Water Worlds

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

I MUST HAVE BEEN NO OLDER than five when I noticed the rain rushing down the driveway in my mother’s garden at such a volume that it could not be absorbed or carried away quickly enough to keep it from flowing into our garage. In Bermuda we had sudden rainstorms, often with extraordinarily violent thunder and lightning, and if the Island had been having one of its frequent droughts, the ground would be packed down as hard as concrete. All moisture would puddle and flow, absorption might happen gradually, and saturation would take a great deal of time.

And I crouched in my bare feet, in my Bermuda shorts, in our garage as several inches of water collected on the rough cement floor. The water, I recall rather well, was warm, and there were bits of sand in it. It had a slight texture besides that of pure flowing water. I found some pieces of wood, remnants from the roof beams of the garage (it had been only recently constructed to replace an open trellis with stephanotis vines on it that did nothing to protect the car), and tried to get them floating. Some were too heavy, some too thick, to sail about easily on my own private inland sea. Some, however, became ships and boats.

As the rainwater continued to drain into the garage, the currents within it would move my wooden ships about. No need for me to guide them with my hands. Like some sort of lazy god I could watch my creation work itself out. Some of the ships sailed safely to ports within the garage, others snagged on the uneven parts of the floor, and a few were carried right out of the garage door and down the driveway to the lower road behind our house.

Many of my Eldridge relatives have served in the Royal Navy. A cousin is an officer in what remains of Britain’s navy at this moment. It is worth noting he was on HMS Manchester last summer when she was sailing off the shores of Bermuda during Hurricane Igor, in case the Island needed help when the storm had passed. As it happened, no help was requested, and one assumes none was required.

The closest I have come to boating was a spell of rowing a relative’s punt (called Swampy) in Hamilton Harbour on a weekend. My plan was to build up my scrawny body. It did not help.

On my travels I have seen a good deal of water, salt and fresh. I have sailed across Lake Michigan on a car ferry to Beaver Island. I have driven up a fairly shallow stream in the mountains above Salt Lake City in a Ford Bronco SUV, which was hardly kind to Nature. One of the most incredible rainstorms I have witnessed was in Hurricane, Utah, in about 1994. That is a desert area, usually dry as a bone, where tumbleweeds rolled down the gravel-coated Main Street and orange dust blew about and coated everything the colour of the landscapes in John Wayne’s western movies. One afternoon I was in a car with a friend at the junction of Main and State Street and a microburst opened above us. We pulled over to the side of the road and slowly moved into the parking area outside a Taco Time fast food outlet. The world vanished as the rain poured onto the Hurricane Valley, and in a minute there was a foot of water on the roads and low-lying areas in the centre of town where we were attempting to shelter. If the water had been much deeper it might have been a flash flood, but it was able to move quickly enough to even lower ground at the south side of town. Still, it was rather exciting, rather frightening.

Having lived through several major hurricanes in Bermuda, complete with tornados and water-spouts and deluging rain, I can answer the frequent questions I get regarding the Bermuda Triangle with my general theory that it just happens to be a part of the western Atlantic that has frequent and often sudden storms, and it is a busy area for shipping and air travel. I’m almost certain that there are no more UFOs near Bermuda than there are anywhere else. Wind and rain happen, waves happen, things go down.

Last Wednesday we had a spectacular day. It was so bright and sunny, and fairly warm, that we took the dogs for a walk by the River Coquet. We even sat in the sun and talked about the sparkling light on the water in the River and out towards the Harbour entrance. The dogs ran about at the end of their longest retractable leads and returned with clean feet. The bank of the River has been under ice, snow or mud since last autumn. This was the first walk there since then.

Since Wednesday, we have had steady rain. It is snowing on higher ground, but we’ve only had some sleet on the coast. Howling winds. Dark skies. Wet footprints (dog and man size) in the hallway.

To summarise: Summer of 2011 was on 16 February this year, and it was lovely.

This afternoon we went to lunch at The Fleece Inn up in Alnwick. The landlord opened the doors at noon and had a coal fire going. On a cold, rainy day this was appreciated. It is an old pub, full of character. It happens to have a men’s toilet (the Americans might call it a restroom) for customers only (reads the sign) that is the most hideous public bog I have ever come across. The walls seem to be running with moisture, the urinal is along two walls with a stinking trough at one’s feet, and the red-tile floor is puddled. The single cubicle does not lock. I am rather surprised that a business would present itself so badly, even if it may be that most of the lads who use the toilet are off their faces and cannot focus on anything at all. I can only guess that the toilet is so ancient that it is “listed” and cannot be renovated or replaced; it is caught up, trapped, in history. I like history well enough, but I don’t care to paddle across a toilet’s floor to reach a smelly urinal. To use the cubicle, to actually sit on the commode, one would have to push on the door with one’s feet to keep it shut while one did one’s business.

