Maroon - Prior's Haven

Over Prior's Haven: little cloud produced by one of four maroons announcing the Breeches Buoy Demonstration by the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade as part of their 150th anniversary celebrations.

http://www.tvlb.org

Please email Air France to Stop Forced Removal of Bernard Batey & Lydia Besong...

Telephone Number: 08455 19 15 23                                     Email: mail.internet.afc@airfrance.fr

Mr Henri Hourcade

UK & Ireland General Manager

Air France

Warwick Street

London, W1B 5LZ                                                                                              19th  January 2012

Dear Mr Hourcade

RE: Forced removal of Bernard Batey and Lydia Besong on AF1481, 21/01/2012

I write in protest against Air France’s involvement of the UKBA’s forced removal from the UK of the human rights campaigners Bernard Batey and his wife Lydia Besong who are booked on Air France flight AF1481 at 08.20 hrs on Saturday 21st January 2012 from LHR via Paris to Yaoundé, Republic of Cameroon.

Whatever the decision of the court and UKBA,  Lydia and Bernard cannot go back because groups loyal to the government are monitoring the situation and the flight details are in the public domain. They know that the couple have continued to raise awareness about the situation in their country, with Lydia's new play about President Paul Biya, 'Down with the Dictator', currently in production. You would be placing these two courageous people in serious danger.

There is a big national campaign to halt this deportation, so unless the booking is cancelled Air France is likely to attract a great deal of negative attention, including at local branches. Celebrity support for Lydia and  Bernard includes many A-list writers, playwrights, journalists, MPs and church leaders. they include Michael Morpurgo, Helena Kennedy QC, Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, Nick Hornby and Alan Ayckbourn and the Bishop of Manchester.

Please see this article in Tuesday's Guardian

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/17/authors-activists-deport-cameroonian-playwright?newsfeed=true

I strenuously urge Air France NOT to facilitate the UK’s enforcement policies of forced removals; a barbaric practice which has been highly criticised by the UK national media, many UK MP’s, human rights organisations, including Amnesty International as well as a growing number of members of the UK general public.

Thanks in advance for showing compassion and solidarity.

Yours Sincerely,

Name:

Address:

Email:  

Tel:

New Neighbours and Old: Harriet Martineau & Charlotte Bronte

The Martineau Guesthouse on Front Street, Tynemouth - Harriet Martineau stayed here from 1840 to 1845, her extensive travels interrupted by the incapacitating pain of an ovarian cyst. From her rooms at the back of the building she shared my new view across the river, watching through her telescope 'lovers and friends taking their breezy walks', or the Northern Lights flickering between the stars.

'The Hour and the Man', the story of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, was written here. Along with Martineau's other writings on slavery the novel is credited with swaying popular opinion in Britain in favour of abolitionism.

In 1845 she experimented with mesmerism, a controversial 'alternative therapy' similar to hypnotism.  A nine year reprieve from the pain of her illness resulted, along with a permanent rift with her brother-in-law, the famous Newcastle doctor, Thomas Michael Greenhow. Martineau moved to Ambleside in the Lake District and continued her travels in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, developing the observational methodology which was to become an essential part of modern sociology. During this period she also published 'Household Education', parts of which Charlotte Bronte, still writing to Martineau using her pseudonym 'Currer Bell', said were 'like meeting her own fetch'. (It was rumoured that Martineau was 'the real Currer Bell' during the speculation following the publication of Jane Eyre.)

First Look Inside Tynemouth Priory and Castle

In the sunny early autumn we ignored the ruins high above the bay, though every day at 4 the shadow of the castle walls began to creep over the beach, sending us home too early. This week the weather turned, wet and blustery, and we went up to see what we could see.

The first known written description of the priory is in a monk's letter, written, in Latin, in the mid 14th century:

'Our house is confined to the top of a high rock and is surrounded by sea on every side but one. Here is the approach to the monastery through a gate cut out of the rock so narrow that a cart can hardly pass through. Day and night the waves break and roar and undermine the cliff. Thick sea frets roll in wrapping everything in gloom. Dim eyes, hoarse voices, sore throats are the consequences...Shipwrecks are frequent. It is a great pity to see the numbed crew, whom no power on earth can save, whose vessel, mast swaying and timbers parted, rushes upon the rock or reef. No ringdove or nightingale is here, only grey birds which nest in rocks and greedily prey upon the drowned, whose screaming cry is a token of a coming storm... in the Spring the sea air blights the blossoms of the stunted fruit trees, so that you are lucky to find a wizened apple, though it will set your teeth on edge if you try to eat it. See to it, dear brother, that you do not come to this comfortless place. But the church is of wondrous beauty. It has been lately completed. Within it lies the body of the blessed martyr, Oswine, in a silver shrine, magnificently decorated with gold and jewels. He protects the murderers, thieves and seditious persons who fly to him and commutes their punishment to exile. He heals those whom no doctor can cure. The martyr's protection and the church's beauty furnish us with a bond of unity. We are well off for food, thanks to the abundant supply of fish of which we tire.'

