News from Nowhere

For once it was durham_rambler who suggested that we take Tuesday afternoon off, and go out. What's more, he knew where he wanted to go: his social media had been showing him pictures of Joe's Pond, and the adjacent nature reserve at Rainton Meadows.



This is post-industrial landscape: the nature reserve was created by the restoration of the Rye Hill Opencast coal mine, and Joe's Pond is a former clay pit, now a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a very pleasant place to walk around on a sunny afternoon. There's a swan on her nest, and another preening by the path, who hissed at us as we passed. There were some coot, but they were camera-shy. The hawthorn was in bloom, and the yellow irises were just emerging.

And we called at a farm shop on our way home.

The show we saw at the Glass Centre last week was called Harvest: Fruit Gathering, a collaboration between two glass artists, Neil Wilkin and Rachael Woodman (Neil Wilkin's website; Rachael Woodman's Instagram). If I've got this right, they both trained in glassmaking, but Rachael Woodman now works primarily on design, while Neil Wilkin is the primary maker. They are long time collaborators, but this is their first joint exhibition, previously shown at the Ruthin Craft Centre, and now touring a number of other venues.

Despite the title of the show, perhaps a third of the pieces made me think of fruit: another group were vases and bowls in glorious colours, very easy on the eye, but I didn't feel any urge to photograph them; what I did feel the urge to photograph was - ( Well, let's put that under a cut... )

Long ago, when the Angel of the North was still a not-altogether-popular proposal for which Gateshead council was engaged in a charm offensive, durham_rambler and I went to see Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles, in what I remember as an ill-lit engine shed somewhere in Gateshead: thousands of little clay homunculi staring up at us out of the gloom. Since then it has won the Turner Prize, and the Angel has become not just a National Treasure but a local hero as well - and the Field for the British Isles is paying a return visit to the north east. So yesterday we went to the Sunderland Glass Centre, to see it again.



( More of the same ... )

After which we ordered a pot of Earl Grey tea each to drink at the café's outdoor tables, and I stocked up on cards from the gift shop while I waited for it to arrive.

Phil Gates on Roker Beach.

We decided we needed a day out over the long weekend, and the forecast was the Sunday was our best bet. This - with the caveat that the weather wasn't brilliant, but that the rest of the weekend was worse - turned out to be the case. durham_rambler asked me where I wanted to go, and since I didn't have anything in particular in mind, I gave him my default answer: the seaside! He had come across references to some additional sculptures in the vicinity of the St Peter's Basin sculpture trail, and we decided this was a clue worth pursuing (spoiler: only approximately true, in both respects - but if we didn't find what we were expecting, we found things we weren't expecting...). Plan A was to head for St Peter's metro, and walk along the river from there to the sea - with a detour on the way in to Sunderland to see if we could get a decent view of the new river crossing (not really: you can see the spire from all over, but getting close would have been more of a diversion than we wanted). Down to the river and under the bridge:



( You have been warned... )

We spent Saturday at the Wonderlands Graphic Novels Expo in Sunderland. I had a great time, and durham_rambler enjoyed it too: having retained the option of leaving when he'd had enough, he stayed until the end, when they were closing the venue around us. There was a full - maybe even overfull! - programme of talks: I didn't want to miss any of them, but I did also want to visit all the exhibitors, and simply take a breather. I had some great conversations - as I'd suspected, wearing my very old Swamp Thing t-shirt was a good icebreaker (my excuse is that it was our first day home from holiday, and I'd barely started on the laundry, but yes, there may have been a touch of showing off, too).

I was very restrained about buying things, and came away with just three purchases: Bryan Talbot's Grandville Noël, which I had been waiting to buy where Bryan could sign it for me; Darryl Cunningham's Supercrash, because I asked durham_rambler which of the graphic novels recommended by Paul Gravett he would be most likely to read (thinking there was a good chance he'd choose something that I already had, and if I didn't have it, samarcand probably would) and this is what he chose, without hestitating; and an animal print by Jenn Begley just because.

I didn't take a notebook: I didn't expect to need one. Instead, I scribbled all over the back of the page on which I had printed out instructions for finding the event:

• Paul Gravett, having trouble timing his talk: "Is someone going to stop me? I am the Ken Dodd of comics..."