I recommend The Fleece Inn, but do relieve yourself before you leave home.

I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts,

or my thoughts the result of my dreams.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

It is a little after five o’clock in the evening. I woke twelve hours ago having a peculiar dream about North and South Korea. In my dream the North had finally lobbed some sort of nuclear bomb at the South. It has not been mentioned during the day, I’ve not watched the telly though. I imagine the booming wind and the rattling sleet on my windows at daybreak may have turned my dreams to thoughts of war, or my thoughts of war to dreams.

There's high, and there's high, and to get really high -

I mean so high that you can walk on the water,

that high-that's where I'm going.
George Harrison (1943-2001)

It’s full moon just now and the water in the Estuary is as high as I have ever seen it, perhaps a foot more and the road to Warkworth will be awash. The pastures on the other side of the road were puddled this morning, and are pond-like tonight.

The sky is dark as I write this, the rain is merciless. I know there’s a spring and summer out there. The snowdrops are up and blossoming, the daffodils are several inches high. We don’t really do crocuses up here, not the way they do in, say, Hyde Park. We will have wild bluebells and then the cultured plants. I usually invest in daisy-like seedlings and petunias. Most years I am inundated with flowers on my side of the courtyard.

One has to remember all that when it is this grim. In this Water World.

Enter the Whirlwind

Change your opinions,
Keep to your principles;
Change your leaves,
Keep intact your roots.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

I WORE A SWEATER YESTERDAY, as well as my corduroy jacket, and did not feel over-warm. The ghastly metal seat in the Alnwick Bus Station was really rather cold on my backside; I shall soon have to get my winter trousers down from the suitcases atop my wardrobe where I store them for the two or three months that pass for summer up here.

Yesterday’s slight chill is today’s howling gale from the north, and genuine cold. The BBC weatherman used the “F” and “S” words. Ground Frost in Northern England by Friday night, and Snow in the Scottish Highlands by weekend. I live less than 50 miles from Scotland. The first visible sign of winter in Amble is usually an open flat-bed truck come down from Scotland with an unintentional load of snow. I should point out that one’s breath shows in the cold morning air well before the imported precipitation, and I’ve noticed mine as I wait for the car for over a week now.

We had wonderfully coloured autumn leaves in 2008, and then last year, in early September, we had a sudden violent windstorm which withered most of the leaves here on the coast in a day or two. The leaves fell to the ground and blew, I think, into the North Sea before the week was out. They vanished! Autumn’s lease, like that of summer, had all too short a date. One did see some colours in forested areas inland, but nothing compared to 2008. I am watching the plants in the courtyard being blown about; they are somewhat protected. The cables and power-lines above the street are snapping about in the wind, so it’s safe to assume that the bigger trees in town are shaking like a Hawaiian hula-dancer.

There were American and Japanese tourists on the bus yesterday, most of them dressed in summer clothes. Shorts, t-shirts and blouses along with their Foster Grants. The bus hauled a fair number of them from Alnwick (their shopping bags indicated visits to the Castle with its Harry Potter connection and the Alnwick Gardens) over to Alnmouth Village. The usual anxious questions from our visitors: “Are we there yet?” “Will the pubs be open?”

There was an English couple on the bus; I’d guess a husband and wife. Older, dressed for winter, and dressed in rather more formal clothes than the foreigners. I’ll add, to be honest, this couple looked rather shabby, unkempt. They were sat together across and a few rows in front of me in the seats indicated for elderly and infirm passengers. The woman pressed the bell and the couple stood up. The signs on the bus tell us to ring the bell, but to remain seated until the bus stops. I am the only person I know who does that; even the most wibbly of the wobblies insist on rising and making their ways to the door, even as the bus thrashes about. I noticed that the gentleman with his rumpled collar and poorly-knotted tie, old grey-green suit, and a yellow cardigan, had a white stick. He turned back my way, his eyes clamped shut, and it was obvious that he’d come to town without his dentures. His wife called out to the driver: “We can’t see. We want the stop across the roundabout, past the Royal Oak.” They moved along the bus. I knew she’d got it wrong, there is no Royal Oak in Alnwick, it is The Oaks Hotel. The driver brought the bus through the roundabout, which the old lady could sense, and she started calling loudly: “This is the one. This is the one. Stop!” though we hadn’t actually reached the bus stop. She was quite anxious. The bus jerked to a halt and the driver and everyone on the lower deck of the bus watched the blind couple feel their way out of the bus and onto the pavement. Once outside, the man held onto the woman’s arm and began tap-tapping his stick (it was an ordinary walking cane that had been painted white except at the curved handle). They shuffled away, as winter, while those of us on the bus, summer and autumn, rolled on towards Alnmouth.