Heck. Seemed bleaker still with only some broken walls remaining and the 20th century gun batteries beyond but as we battled through the wind and rain began again we saw an open door, with a roof above it - the Percy Chantry, all quiet and relative warmth within, coloured light from stained glass windows flickering over golden stone and red, blue, golden floor tiles. Overhead carved bosses in the vaulting, angels, roses, saints and their emblems and the ceiling lapis blue, painted with stars.

A 15th century chantry, it was long thought to be the Lady Chapel of the church described in the letter above, housing the tomb of St Oswine, one of the three kings supposed to be buried at the priory. In fact the Lady Chapel was destroyed at the dissolution of the monasteries and only the foundation of the south wall remains. The chantry is the only building to remain intact, renovated in 1850 by, guess who, John Dobson, who added a stone altar, Minton floor tiles and the starry heaven on the vault.

Northumbrian Cobles & The Unit of Tigris Boatmen - South Side of the Tyne

This afternoon we crossed the River to South Shields, planned destination the Arbeia Roman Fort (any excuse for a go on the boats, though).

A huge fort, built to defend the Mouth of the Tyne and store supplies for garrisons right the way along Hadrian's Wall. We did some 'excavating' in the visitor centre, unearthing many 'shards', and possibly a sheep's skull, before climbing up inside the restored West Tower to learn more about the pre- and post-Roman history of the Lawes area. Too busy for ghosts - more likely to encounter those on the extant stretches of Roman road up country - as always struck by the cosmopolitan nature of the Roman Empire... Arbeia, overlooking the Tyne, takes its name from 'Bet Arbaye', the Aramaic name for the Tigris, the fort being staffed by The Unit of Tigris Boatmen.

Making our way back down towards the ferry landing I persuaded Vjollca into a tiny museum between boatyards, crammed with paintings, newpaper cuttings and boaty odds and ends but that was not all, as soon we found ourselves on a guided tour of the North East Maritime Trust's workshop, where work was progressing on the restoration of the Henry Frederick Swan, the original Tynemouth Lifeboat, and various Foy boats and Northumbrian Cobles. Although we were given a thoroughly technical explanation of the differences between scarf and clinker joints, et al, and shown why boat builders of the 19th c and earlier took their templates to the forests (timber already growing in the required shape without the need for jointed sections being stronger), the restorers describe themselves as 'romantics', insisting, for example, that the design of the Northumbrian coble derives from the Viking Longships and their bright colours from the boats on the Bayeux Tapestry. Also an explanation of the use of the three lighthouses along the river mouth - navigators must 'line them up' in order to negotiate the curve of the river and the spiky rock formations known as the Black Middens.

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/arbeia/

http://www.nemaritimetrust.co.uk/2011/02/henry-frederick-swan-restoration-on-full-ahead/
http://www.nemaritimetrust.co.uk/2010/08/and-now-for-something-very-different-the-boomerang-boat/
(For a photo of the fabulous 'Boomerang Boat'. Built for the 16th Biennale of Sidney, 2008, it explores the idea of turning and returning to the same point.)

Moths and Ghosts

Ghosts wash into my dreams here, seems only natural.

Last night my brother, John, looking younger, sitting beside the storage heater with no shirt on, waiting happily for someone to dress him, big daft lad. Had we not walked around Newcastle all afternoon seeing his name on plaques - John Dobsons everywhere. Then another, waking me to remind me of the first, slipping away behind it.

Near 6 I gave up on lying in the dark and went into the garden. Light breaking over the mouth of the river ('moth' according to the est. agents' ad) in shell pink streaks, unknown birds calling, beautiful and strange. And a dragging, shuffling sound I thought was from the path that runs alongside the garden but did not pass by as expected (I wasn't afraid of it but preparing a shy and stealthy peek when it should pass me). Someone in the market garden across the way working early, perhaps, in the dark, though it sounded like something huge hauling itself from the sea - the Moth of the Tyne itself, maybe.

But moths and ghosts are forgotten as fast as nights end here, before it occurred to me to fetch a torch I realised I could already see the remains of rain water on the table top in front of me, no sign of anything or anyone it might have been, and daytime things to be done.

Moving to Tynemouth

Thursday evening - leaving Blenheim Primary School

So long old friend.

Last walk down the Brambly Path...

Carl's titchy removals - 'It looks small but you'd be surprised' ?!

Splodgy arrives in his Muji Fish Transporter/Cereal Storage

Soon we find a new Tin Fish...

then home to watch moonshine on the river... much later I go outside again, thinking I see ghostly gulls flying past the end of the garden at rhythmic intervals - beams from a lighthouse.