mud flats, about an hour up the coast from Newcastle in the car.

Best walk: Following Hadrian's Wall, north of Hexham, going west - big skies, open rolling country, and wonderful mature trees.

Best gallery: It's got to be the Baltic (0191-478 1810), Gateshead.

Best pub: The Free Trade (0191-265 5764), on the Tyne in Newcastle; and the Crown Posada (0191-232 1269), 31 The Side, tucked away by the quayside.

Best restaurant: Cafe 21 (0191-222 0755) in Newcastle, by the bridge. They serve wonderful food in a cafe adjoining The Live Theatre.

Best place to stay: The Vermont (0191-233 1010), Newcastle. If you get a room high enough, you have fantastic views over the river and the Tyne bridge, but you are still right in the middle of Newcastle.

This is interesting: reasonable choices, though very Newcastle / Gatehead centred. The questionnaire is clearly designed to allow people to talk about a region in which they don't live, but I thought it was an interesting way of looking at my home region, too.

( So here are my answers )

Anyone else? durham_rambler, you had some suggestions, didn't you?

Short stories

matociquala sees it like this:

I hit upon a metaphor today that pleased me. Writing short stories is like watchmaking. Every bit must be finely machined, take up no more space than it needs to do its job, and move precisely in counterpart with all the others--and it must be necessary.

Novels have room for cuckoos and dancing waiters and great big decorative pendulums and so forth.

Val - I beg her pardon, V. L. McDermid says, and I paraphrase from memory, that a novel comes from seeing or hearing or learning something that makes her think: "Oh, that's interesting. I wonder what would happen if...", from applying or twisting or developing an idea. But with a short story, the idea is the short story. You don't speculate about it, or apply it, you nail it down fast. And only when you've nailed down all four corners do you peer under the groundsheet to find out what you've got.

All together now, children:

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And -- every -- single -- one -- of -- them -- is -- right!