Weekend before last I went on a day-trip to Bowness on Windermere in the Lake District. Somehow the weather cooperated and we had brilliant sunshine until late afternoon. We’d taken a coach to Haverthwaite where we boarded a steam locomotive and took a really, really slow trip over to Lakeside. In Lakeside we visited an aquarium, and then everybody except me and our coach driver took a steamer down Windermere to Bowness. I opted to do the drive as I do not like boats and with my brother dying in a boating accent last March I’m now totally boat-phobic.




On the train, and during the coach ride around the lake to Bowness, I had some wonderful views of the English countryside. So lush, so green, I have decided that when I win the Lotto I shall buy one of the large estates near Windermere that we passed by. I am wondering, of course, whether all those leafy trees will be as bare as ours in Amble in a matter of weeks. Trees and men are subject to autumn and winter.

On the way back from the Lake District, crossing the tops of the Pennines, we moved slowly through a barren landscape, just low scrub and rocky outcrops. The ubiquitous loose-stone walls were not in evidence, the only barrier between the land and the highway was fencing. There were a very few stone cottages, none looking habitable. A most desolate place. And we passed a small herd of camels. It must be pretty boring up there, even for a camel, as the beasts were standing at the fence watching the traffic go by. The camels would not be surprised by the cars and coaches, for that is their lot by night and day. For me, on the coach, listening to Jefferson Airplane on my iPod, it really was a most unexpected sight to look out at dromedaries. Will they be up there come the snow?

There’s an apple tree in a garden just along the street from my flat. This is the first year in five that the tree is truly burdened down with apples. They are starting to fall, in the grass and some onto the pavement. None are gathered up and I wonder if they are sour. D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem about the falling of apples to the ground in the autumn, making the point that it is only in the fall to the earth and the bruising of the fruit as a result that the seeds inside are released and the cycle permitted a complete rotation. I believe Lawrence was thinking, also, of the advancing years of man, and that it is the ripe, fully mature fruit that gives rise to the new tree in the spring. Lawrence was only 44 when he died back in 1930.

One sure sign that autumn is arriving is The Last Night at The Proms. That was last week. The Promenade Concerts from the Royal Albert Hall in London run through the summer, and some are televised. I rather enjoyed a concert devoted to Doctor Who. I noticed that the audience was more than half young children, nice that many were with their fathers (rather than mothers). I’ve been following Doctor Who, off and on, since the 1960s. I’m more of a fan now than ever. Are my years running in reverse here?

Every year, when it is time for the grand finale of the Proms, I decide I won’t watch as it will be a bit silly with toffs wrapped in Union flags, bobbing up and down to a hornpipe, and then breaking out into “Rule, Britannia” and “Jerusalem”. However, each year I do tune in, just to see who the female soloist will be. The soloist and the conductor always have a chat with the audience on the Last Night, usually something quite amusing.

So, I switched on my telly, dialled up the BBC, and listened to some rather nice pieces by Richard Strauss. The soloist this year, American Renée Fleming, was splendid, dressed up like a ship of state and beaming.

There were Union flags aplenty, and a good many English, Welsh and Scottish national banners. I’m not too good on flags of the world, but did spot a Canadian flag and some from “down under”. Ms Fleming had a small “Stars and Stripes”.

And the audience sang along with “Jerusalem” and not just in the Albert Hall, but in vast crowds outside in Hyde Park, and in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, as well as at other venues in England. I used to sing Jerusalem at school; it was the only hymn we always sang loud enough for our tetchy Headmaster. Listening to Jerusalem the other night brought back the springtime of my life, when grass was green and tides were high. Now, summer is falling behind and autumn is upon me. My mother died in the autumn, 28 September 1992, when she was in the autumn of her life, aged 65. I tried to sing along with Jerusalem the other night, startling Cailean. It comes with too many memories now, which well up as tears. I wonder if William Blake ever wrote of England’s bleak and wintry land.

As I sit here, minutes from midday, the sky has clouded over completely. The wind seems wilder than ever, I can hear it booming in the rooftops, my chimney and fireplace played like an enormous musical instrument. There are the first bullets of rain on my windows.

The few flowers left by my kitchen door tend to be blue: lavender and hydrangeas and small blossoms that froth from my plant pots. Bees are fond of blue flowers, so there are still some of those around. Where do the honey bees go in the winter? Where will the people play?

