TIL that subwoofers are just the bottom end of a whole range of animal-noise terms for speakers. Subwoofers are the biggest and bassiest, but then you have woofers, squawkers, tweeters, and even supertweeters! Neat.
Posts in EnglishPage 17
Walking the Blyth and Tyne, part two: Oh, Delaval is a terrible place
Last time on The Garden: A strip mall turns out to be a place of immense historical curiosity, i am interrupted by a rude troupe of boy racers, and find myself caught up in the lyrics of a pro-union folk song.
Leaving Seghill, going past a house with a conspicuous Northumbrian flag, the landscape once again slips swiftly back into ruralia â a common occurrence on this leg of the journey. No sooner had i left behind the station house than i found myself on a dirt path which i wasnât quiiiite sure i was meant to be on.
This was the small hamlet of Mare Close, essentially a farmhouse surrounded by a few cottages. I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone living there has been friends since primary school, though i'll never know for sure. Opposite the cottages, by the next leg of my route, lay a small village church and graveyard which i dared not enter. Onwards.
Seaton DelavalÎą sits at the heart of the valley. Turning one way, there lies a charming local coĂśperative store, a genuine lordly manor (owned by the townâs namesake De la Val family, who came over after 1066), the previously-blogged village of Holywell, and, eventually, the seaside settlement of Seaton Sluice.β Unfortunately, weâll be turning the other way, by where once stood a colliery.
The former site of Delavalâs station can hardly be considered a sight for sore eyes. Cars and lorries pass by, horns blaring, trying to weave their way between those turning into the nearby petrol station.Îł The location of the station itself is an uninspiring gravel pit on one site with an overgrown nettle-filled path on the other; next door is a chain pub whose car park will be getting embiggened to accommodate the extra traffic once the railway reopens.
It doesnât get much better. A few interesting-looking eateries (a grimy-looking cafĂŠ called âOnly Fools and Saucesâ, a venue by the name of the Secret Gardenδ with a wonderful hand-painted sign) added some initial spice, but soon i was back to the same industrial wasteland: Auto recycling! Furniture wholesalers! Caravan storage! Chemical producers! The works!
...I said something about a colliery, didnât i?
16 January, 1862. Itâs half past ten â or, at least, it might be. Youâve been labouring away in the coal pit since two in the morning, and youâve not seen the sun since. The shift is almost over, and itâs time to swap over with the next group.
One by one, your comrades file in line to get out. A huddle of people enter the rusting lift. The familiar ketter-ketter-ketter shudders through the cave â but then, for a fraction of a second, all falls silent.
Your heart races. A drop of water falls from the ceiling. Nobody makes a sound.
And then, all of a sudden, it is as though Thorâs hammer has crashed into the ground. The earth around you shakes in terror, lets out what can only be described as an otherworldly scream, as ten tonnes of blood-red steel smash into the floor.
This was the Hartley Pit disaster, and its shockwaves can still be heard across town.
Just across from the telltale jackhammers and yellow tape of a housing estate so new Google Maps hasnât caught up yetÎľ sits a lovely memorial garden, explaining the story of the tragedy, with a poem to contemplate as you ramble along the path.
In terms of stations, the town has had two â Hartley and Hartley Pit â both right next to each other, and neither seeming to have any chance of reopening.
I was a bit anxious about continuing on, because there were several serious-looking men in hard-hats and high-vis jackets, but they didnât seem to mind. They really, really should have tried to stop me from going to where i was going next.
Coming up on The Garden: your author tries not to disturb some horses, desperately tries to avoid going to fucking Blyth, and accidentally sneaks in a brief trip to Durham. I promise, it makes sense in context.
Mx van Hoornâs link roundup, Volume I
I figure over time dates will get ambiguous â itâs time to start numbering these bad boys, from the top. Five for your perusal this time aroundâŚ
- The New Republic on the claimed devolution of Thom Yorkeâs songwriting â well-argued, but themâs fighting words!
- Monkeytype, a ridiculously customisable words-per-minute type-tester â clearly someoneâs passion project⌠With proper punctuation turned on, I get around 127 w.p.m, which is apparently four times as fast as the average? đ
- Seinfeld, but itâs a Don Bluth cartoon from the â90s â shockingly well done
- Newtonâs fractal â maths nerds only; the plot twist at the end will shock you
- Some fun Ascii calendars
WashingtonWormhole
Look â reader, i understand this about as much as you do. It just popped up in my recommendations one day. I watched the entire series of videos this is apparently a part of, and i still donât feel like i get it. Something about James Dean and evil national landmarks?