• and on the first graphic novel, Rodolphe Töpffer's Histoire de M. Vieux Bois published, as a book, in 1837 (meaning that the very first comic was actually a graphic novel): "We should celebrate Comics Day on his birthday" (it's January 31st). Goethe wrote him a fan letter, which makes him the first fanboy.


• Dylan Horrocks: "Comics is always a collaboration, even when you're doing it by yourself."


• SHE LIVES: Woodrow Phoenix and his impossible giant book.


• Posy Simmonds on the joys of overheard dialogue: "I love queues - In fact, I often join queues..." (which reminds me of Ann Cleeves talking about what she overhears on trains).


• on receiving letters pointing out errors: "I am never going to draw a train again."


• and "What I like about comics is, they're so democratic."


• Al Davison on an unexpected connection with Sally Heathcote Suffragette: "Emily Wilding Davison was my great-aunt."


• on the meaning of the title Spiral Cage, a phrase he had used to describe the way society limits the disabled person with shifting restrictions: you overcome one aspect, and the cage changes, so that you are still trapped. But once Alan Moore pointed out, in his introduction, that DNA is a spiral cage, how could this not be the true meaning?


• and on the difficulties of explainig to bookshops that although this was a comic, it was also an autobiography. Turning up to a signing in Waterstones, he found himself directed to the SF section.


• The last event of the schedule, a panel of publishers discussing the current state of graphic novels - and the future! - was the most cheerful view of publishing I have seen in a long time. Then again, it didn't have too much to say about the future...


• The best selling graphic novel in Japan which is not manga: Möbius and Jodorovsky's L'Incal.

Wonderlands was part of the 'Alice is 150' celebrations - but I hope they do it again next year, when Alice is 151!

ETA the final two points, discovered on a separate piece of paper!

We dined last night in Sunderland with a group of my cousins who come north once a year to see the lads play at home. We were a party of ten: three brothers, two wives, three grandchildren, durham_rambler and me. We talked about plans, and absent siblings, and our various work / life balances, and at half time I changed ends and talked books, music and films.

We didn't talk much about the match. Sunderland had had a player sent off four minutes into the game, and had not distinguished themselves thereafter. "To think," said my cousin R., "that I got up at five o' clock and drove 300 miles for that!"

"I," said the lady at the next table, "flew in from Switzerland for that!"

A schoolfriend, who was also a Durham student, has been visiting for a long Bank Holiday weekend. We've been promising ourselves a visit for quite a while, but the thing that finally made it happen was her desire to see the Lindisfarne Gospels during their time in Durham "where they belong."

I don't actually buy this: the Gospels are important enough to belong in a national collection (and if I were going to get sentimental about it, I'd like to see them on Lindisfarne, which is not going to happen). But I'm very happy that it gave me a few days with a friend I don't see often enough; and once I had got over being grumpy about the way it was organised, the exhibition was worth seeing, as much for the supporting material as for the Gospels themselves, which came almost as an anticlimax at the end.

Admission is by timed ticket, and you are asked to arrive fifteen minutes ahead of the time on your ticket - and then kept waiting outside until your admission time. We were then kept for another ten minutes in a queue in the library foyer, from where we could see tantalising glimpses of an introductory video; then when we were allowed into the video room, the attendants tried to encourage us straight into the exhibition proper. I'm glad we resisted, because the exhibition had a thesis, and the video explained it: the Gospels were an attempt to weave together the Roman and Celtic strands of Christianity and so regain some of the ground lost by the Celtic church after the synod of Whitby. I had not realised the extent to which the Irish monastic settlements had retreated after that defeat, so that the creation of the Lindisfarne Gospels took place in a community which was already a reclamation, a revival (as the ruins of the priory we now see were a reclamation of territory abandoned to the Viking invasions). The exhibition brings together manuscripts, jewels and stonework, and attempts to explain the differences between the two traditions - I say 'attempts' because I couldn't always see it, certainly not in the low light and press of people (despite the timed tickets, it was busier than I found comfortable, though that may have something to do with our timing). But there were wonderful things, manuscripts which were beautiful not just in their decoration but in their actual text (I was sorry that the Gospels were open at the portrait of Saint John, which I found less appealing than his words). How can you not be amazed by a book which was read by Bede himself?