Clog Tired

You should make a point of trying every experience once,

excepting incest and folk dancing.

Arnold Bax (1883-1953)

IN ANOTHER LIFE, a fairly recent one, I would, from time to time, review the arts. This was in Bermuda, for the weekly newspaper, the Mid-Ocean News, that has recently been put out of business by the machinations of Bermuda’s dictatorial government. Now and then I’d write a review for the daily paper, the Royal Gazette, which is now in the cross-hairs and, I believe, struggling.

I had no training as an arts critic, or as a journalist of any kind. I’d failed my “O” Level English the first go round. I had been an amateur painter, very amateur. However, artistic ability does run in my family, both sides. I should not be allowed a paintbrush, but decades of writing letters made me dare to pick up the sword. I mean pen.

The Mid-Ocean News had an arts critic, and rather a good one. She died. I applied. Eventually I received $100 a pop and a pair of free tickets if I was to look in on live theatre or music. I simply wrote down my own personal impressions of the exhibition, the musical, the dramatic presentation, and I think I was honest and did not ever try to gild a turnip.

Well, that is history. And before I continue, a few words about beginning a remark with the word well. When interviewed, many (perhaps most) will reply to a question with “Well ...” and that’s frowned upon. I know that full well, but thought I’d bring it up here so that you know how to respond the next time a television or newspaper reporter approaches you and asks if you have anything to say about the show. Don’t say: “Well ... it was rubbish.” Just say: “It was rubbish.” Or you might roll your eyes heavenward and say: “Rubbish!” Or smile widely and cry: “Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!”

I was in Alnwick yesterday with some friends, under mostly sunny skies. This is unusual during the Alnwick International Music Festival, an annual event, which began yesterday in the Market Square. Seems to me that in recent years I’ve had to dodge degrees of rain and some of the performances have been moved inside with a resultant smaller seating situation and all the fuss of setting up the sound equipment again at short notice.

The host at yesterday’s afternoon performance told a large crowd the very same jokes to fill the gaps that he told a year ago, and two years ago. They were not original jokes when they entered his repertoire. Advice from me: Retire the one about the lady hugging the frozen cows, thus saving their lives, in wintry fields. You know the one: the mysterious lady’s name turns out to be Thora Hird. There are many tourists at the Alnwick Music Festival, and I dare say Dame Thora is a complete stranger to them. “Must be Geordie humour?” For Pete’s sake, Thora was from Morecambe, Lancashire. Not one of ours. The little children, the locals, won’t get it either. The host, by the way, is the Town Crier. He was not dressed up like Sergeant Pepper, but in clothes that made me think he’d been fishing. Nice clothes, but country-country, not country-town. Perhaps this is his take on folk? The same clothes (I’m not sure about his undergarments) right down to (up to?) his hat that he wore in 2009.

The main event yesterday afternoon was a group of Dutch dancers called De Speelluden. Is that not a wonderful word to roll off the tongue? De Speelluden. The group was formed in 1967, but they are hardly Sixties rock and roll. What these men and women do is perform the peasant dances of the Westervoort part of the Netherlands that were customary back in about 1900.

The men dressed in black uniforms that made me think of railway employees as depicted in the movies, complete with watch-chains. Railway employees anywhere in the West, from Santa Fé to the Swiss Alps. The women wore dark peasant garb with grey aprons, working clothes, and one might think of pioneers in the Americas. Rather over-dressed, as one was forced to be by modesty. How many Dutch women got hooked on the sails of windmills as their skirts billowed about? Odd lace caps. And the men and their womenfolk all wore whitewashed clogs. Great big heavy clogs. Lethal weapons. The English might fling Wellies, and they’d be no match for these clogs.

The visiting De Speelluden dancers were all getting on in years, at least one long white beard worthy of Rip Van Winkle. I was near the stage as they went on and they spoke in Dutch, and the one member of the group who read from an English script did so with a thick accent. The dances were all rather alike, perhaps 8 or 10 women spinning around with 8 or 10 men. There was a dance about a girl who fell in love, at first sight, with a boy who lived in a windmill. Nowadays she would fall for the son of an industrialist who was blotting the countryside with wind turbines. There was also a dance about sunflowers, celebrating autumn. Perhaps Vincent van Gogh saw his sunflowers as autumnal things, rather than window dressing. Van Gogh’s work is so often of a seasonal nature.