This is one of the better-done things in the recent wave of âanalogue horrorâ that has been circulating the interwebs â short, spooky videos taking inspiration from late-night public television or other media of the past. I just think it's neat. Anyone else want to go through the WASHINGTONWORMHOLE?
I've decided that the only people who are allowed to do the Youtuber voice are the Vlogbrothers. Everyone else has to learn to talk like a normal human being.
Autumn
It often feels like, as soon as the calendar ticks over from 22 to 23 September, that autumn, having hidden its face for months upon months, all of a sudden decides to come out all at once. Auburn leaves begin to fall, telling the time until winter like an hourglass; the days get shorter and the nights come earlier, the air gets that particular autumn crispness, and, of course, it begins to rain.i
Not that iâm complaining. Autumn is, in my view, the most wonderful season of the year: yes, summer is nice and warm, and winter is the time for comfort and gezelligheid with family and friends, but autumn is when our festivities are perhaps the closest to how they were millennia ago. Echoes of the last harvest festivals of the year still ring (school assemblies for the young, pumpkin spice for the jaded), and whatever you want to call it â Halloweâen, All Hallowsâ Eve, SamhÂain, Day of the Dead â the atmosphere about that midautumn celebration beats even Christmas for the best time of the year; for a whole month, the western world lets itself get a little morbid for a changeii, and the celebrations have the good sense to get out of the way quietly once November shuffles along.
So. Happy autumn, everyone! Enjoy it while it lasts.
Links for the 27th of September
It's been far too long, hasn't it? (Rest assured, i have been continuing my walk along the Blyth and Tyne railway â just at a rather glacial paceâŚ)
- W. H. Smith bingo
- On Radio 4, Tynemouth Sea and Song: âFolk singer Jez Lowe uncovers the traditions of seafaring and song in Tynemouth and North Shields and hears why music is essential to this landscape, its people and its history.â
- The Diamond Geezer risk log: Makes me think about the risks to my own blog.
- Why are links blue?
- The origins of the dialectal words of the north â I was quite surprised to see how many are from Romani
-
English counties explained, by Jay
Foreman â good heavens, itâs a mess
- See also Wikishire and their excellent map of the historic counties of Britain and Ireland.
- Three odd canal crossings
- How to see the republic of Ireland from England
- It is fascinating, fourteen years on, to watch the reveal of the original iPhone. How many things we take for granted now that were revolutionary back in 2007!
- Absement, the opposite of velocity
- Genes reveal how and when Polynesian sailors reached the remote isles of the Pacific
Walking the Blyth and Tyne, part one: Northumberland Park to Seghill
Last time on The Garden: the axe falls on the Blyth and Tyne line, and i foolhardily decide to walk its lengthâŚ
Our journey begins at NorthÂumÂberÂland Park, in North Tyneside. Though itâs the first station weâll be visiting, it was the last to be constructed, having only opened in 2005 â and itâs quite easy to tell, even after sixteen years of wear and tear; the place is outfitted with modern amenities, lifts, ticket machines flush with the wall, and, more lately, pandemic-themed graffiti opposite the platform. This unassuming metro station will, according to the county councilâs plans, serve as the interchange between the old and new lines, heavy rail and metro meeting one last time before splitting apart and going their separate ways.
Setting off from there, the first thing that caught my eye were twin giants: a frosted glass-covered car park and a red-brick Sainsburyâs, unexpected icons of the modern British condition. It didnât get much better from there; down the road lies an American-style strip mall lined with bookmakers trying to get people to piss away all their money.
This southernmost tip of NorthÂumÂberÂland is criss-crossed by innumerable public footpaths, cycle paths, bridleways, and other routes for non-metal-box-related transport; ducking onto one of the reclaimed âwaggonwaysâ once used to transport coal, i found myself on the site of the second station on the list.
The leafy suburb of Backworth has a habit of burying its history. A hoard of offerings from Roman times was found underground in the 1810s, the last vestiges of the colliery that once was are long gone, and the tale of this sorry ex-station is rather similar. Opened in 1864 to replace a nearby station closing the same day, BackÂworth station served its community for over 100 years, surviving the Beeching cuts. But when the Tyne and Wear Metro was announced to come to town, the old station finally closed⌠for good. It wasnât until the opening of NorthÂumÂberÂland Park that there would be a replacement.
As i wandered through the village's verdant streets, i couldnât help but think of its resemblance to the straight, cycle-friendly streets of my old hometown. A little greenery can go a long way.
