Morning Reading I

A change of scene today: I met Lesley outside the Metro Station a little before 8.00 a.m. and we did her usual commute into Newcastle. I have something of an odd nostalgia for commuting to work.

Being self-employed the biggest amount of travelling I do most mornings is from the bedroom to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. So bizarrely, this trip into Newcastle counts as something of a treat.

After saying goodbye to Lesley, I paused to take in my surroundings for a moment on the corner of Hood Street looking down Grey Street...

Back up to Earl Grey's Monument...

looking back towards what used to Mawson, Swan and Morgan's shop and until recently, a branch of Waterstones...

Then heading off down Grey Street...

Walking down Pudding Chare I passed a pub which is now called Fleet Street. The last time I had a cheeky one in there was probably sometime in the 80s or early 90s and it was called The Printer’s Pie.

The press association with its name comes from its proximity to the offices of Newcastle’s Journal and Evening Chronicle newspapers. “Utilitarian” and “No frills” might be a couple of ways to describe the experience of drinking there.

As far as I know it had been called The Printer’s Pie for decades but some marketing whizz no doubt felt it would be better to get rid of the old and go all glitzy and new. The results of this refurbishment are distinctly red top I’m sorry to say.

Out of Pudding Chare and onto Westgate Road and the Lit & Phil.

The heat of the morning soon faded away in the confines of this marvelous building. Working in an entirely random way, my reading takes in the New York Review of Books (including an interesting assesment of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books), the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, original editions of poetry by e e cummings, Anne Sexton and Theodore Roethke.

After a cup of tea and an almond slice, I moved on to We Make Ships by Tom Pickard and George Melly's Don't Tell Sybil: An intimate memoir of ELT Mesens and the transcripts from the trail of William Joyce.

A couple of hours just reading. Without a computer. A rare treat!

Then it was time to wander about and stretch my legs. I headed for the rather nice iron spiral staircase you can see in the top right hand corner of this photo...





into the boardroom which also houses an impressive collection of first edition fiction and musical scores. I sat in here for half an hour reading a collection of musical criticism...

and relishing the building's filing system and its random pleasures...


Then back into the main hall...



and back to where I began...



I'd said to my pal John that one of the reasons I wanted to join was that it would get me out of the yellow room and some of my habitual methods. The poetry aside, I'm not sure I would ever have spent the best part of four hours reading such unrelated material.

It was curiously liberating to just follow one's eye and pick up a book or periodical for no other reason than it was within reach.

Marvellous!