The lady, reading slowly from her papers, said they would dance “The Waltz of the French Beasts” for us. It tells the story of the terrible “tummy pains” caused by those “French Beasts”. This certainly made me sit up. Those bloody awful Frenchmen invading Holland, raping the women (getting them knocked up) and stabbing the Dutch men in their guts. The dance was a bit of a spin around the stage, the accordionists playing, it must be said, in ¾ time. There was no doubling over at the waist in apparent anguish, and I thought we might be getting the children’s version with so many youngsters in the crowd. I was disappointed. When the spinning stopped, the lady read a little more from the script and suddenly I realised that I had misheard. This was “The Waltz of the French Beans” and the abdominal aches would have been from gas and not from pointy weaponry.

Three pairs of men did a dance that seemed to be showing what Dutchmen do when the pubs get out and they are quarrelling over one of the pretty girls. They thump one another with their chests and shoulders and stick their thumbs in their ears and waggle their fingers at each other. Brilliant! If Michael Jackson had done this in his act he’d have really been acclaimed for his dancing.



The ladies showed us their covered backsides, and I have no idea why. They then showed us their knickers. Nothing that floated my boat, but enough cloth to make sails with. And the ladies pulled open flaps on the fronts of the men’s trousers to reveal the male equivalent. This must pass for entertainment in Westervoort.

Holland is not all that far from here. People go down and across to Amsterdam by overnight ferry. De Speelluden certainly seemed strange and exotic for something a few hours away by boat.

Should one go to see folk dancing in Alnwick? Why not? It’s a fun day out and (it’s raining today) something to take one’s mind off the usual English summer weather. Should one learn to folk dance? I dare say there’s an arts critic in Westervoort who would find a Morris Dancing group from Yorkshire totally baffling, quite silly with the sticks and bells, and lacking any references to wind (windmills or French beans). I should probably stick with what I know. Shuffling in a crowded disco.

On Being Raised (As I Was) With Penguins

Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me
from mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
William Shakespeare (The Tempest. Act I, Scene II)

I WAS HAVING LUNCH with one of my cousins at Barter Books up in Alnwick yesterday and he happened to mention that his son had recently had the opportunity to see a great many penguins in their natural habitat far, far south of here. I felt a little envious for I was, in a way, raised by penguins. Not many hundreds of thousands of them on an icy beach, of course. But more than a few times a Penguin or two accompanied me to Horseshoe Bay in Bermuda, more frequently to our family's dock on the northern shore of Warwick Parish there.

When we were very young, my sisters and I would be taken to the Aquarium in Bermuda by our father. This was one of those separated (and eventually divorced) parents' situations. Father could have us on a Sunday if he wanted to, and if we wanted to be had. As Sundays on the road with our father meant being away from our friends, there was certainly good reason to call it off from time to time. However, many, many dozens of Sundays in the late 1950s and early 1960s might be spent lunching in a greasy hamburger bar somewhere (no desserts, too expensive) followed by a drive over to Flatts Village and the Bermuda Aquarium.

The Bermuda Aquarium was not (and is not) particularly incredible as aquariums go, the biggest draw being a black spider monkey (not a fish, not an arachnid, but a scruffy, skinny monkey of South American lineage) which would take the peanuts we offered through the bars and leap about shrieking in delight, and then have a bit of a wank (as primates will no matter the blushes they create).

Between the fish tanks and the spider monkey was a small pool with a wooden and canvas umbrella arrangement above it. In that pool, and on a few rocks and diving platforms around it, lived (at the most, as I recall) four penguins. They were small, rather shabby penguins and not particularly friendly. There was nothing one could throw to them by way of food as an enticement to do tricks. Wealthier folks would try and bounce big British pennies off their heads (turtles came in for the same treatment and were an easier target), but we had spent our pennies on peanuts for the filthy little monkey round the corner. I recall the penguin population shrinking to two. It was quite pathetic. And then there were none. The monkey made an exit as well. Last I was at the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo, as it is now styled, the penguin tank had become home to a few small seals, and the place where once a monkey ranged was a hollow with a dusty alligator in it.

Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, is one of the largest second-hand bookstores in Britain. Hundreds of thousands of books ranging from rare and expensive first editions to recent best sellers. One can buy books (and it's hard to not find the ones you're looking for with so many titles) or sell them. Not exactly sell, but barter them in exchange for purchases at the time or in the future.

The bookstore is housed in a former railway station, with the arched roof and layout so familiar to those of us who travel by rail here. There are a number of rooms and areas devoted to particular subjects. There's a restaurant (I recommend the cheese toasties and a pot of Earl Grey) and a bank of computers in case one wants to compute. A valuation service is provided daily. Dogs are welcome. There are huge murals. Couches, chairs and tables are available if you want to rest (you'll most likely need to as hours can pass). Old railway stations being what they are, there are coal fires to sit by for warmth. And non-gender-specific (unisex) lavatories, which seems European somehow. There's a children's area too, always a plus if you haven't got a caged monkey or penguins.

