A modest birthday wish

When did Newcastle-on-Tyne become Newcastle upon Tyne?

That was the question posed on a Facebook page I enjoy visiting to look at old photos of the toon.

It was the cue for a lot of fiercely patriotic Geordies to assert that it had always been called Newcastle upon Tyne, at any rate since it stopped being called Pons Aelius.

Reminding themselves, for good measure, that it had been a proud county in its own right and never a mere part of Northumberland.

The finest street in England ...

... leading to the finest riverside in England ...

... via a magnificent railway arch ...

... bearing the world's least likely warning sign

Clearly no one recalled, as I do, a decree being handed down that we should stop calling the place Newcastle-on-Tyne, which was the normal form when I was a small boy.

I can’t remember whether it came from the City Council or the Post Office, and remarkably in the age of Google and Wikipedia I can find no record of he pronouncement being made, but I guess it was around 1960.

I do distinctly remember my father moaning about having to change the wording on our letterhead, and the postmarks on all local mail changing to the longer and grander form of “upon Tyne”.

A few years later my dad had occasion to moan again when the introduction of postcodes demanded another print job, and I was grateful for his blood pressure that the change in the county boundaries in 1974 did not make him print the things again.

Because although we were shunted from Longbenton in the historic county of Northumberland to North Tyneside in the new-fangled and bogus county of Tyne & Wear, our postal address remained “Newcastle upon Tyne”.

We lived yards from the city boundary and I cherished the grand sign bearing the coat of arms and the legend welcoming visitors to the “City and County of Newcastle upon Tyne”.

The road sign was much better than this; shame I never took a photo of it

It was one of those distinctive things, like yellow buses, the Tyne Bridge, singing Blaydon Races, and displaying unquenchable loyalty to an underperforming football team, that set Newcastle apart and gave me a surge of pride in my birthplace.

Which was, indeed, described as “upon Tyne” on my 1954 birth certificate.

I must admit that I have always thought of Newcastle as being part of Northumberland, not least because of the large, white LNER signs precisely halfway across the river on the King Edward Bridge, proclaiming that that was where Durham ended and Northumberland started.

Then there was the fact that Northumberland County Council based itself next to the New Castle, in what is now the Vermont Hotel, until the end of the 1970s. If, as I must accept, Newcastle was recognised as a county in its own right in 1400, it seemed odd that it took the council nearly 600 years to take the hint and move their base to Morpeth.

(They should, of course, have gone to Alnwick, which as any fule kno is the true county town of Northumberland, but that is a story for another day.)

A claim undisputed in Alnwick

Finally, and critically for a royalist like me, Newcastle did not have its own Lord-Lieutenant, but was part of Northumberland for this purpose. Though I note with pleasure that the first Duke of Northumberland, when appointed to this role in 1753, was titled “Lord Lieutenant, Custos Rotulorum and Vice-Admiral of the county of Northumberland, and Lord Lieutenant of the town and county of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.”

It seems a shame, given this quirky history, that we have not managed to create any pleasing apocryphal tales, like the widely-held misconception that Berwick-upon-Tweed is still at war with Russia over Crimea. Maybe we should work on that.

One fact on which we can all sadly agree is that is Newcastle formed part of the county of Tyne & Wear from its creation in 1974 until its welcome abolition in 1986. Why it retains a vestigial existence for ceremonial purposes, such as the Lord-Lieutenancy, is a total mystery to me.

Just plain wrong. Good riddance.

I am very proud to be a Novocastrian, Northumbrian, Englishman and Briton. But I can no more identify with Tyne & Wear or NewcastleGateshead than with the European Union.

Today, coincidentally, is my 61st birthday. If anyone else can remember the official clampdown on “Newcastle-on-Tyne” and let me know who issued that order and when, it would truly make my day.

mail@keithhann.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

What I did on my holidays

No image of the Second World War resonates more strongly with me than that poster enquiring “Is your journey really necessary?”

If asked to recommend a single grand gesture to “save the planet”, I would close down the entire global tourism industry at a stroke.

The ever more intrusive rigmarole of airport security has heightened my already strong aversion to air travel; congestion makes the roads unbearable; while the demise of the East Coast restaurant car removes the last plausible excuse for regarding a train journey as a potential pleasure. I have never been on a cruise, but can see no reason to disagree with Dr Johnson’s assertion that time spent on a ship compares unfavourably with a prison sentence because it carries the added risk of being drowned.

Now admittedly I enjoy a huge advantage in living in one of the loveliest spots on all God’s Earth, and might take a different view if home were an inner city slum or even a dull suburb. Indeed, growing up in Longbenton in the 1950s and 60s, I greatly looked forward to my annual fortnight with my parents at the Haven hotel in St Abb’s, where the sun always seemed to shine on the sandy beach, the other guests applauded latecomers to the dining room and the children were entertained with sports and amateur theatricals (in which I resolutely refused to participate).

An early taste of Paradise: St Abbs Haven Hotel

Having belatedly acquired a son of my own I even thought of taking him there. A notion I entertained for long enough to look the place up on the internet, where I found that a developer had turned it into flats.

Last year I got away with a holiday at home because the boy was deemed too young to know or care where he was, but this year I was told it would not do. I fought hard for a cottage in Northumberland on the grounds that we already owned a cottage in Northumberland, which has a number of obvious advantages. But instead I find myself writing this in a remote corner of Wales.

Our beach in Wales: how the Tourist Board presents it

The reality: all wrapped up building a sandcastle in the rain

The rain has been lashing down more or less ever since we arrived, and there is also a scenic rivulet trickling down the wall of the sitting room. The Welsh equivalent of Bob the builder came round to look at it on Sunday afternoon, disrupting the toddler’s afternoon nap, and announced that it was due to the gutters overflowing during Saturday’s freak downpour. But later we pulled the plug on our son’s bath and watched a perfect miniature reproduction of High Force in the room below.

Our sitting room after The Boy's bath

There are two real ale pubs within 50 yards in which I could drown my sorrows, if only I could face running the gauntlet of the menacing huddle of troglodytes outside their doors, drawing deeply on cancer sticks and muttering darkly in Welsh.

In short, it’s just like being at home except wetter (indoors and out), less comfortable and more expensive. The only conceivable advantage is that the beach is a five minute walk away rather than a half hour’s drive, but this seems immaterial when it is too cold, wet and windy to do anything on said beach apart from taking a brisk walk with the dog. The scenic highlight to date was observing the amazing rainbow that formed during the violent thunder and hailstorm from which we sheltered under the awning of a beach hut on Friday evening, as our son looked at us in wonderment and pronounced “My soaked”.

An uncanny echo of Roeg's 'Don't Look Now'

Next month my wife and boy are going for a more advanced beach holiday in Majorca, where sun is apparently more or less guaranteed. I shall be at home in Northumberland enjoying a good book. Which, unless Wales bucks its ideas up pretty smartly, is also where I shall be by the time you read this.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.