Durham is attempting to maximise tourist revenue during the visit, and everything is gospel themed: flower shows, buses in illuminated livery, the burger van on Palace Green renamed Gospels Gourmet for the duration (oh, I was so tempted to try to order five buns and two fishes). Mostly I try to ignore this, and we certainly weren't looking for gospel-themed art when we stepped inside the World Heritage Visitor Centre, just a chance to show S. a space which had been carved into the old streets since she was last in Durham. But I liked Stephen Livingstone's 'Moths and Moons', 30 pieces painted using natural pigments applied to discarded library books - scroll down the page for pictures, made for the British Library and only loosely gospel-themed.

The specification for Saturday was: it may rain, but S. would like to go to the seaside. So we started out at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland, now reopened after extensive renovations. The upstairs galleries seem lighter and airier, and the historical material more extensive, but the visiting exhibition was just ugly (A retrospective of the work of Erwin Eisch). The smaller displays in the gallery showcases were better: Richard Slee's torches, each supported by its own beam of light, and his shrimping net whose net was made of glass; James Maskrey's shelf of brown jars, containing an assortment of real and imagined dietary curiosities which Captain Cook might have acquired on his travels - a jar of pickled lyrebird eggs, the eggs, like the jar, made of glass, or sauerkraut, the jar containing red (glass) cabbage. The chandeliers were good, too.

After lunch we watched a demonstration of glassblowing, then walked along the river past the sculptures, as far as the sea. Mission accomplished.

And on Sunday we went up the dale for a short walk around Harehope Quarry before lunch at the Black Bull in Frosterley.

Living up a hill on a street which is not officially a through road, it's easy to feel snowed in: but on Sunday we decided that we could not only get the car down the hill, we'd be able to get it back up again. So we went for a walk on the beach. It seems a waste, when we've had such thick and inviting snowfalls, not to go crunching through the blankets of untrodden snow - but I know my limitations, so we went to Roker. The row of stumps lined up along the edge of the pavement suggests that there had been a storm, but we had sunshine and a brisk wind, and even walked out to the end of the pier (though I wasn't tempted to linger there). A short walk there and back, with fish and chips for lunch at the midpoint, but a welcome outing.

Driving home, we crossed a distinct boundary, just where the sign marked the county border. In Sunderland we saw literally no snow: in County Durham the fields were still white, though green was showing through. The snow was thawing rapidly, and water streamed off the fields and across the road. A couple of times, at the bottom of a dip, we had to ford a substantial pool of water.

Back in the city, the river was high, still within its banks and with visible changes of level at the weirs, a swift moving torrent of iced coffee.

First walk of the year: park at Fulwell Mill in Sunderland, climb up onto the Cleadon Hills, with views south to the mouth of the Wear and north to Tynemouth (though if there's any point from which you can see both at once, I didn't find it), down to Marsden and back along the coast. I think of this as a short walk, because it's a walk we do in winter, when the days are short - but durham_rambler has sent me a link to a map he made in January 2008, which gives a distance of 9.8 miles. Perhaps that's why we decided against walking it in January 2008; and perhaps it's why I feel so worn out by it now.



First photos of the year: this one isn't the very first, but it's the one I like best of the first batch, up on the Cleadon Hills.

First fish and chips of the year, at the Marsden grotto. And from there, first walk along the coast, and first walk on the beach: if it's the first walk of the year, I suppose it goes without saying that it's also the first walk on whatever sort of terrain we chose - but starting with a walk along the cliffs suits me just fine.

First musical gig of the year was Thursday, at the Sage, when we heard Louisa Killen as part of the 'One Night in Gateshead' series. There's a whole post I could write about that, but briefly: I enjoyed it, but wondered about the extent to which Louisa Killen relied on her guests, Johnny Handle and Emily Portman. Does she no longer have the voice or the stamina to carry an evening alone? Even if that were the case (and it may just be that she had a cold that particular evening), why not use the interview format that they'd used with Bob Davenport? She had enough anecdotes about the folk revival of the late 50s, starting a folk club and collecting songs, that I'd have loved to hear more... This is no criticism of Johnny Handle, who I was glad to hear will be doing his own 'One Night in Gateshead' show, nor yet of Emily Portman, who was tutored by Louisa Killen and sang - magnificently - some of the traditional songs she'd learned then. Her own compositions on her MySpace page are quite different but identifiably rooted in the traditional stories, twisted fairy tales well worth a listen.