But Barter Books does have Penguins. Penguin Books. Thousands of them.


Penguin Books was founded in 1935 with the promise of inexpensive books for everybody and anybody. The price of a pack of cigarettes, I believe was standard, say 6d. That was six old pence. I remember buying Penguin Books for about 1/6 (one shilling and sixpence), but I don't hark back as far as 1935. When I was paying 1/6, I would guess a pack of ciggies was about that much as well. I no longer smoke and honestly have no idea how much cigarettes cost now, but a pack would be over £5, I'm sure. A new Penguin paperback of a classic novel could be less, most of the second hand copies at Barter Books cost about £3.

When I was in my early teens my father remarried for the first time. Beryl, my first step-mother, who I really liked immediately because she had more books than anybody I'd ever known besides the public library, may have brought most of her book collection to Bermuda (from England) when she came out on a teaching contract as she had many, many dozens of the original 6d Penguin paperbacks. Orange and white covers for general fiction, green and white for crime, dark blue and white for biographies, and Beryl even had some of the rarer purple and white covered essays.

While I was looking through Beryl's history books, Penguin was fighting the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity case (which it won). Not many years later I was buying my own Penguins, all of DH Lawrence's writings, including the four Lady Chatterley's, as well as all the modern classics (I was partial to Huxley, Mann, Orwell, Woolf and Gide and can still recall my shelves filled with everything I could buy from those writers).

I would go to rummage sales and second hand bookstores in Bermuda and one couldn't go wrong looking for Penguins. The spines on so many of my books were bright orange. Like real, feathered penguins, the thousands of Penguin publications are as individual and different, and each has its own call and is recognised immediately and exactly, even in a huge crowd, despite the similar outfitting.

In Barter Books yesterday I noticed that their very old 6d version Penguins are on display at the ends of rows in their alphabetical fiction section. I recognised titles that I've had in my time, plays by George Bernard Shaw, and Erewhon by Samuel Butler, and many titles by DH Lawrence (before Chatterley). I looked inside one book and it had, in ink, the name of the original owner and the date 1935, and a college address. A charming discovery.

If I were on an ice sheet with a million penguins and could take a few home with me, I think one might appreciate that any two would most likely be fine given the colony. In Barter Books yesterday, with hundreds of thousands of titles in something of a blur, and having only scratched the surface in my favourite sections, I came out with a couple of books that will, I'm sure, be winners. One is not a Penguin, but a large pictorial biography of Lewis Carroll (I went down a great many rabbit holes when I was younger and I'm still partial to Alice and mushrooms).

So far as I can recall, I've never binned a book that I've owned and wanted to dispose of. When I have uprooted myself from time to time and couldn't afford to take all my books, the ones left behind would go to second hand bookstores and rummage sales. I do that reluctantly, though there may be something selfish about withholding a book one has read (and might not read again or refer to) from a second hand bookstore.

Busted: A Transport of Delight

Oh, they used to laugh at me
When I refused to ride
On all those double-decker buses
All because there was no driver on the top.
Sung by Joni Mitchell (Twisted)

I HAVE NEVER lived as close to a bus stop as I do at present. The 518 linking Newcastle and Alnwick (pronounced Ann-ick) runs past my front door, as does the 420 that travels back and forth between Ashington and Alnwick. The actual bus stops are a matter of short yards away.

The 518 tends to take the coastal road to the north of Amble, turning inland at Alnmouth (pronounced Alan-muth) Station. You can link with the trains, in theory. I've tried it. It's still a theory. To the south of Amble, the 518 swings slightly inland to Morpeth, and down to Newcastle's Haymarket Station. It's a fairly picturesque ride in summer, especially from the upper deck. Summer, in 2008, was two days in August, so book early as seats are limited. The views are far less picturesque on the other days of the year as the mud has usually risen half-way up the side of all the buses.

Alnwick Station is a miserable spot. It is sheltered only from the worst of the north wind, but open on three sides. There are a very few iron benches guaranteed to wreck your spine. They are constructed to make sleep on them pretty much impossible, which makes me wonder if Alnwick has a homeless problem. There are people wandering abroad? Keep 'em wandering! The station in Newcastle's Haymarket is rather old and charming, and enclosed. No doubt it will be pulled down one day and something hideous and uncomfortable vomited up in its place. If that happens, perhaps Alnwick could purchase Newcastle's bricks and stones and rebuild that station up the country. Visitors to the Alnwick Gardens and Alnwick Castle (Harry Potter's 'Hogwarts' interiors were filmed there) would love a reconstruction. God knows, Americans have bought up old castles and chateaus and (famously) London Bridge to grace the deprived New World.