Network Rail were hard at work at the site of the aforementioned original BackÂworth station, whose plot of land now sits vacant, marking the cityâs last hurrah; the further i walked along the dirt back roads, the further the sounds of bustling cars receded, until, ducking under a shady underpass, i found myself utterly alone amongst pastoral fields (and the overwhelming scent of manure).
That peace and quiet was swiftly interrupted by a troupe of boy racers on motorcycles and quad-bikes, but you canât win them all, you know?
The (post-1974) border town of Seghill occupies only the tiniest fragment of the collective English consciousness, popping up briefly in an anti-scab minersâ folk song called âBlackleg Minerâ:
Itâs in the evening after dark,
when the blackleg miner creeps to work
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt
there gans the blackleg miner![...]
So, divvint gan near the Seghill mine
Across the way they stretch a line,
to catch the throat and break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner[...]
So join the union while you may
Divvint wait till your dying day,
for that may not be far away,
you dirty blackleg miner!
For our purposes, itâs chiefly notable for the fact that itâs the first disused station on the list whose buildings are still intact and in use, this time as a corner shop, from which i of course bought a copy of the local rag â prominently including a Q&A about the restoration of service on the line, which i thought a fitting reminder of why i set out on this silly old journey in the first place.
After getting some well deserved rest, i headed on off towards the next town over, awaiting what fresh stories i would find...
Next time on âWalking the Blyth and Tyneâ: your author is reminded of her own mortality, finds himself in the company of a noble family, and shudders at the thought of having to go to Blyth, of all places on Godsâ green Earth
Walking the Blyth and Tyne: an introduction
Itâs March of 1963. The island of Great Britain is in the throes of its coldest winter in two decades, senior frontbench MP Harold Wilson was recently handed the reins of the Labour party, the Beatles have just released their debut album, and, somewhere in the bowels of Whitehall, Dr Richard Beeching is writing a report that will change the countryâs connecting tissue forever.
Dr Beeching, you see, is the chairman of British Railways, the state-owned company in charge of rail transport, and theyâre in a spot of financial trouble. British Railways are in charge of running fifteen thousand miles of track shuttling between about four and a half thousand stations, and the only way they can do that is via generous subsidies from Her Majestyâs Government â something which the governing Conservatives, as a rule, are never too happy about.
So, pen in hand, he takes a metaphorical axe to the network, marking about half of the islandâs stations for closure. Itâs not pleasant, but it has to be done â and, after all, people can just take the car to their nearest station if their townâs is shut.i Iâm sure it wonât be too bad.
That's how, a year later, the last passenger trains ran along 5,000 miles of railway across England, Scotland, and Wales, including those connecting the mining heartland of industrial Northumberland. The Tyne and Wear Metro, opened in 1980, allowed some of these lines to reopen in Newcastleâs suburbs and (relatively) affluent coastal communities. But just a few miles north, the former Blyth and Tyne Railway has lain dormant ever since the axe fell⌠until now.
In recent years, the stars have aligned, and both the county council and Westminster have agreed to reopen the line, finally bringing these proud towns back together. The Blyth and Tyne Railway, now rechristened by the more attractive name of the Northumberland Line, is set to reopen by 2024. To celebrate this historic moment, i thought iâd see what has become of the stations and towns that were. Iâve identified fourteen stations, past, present, and future, along the line, and iâll be walking between each of them in turn, seeing what stories they tell. The list includes:
- Northumberland Park, the metro station ready and waiting to become the new lineâs interchange
- Backworth (the second)
- Backworth (the first), already long closed by the time the axe fell
- Seghill
- Seaton Delaval, planned for reopening
- Hartley Pit / Hartley, two old stations just metres apart
- Newsham, planned for reopening
- Blyth, on an old branch line
- Blyth Bebside, planned for reopening
- Bedlington, planned for reopening
- North Seaton, now subsumed within Ashingtonâs town area
- Ashington, planned for reopening
- Woodhorn, listed on early plans for reopening but mysteriously disappeared since
- Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, no longer in existence but with the route there safeguarded just in case
Wonât you join me?
August 2021 recap
As the month winds up and summer draws to a close, it's time again for the menstrual (not that kind!) look back on the month that was.
