News from Nowhere

The drying machines are having their effect: two of them have been removed and we hope that the kitchen will be declared dry when the expert arrives tomorrow afternoon. We are working with our builder towards quoting a price for redecoration which we can pass on to the insurers. The insurers policy is that you don't redecorate part of a room, because that would look silly: a room in which work has to be done is to be recorated in full. This is simple enough in the kitchen, where all we want is to restore things to how they were before, and not too difficult in the spare bedroom, which we have decorated in the past, in colours I don't think are very successful (mostly pale blue, which is light but a bit chilly). But our bedroom has never been decorated since we moved in, and if we are going to have all the upheaval of doing it now, we might as well do it properly, and pay ourselves whatever this costs above the insurance. Time to find out what the options are: last Saturday we went out to look at wallpaper.

We had tracked down a showroom not far away who stocked paper from the William Morris archive: my logic was that I know I like Morris, someone who stocks that may well stock other things that I like. After an hour of wrangling huge volumes of samples, I was losing the will to live. It's still possible that they stock other things that I like, but they hide it among some much other stuff that I do not like at all. What a huge amount of bland, neutral wallpaper there is out there. Not to mention the downright ugly. I don't want to be someone who sticks to what I know I like, I want to be someone who discovers new amazing creative things.

On Tuesday, in Newcastle for my reading group, I tried John Lewis - and yes, they had one or two fun things. If I were looking for a nautical theme, I'd be set. But after another hour, I still hadn't found anything I liked better than Morris - and most of the things I liked almost as much were twice as expensive, which I hadn't thought possible. I complained about this to Gail-Nina over a cup of tea, and she suggested gently that there's a reason why Morris is so highly regarded. That may be it...

In between these two expeditions, we spent Sunday morning at Tees Cottage Pumping Station, constructed in 1849 to pump water up from the river Tees, and then up again to supply Darlington's water. It was powered first by steam, then by gas and finally by electricity, and on Sunday they were in steam. There really is something irresistible about Victorian engineering:



More photos.

This year the Heritage Open Days weekend coincided with a visit from the Bears - scheduled to allow them to participate in a big Sacred Harp sing taking place in Durham the same weekend (and GirlBear did spend a day singing, though BoyBear took the opportunity to put in some intensive sleeping instead). When dates collide, they tend to pile up: the weekend also saw Yom Kippur and my mother's birthday. So mostly it was a weekend of talking, remembering and planning and doing the crossword.



On Saturday morning durham_rambler and I visited the County Hospital, where proposals for the redevelopment of the site were on show. This was despressing, not so much for the plans themselves, as because a scheme which was presented to the local residents' group in July as "everything is still very fluid but we would like to see a mixed development of permanent residents and students" has now become another large block of student accommodation. The only sweetener is that the nineteenth century building is to be stripped of its twentieth century accretions and offered as prestige accommodation for postgrads. Well, it's early days yet, we'll see what happens. And at least this access to the County Hospital allowed me to grab this view of the cathedral beyond the viaduct.

Over Sunday breakfast we planned our grand day out: the forecast was for horrible weather (much worse than actually materialised, as it happens) so we would do mainly indoor things, visiting the Head of Steam museum in Darlington, and an old church nearby, with a brief detour in between for a thematically related sculpture and ending up at a teashop.

So that's what we did, and I took a large number of pictures, which I haven't finished sorting yet. The Head of Steam was a railway museum when we last visited, but has since expanded to take in some local history as well. It has a fine collection of steam engines, including Locomotion itself (as well as a number of Locomotion-related items - Locomotion made out of matchsticks, Locomotion in Meccano), beautifully displayed in the former railway station. The local-interest items are more random, and include three wooden sculptures of dogs' heads, rescued from the "Tudor" frontage of a shop now demolished, and a knitted map of the town.

The church is in Haughton-le-Skerne, which is technically a suburb of Darlington, but feels like a rather superior village, with some elegant old houses along a green - I'd never been there before, and was surprised. The church is circa 1125, pleasant but not distinguished on the outside, but long, light and airy inside (these architects' pictures give some idea). There are treasures to admire, Saxon stones and Cosin woodwork and some lead roof-tiles on which the eighteenth century workmen have scratched their initials, and outlined their hands and boots.

Time for some refreshment: we went to New Moor Farm and ate Archers' ice cream (licquorice flavour!).