Bus stops in between the towns range from simple poles with acrylic covered panels showing a timetable attached, to basic steel-and-glass shelters, to brick cubbies. I get on and off at a sort of non-existent stop at Hawkhill Farm somewhere between Alnmouth and Alnwick. One must walk up to the driver in time to ask him to stop "by that gate" if on the bus. If waiting at Hawkhill for the bus, one must step out onto the highway and flap about a bit to draw the driver's attention. And pray you get it in good time!

The 420 buses only come to the coast in Amble, and tend to stop at every odd spot on country lanes. This means that in bad weather they may well be sloshing about on rough roads. Shilbottle can be a bit dodgy. The locals in Shilbottle with a sense of humour take magic marker pens to the Shilbottle signs and cross that first l to make a t. Shitbottle.

The 420 from Amble to Alnwick takes about 35 minutes, the 518 does its route in 30 minutes. Roughly. There might be an injured badger to navigate around on the 420's country lanes, or a language difficulty with boarding Japanese tourists in Alnmouth Village on the 518. Badgers are easier.

One can take one's wheelchair, one's dog, or one's luggage on the buses at no extra charge. The newer buses feature wide double-doors and the ability to lower the floor to the level of the pavement. In theory. A wide aisle and a designated place for one wheelchair are available on these buses.

The 518 and 420 routes feature double-decker buses for the most part, in shades of aqua with advertising on panels, until recently. I have spotted several red London-style buses. All since a rather fun Christmas party, actually. So, I think I've seen red buses recently. Don't take my word for it. There are sometimes single-decker buses on the 420, usually, it seems, when more space is required; and those buses must be a real bother for people with walking difficulties as they are high off the ground, perhaps three steps up.

I carry Cailean on my lap on the bus. He's a small enough pup. He usually puts his nose in any gaps between seats to study the other passengers. With his friendly nature, he's not really a problem. Any fuss is a good one.

The passengers can be of any age, but tend to be OAPs shortly after nine o'clock in the morning when they can ride for free. OAPs are Old Age Pensioners: people over 60 with a bus pass. These OAP passengers have been nicknamed "The Twirlies" because they ask, if it is only just nine in the morning, when flashing their pass to the driver: "Am I twirly?" Schoolchildren have specially designated 423 buses on the 420 route, and ride the regular 518s. One should plan to avoid those buses when the children are travelling. Children rarely give up their seats these days, it seems. They do, at least, tend to sit upstairs. Noisily.

I very much enjoy riding the buses here. I'd like to sit upstairs all the time, but it is awkward, if Cailean is with me, manoeuvring up the twisting steps to the top deck, even if I carry him. It's a shame, as we'd both enjoy the view.

One could populate a novel with characters from the buses, and fill pages and pages of dialogue with overheard conversations. I do make notes at times. Always (I tell you) carry a notepad and pen with you if you write as much as a letter to Nana once a year: buses are a gift horse.

I particularly like the older folks, the seedy ones. The few left who are older than I am. Plastic Macs, the little old ladies bent low with osteoporosis and a week's shopping in string bags, knitted woollen hats over wisps of white hair, thick stockings and sensible shoes. In America these women would be redheads and wouldn't be on the bus, but driving this year's Cadillac. And men, not so bent, just shortened by life's loads (and in Northumbria that could well mean coal), in well-worn overcoats, flat caps, nicotine-stained fingers and bad breath. Stinking of beer and smoke, no matter the hour.

On the very oldest of buses there are seats facing each other at the front. One rather wibbly-wobbly gentleman wearing a tweed jacket with some sort of military pin in the lapel clambered aboard the bus and sat in the seat facing me. I was facing the front of the bus. No, he did not face me when he sat down, but kneeled on his seat, holding onto its back, and off we went, his feet banging my knees. Get the picture? Some people simply must face the direction a train is travelling (and I am one of them) and that obviously extended to buses for this chappie.

An overheard conversation to end this piece. Two old ladies with bits of shopping from the Co-op discussing the son of one of them, a fellow who, apparently, was as daft as a brush.

"Well, Hilda, I opened the door and walked in on him."
"You don't say, Vera?"
"I do. And there he was, stark naked, and in the act."
"Just like that?"
"Yes. Quite a shock, I'll tell you."
"Well, what did you say?"
"I said, 'Horace, get out of here this minute, I have a bus to catch!'"
"And did he, Vera?"
"Oh, yes. Right away."
"What did he think he was doing … doing that?"
"I don't know Hilda. Who takes a bath on a weekday?"