Films watched
- Wes Andersonâs The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) â I want to live inside of this film, and if that is not possible, i will somehow find a way to hang the entire thing on my wall. A strong contender for my second favourite film ever. (A+)
- Quentin Tarantinoâs Inglourious Basterds (2009) â You do have to wonder if their German and French was actually any good. (A)
- Ilya Naishullerâs Nobody (2021) â A good action film with fun setpieces which iâll probably forget i ever watched. (C)
- James Gunnâs The Suicide Squad (2021) â I went to the cinema for the first time since the pandemic began to watch this â I think i would have taken just about anything! (B)
Albums listened to
- The Beatlesâ Sgt. Pepperâs Lonely Hearts Club Band â I am not entirely sure i could give this album an objective ranking after all these years of it being talked up, so, uh, (Classic/10) [Best track: A Day in the Life]
- Chvrchesâ Screen Violence â Itâs.... fine, i guess? Not their best, not their worst. (C) [Best track: Better If You Donât]
- Lucy Dacusâs Home Video â Beautiful. Just beautiful. (B+) [Best track: Triple Dog Dare]
- Green Dayâs American Idiot â By the end of it it all starts sounding a bit same-y. (C+) [Best track: American Idiot]
- Will Woodâs The Normal Album â Chaotic good. (A-) [Best track: I / Me / Myself]
Miscellaneous photos and videos
Links for the 28th of August
- Gazing at the tubes:
- Wikipedia wanderings:
- The innovative ways gay South Asian couples celebrate their marriage, blending old and new
- The tiny Channel island of Sark, where cars are banned, has hosted a lawnmower race instead
- Steve Bruce up your wedding
- Richard in a Hat, a blog where a passionate collector of hats posts photos of himself wearing said hats â this is what the internet was made for, i feel (via the ever-excellent, but unrelated, Language Hat)i
Seen at a post office while out and about:
Can you guess the Radiohead song from under a second of audio?
Best i could do was 8 out of 15, only one better than the gentleman in the video.
You could make a good webpage out of quizzes like these â i donât know if iâd be willing to risk the copyright claims, but if anyone else wants a go at it, youâre very welcome to the idea.
The Victoria Tunnel
The Victoria Tunnel runs beneath the streets of Newcastle, from the Tyne up to the Town Moor. It traverses not only space, but time, through nearly every corner of Englandâs history: built to transport coal in the Industrial Revolution, on the site of an old Roman spring, it was used during the second world war to house those fleeing German bombs. It was even considered for use in the cold war, before the government realised that some musty old coal tunnels would probably not provide the greatest protection against a nuclear blast.
And now you can go down it. In 2007, Newcastle City Council decided to refurbish the tunnel and open a small stretchâof it â the rest is either unsafe for sending humans down or currently in use as a sewerâââup for public tours. Entry is via a side street along the Ouseburn, where the guides will cheerfully show you a map and some old photographs of the entrance. Once you get inside the tunnel itself, hard hats and torches are compulsory, and covid restrictions are still in full force. This was both a benefit and a malefit: yes, the tour was shorter than it would otherwise be, and masks get quite uncomfortable when youâre wearing them for an hour in a dank, dark tunnel, but on the other hand, our small group of family and friends got the place practically all to ourselves, without having to be shepherded alongside other members of the public.
The tunnel is just barely wide enough to fit three people side-by-side, and if, like me, youâre of a certain height, bumping your head on the roof is practically guaranteed. By every blast door, thereâs a plaque about whatâs above you, and how it factors into the tunnel and the cityâs history, stories with which the guides will gladly regale visitors (including some rather grim tragedies).
Coming back out the entrance, i felt more informed about this wonderful countyâs industrial history â just in time to pop over to a gentrified vegan âsuperfood pubâ. The wonders of modern life.
Information for prospective visitors
- Tours can be booked on the Ouseburn Trustâs website.
- Price: ÂŁ9â11 per adult depending on the length of the tour; ÂŁ4 per child
- Address: Victoria Tunnel Entrance, Ouse St., Valley, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 2PF â just next to the CrossFit gym.
- Accessibility: The tunnel was built in the 19th century and without accessibility in mind, so is not wheelchair-accessible. The Ouseburn Trust do, due to the pandemic, offer a virtual tour.
- Getting there: The Q3 bus from the centre of town stops nearby; otherwise, getting there poses a bit of a hike, due to its location.
Links for the 20th of August
- Recreating the original Thomas the Tank Engine model railway
- The holy war over Larry Landtrain
- An atlas of the underground tunnels of Washington, D.C.
- The Institute of Illegal Images, home to the worldâs largest collection of LSD blotter art
- The moose of New Zealand: did they die off in the 1900s, or do they still roam the South Island in secret?
- How fast can you type the alphabet? Best i can do is 3.162 seconds.