GIMME SHELTER!

Sitting in an English garden

waiting for the sun

If the sun don't come

you get a tan

from standing in the English rain

I am the eggman

They are the eggmen

I am the walrus

Goo goo g' joob
John Lennon (I am the Walrus)

I am watching the sky above Warkworth Castle: it is as dark and grim as a thundery sky over Bermuda at this time of year. The rain in those clouds, when moving my way, could arrive very quickly, and will beat on my kitchen windows obliterating the view. As I have a week's worth of laundry out on the lines, I am looking for the last moment to run outside and haul down clothes, towels and linen.

Why even try? I don't have a clothes dryer, though I can dry things in the flat in two or three days on the airing racks; but that is an inconvenience as Cailean likes to nick things from the rack and hide them away. I can turn the heating on, but our gas rates just increased by 35%. On a very windy day such as this one, outdoors in the courtyard I can get my laundry completely dry, ready to fold and put away, in two hours.

Will I get the two hours? I am watching!

According to the Evening Chronicle out of Newcastle, August has already had more than twice the normal rainfall for this month in the North than it did in 2007, which had been a very wet summer.

Noted: 1,500 cricket matches have been called off this summer of 2008, so far. In 2007, 1,600 were postponed or cancelled during the entire year. God help us!

Farmers are trying to get their crops harvested. Driers must be used once the wet grain is gathered in, and driers use high-priced fuel, and that is crippling farmers. I imagine that handicap will be passed along to us as far higher prices for things as simple as a small wholemeal loaf. The 68P loaf I bought last Christmas cost me 85P yesterday. Up 25%.

The Chronicle gives rainfall figures in millimetres, which means little to me. I still think in old money. I shall attempt to convert these figures here as I know there must be a few people like me who still feel at home with inches.

In Northumberland, in the first two weeks of August this summer, we've had 108.3 mm of rain. That is over 4.5 inches. We had a little over two inches in 2007 for the entire month of August. It's still raining in 2008.

The Alnwick International Music Festival, staged every August for a week in the town's old, cobbled Market Square, during the daylight hours, had to be moved indoors this year. No punters in sunglasses, shorts and pale hairy legs (and their husbands) soaking up the sun and arts and history in 2008. Rather, uncomfortable seats in the cramped Alnwick Playhouse, with its inadequate stage, lighting and gloomy atmosphere.

My summer's potted plants were washed out by mid-month, and I ripped out the annuals, cut back the plants I'm hoping will survive, and toted the lot indoors. Too cold for them outside in Amble's winter weather. The flat is full of clay pots. Despite the pruning, a number of garden dwellers came in with the geraniums, impatiens, hydrangeas, palms and many mystery plants that I bought simply because they looked nice, not by name or reputation. Many times over the past fortnight, Cailean has nudged me and directed me to some corner of the flat, where he then pointed out a large snail, slug or many-legged bug making its way across a room. These visitors have been carefully carried outside and placed in overgrown areas. Even the slugs, they are amazing creatures.

The radio reported trouble at Hadrian's Wall, which starts its way west in Wallsend, some forty miles south of here. I live in the part of the world that Hadrian considered beyond Civilization. On a Saturday night, at least, that reputation stands. Apparently, all the rain has made the ground near the Wall more than a little soggy, well-worn footpaths alongside it are puddled and all that is undermining the Wall in places, making it liable to tumble down. Visitors and hikers are advised to walk at a distance from the Wall, and not in single file, on firmer ground.

If the Scots have their wits about them, they might burst through the Wall about now, take some territory back from the Sassenachs, and get their revenge for Mel Gibson's Braveheart. Should be a walkover!

One day last week, we woke to not only the rain, but to temperatures in the low 40's. In fact, the radio presenter said that it was "six degrees", but he was talking Celsius. Looking outside, people were wearing overcoats, hats and gloves!

Yesterday, 24 August, was not only Sunday Market Day in Amble, but a cycle meet for this part of England (and cyclists from all over Europe it seemed), as well as a fair for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution on the Amble waterfront. Why should the rain ease after three weeks? But, ease it did, about mid-morning, and, while cool, it was gloriously sunny and dry. I fossicked for my sunglasses and Panama hat, trimmed my moustache, hitched Cailean to his leash, and walked out among the poodles instead of weeks of puddles.

By last night, of course, the rain had returned. And it only paused a few hours ago. Gathering strength, I imagine.

Warkworth Castle has the look of Al Capp's Joe Btfsplk about it.

I am watching the sky carefully. Goo goo g'joob.