On Tuesday morning I woke up to a feeling in the media and among government that the worst feared had not happened. An interview later in the day with an army leader revealed that the water had risen to within six inches of damaging the electricity sub station with the consequence that families may have then had to have been evacuated and presumably a national state of emergency declared. Interviews with the Prime Minister showed a man calm, concerned and getting his own and the government's act together. (It was impressive and I have no doubt enhanced his personal position considerably as it was evident he was being himself and not putting on an act of any kind, and one can see the self confidence in his new role increase daily)
This morning I woke to news that the Thames surge forecast 24 hours ago had happened and that some homes had been evacuated. The problem arose from tributaries of the Thames rather than the main river which had held so far. Although there was considerable water the number of homes affected appeared small by comparison with those in Gloucestershire and immediate areas. In fairness to the authorities the severe flood warning had been maintained on both river systems.
The sun had shone early, although it is in the evenings that the best weather has been experienced on three successive days. I decided to go walking along the coast with my digital camera. I drove to the end of the three parks and open play space just before the New Crown restaurant, parking opposite the private housing built on the site of the former Colliery from where some 2000 men had toiled miles out under the North sea and had done so without one fatal accident.
Council workmen were attending to the attractive roundabout flower bed where the centrepiece is an model galleon. As I walked across the playing field with the Gypsy Green athletic stadium to my right I could see a tall mastered vessel at the mouth of the Tyne, just outside the two piers. My attention was then diverted to the Sand Dancer pub restaurant built at beach edge. It was now a building site in the process of major renovations and had been sold to a different chain.
I walked from here along the beach road adjacent to sand dunes on my right above which the Leas commenced to rise and spread in width, and on to the former Waters Edge pub restaurant, recently called Mango's, and now looking deserted. I had to pass the Life Station lookout and which marks an area where bathing is forbidden because the area has been set aside for water sports. This is a quiet and attractive beach area accessible from either the public car park at the Sand Dancer or by continuing along the coast Road and Turning in towards Mango's which is not visible from the roadway, through the Trow quarry and to the car park.
There are two walkways at Trow Quarry. The higher route cuts through the former quarry whose stone was used by the Romans to build the Arbeia fort around the corner from where I live. I have just received a consultation document from the local Council about the future of the fort, with a picture of the recreated gateway and sub titled "Preserving our heritage and building a future." It put present events into perspective as I stood within the cultured grass. surrounded by rocky mounds to picture the situation about AD 160 as locals quarried rock for the Romans. I climbed the small hill at the coast edge to where a World War 2 gun remains mounted guarding what can be seen from this vantage point as the bay of South Shields with the river entrance wall at one end and my viewpoint at the other. It is a spectacular stretch of soft yellow and clean sand, backed in places by dunes and stretching over a mile, perhaps close on two kilometres. I must measure the road distance by car.
Having enjoyed this perspective perhaps for the first time, as I cannot remember ever climbing to this point before, I then look in the opposite direction onto a stony bay with the sun glinting at the water's edge as it breaks through a cloud gathering sky, and it is a scene matching anything that Cornwall or Scotland can offer, including a large cave in a headland. At one point, as I made the lower walk along the edge of the rocky bay although there are steep steps to reach the sea, I look out over a medium sized fishing boat over to the Tall ship, and then watch as a modern naval ship swiftly exits the Tyne and disappears out to sea. At one minute I am in Roman England, and then watch a 17th, 18th century pirate or smuggling ship await to unload its cargo at such a cove as this, and then I am reminded of the reality of modern warfare and the present day.
There was a similar juxtaposition between the old and the new later in the evening as I watched the second of a series of programmes about the Grenadier Guards. The programme switched between the preparations of the guards, many seventeen year olds just out of basic training, for a state visit from the president of Ghana, while the main force prepared for duty in the Hellman Provence of Afghanistan, using live ammunition and prospective combat conditions. Every time there is any reference to Afghanistan, I remember the Sunday lunch time at Birmingham University when studying for the child care certificate, shared with an Afghan post graduate who told me about his country and his hopes for it, and then gave me his card so that we should keep in contact, and which I never did. Therefore without a name, there has been no hope of finding out what happened to him, like so many of the meetings with strangers, work, political and others encountered over the decades.
The TV programme then focussed on a contingent of Ghanaians in national dress in the Mall to wave their President there to wave to their President as he passes with the Queen in a royal coach. One young woman describes the five seconds as the greatest in her life, while a mature man asks the rhetorical question, where else in the world could one see such a better spectacle? I remember a recently trained Ghanaian work colleague of the late 1960's and wonder about that subsequent life.
It is easy to criticise the officers, their wives and friends sampling the High Life of the quarters of the guards in the capital, or to poke fun at the ceremonial dress, or that the drill of the guards as they perform for the tourists, and then reflect on what are no more than teenagers as they fly off to fight for the freedom of others and face potentially their own deaths and horrific injury, using the best technical weaponry of modern war. One can oppose war and the use of violence, one can argue and debate the best way to achieve change, but, and it is a but which I will go on underlining, we must never forget those and their families who volunteers their own lives in the service of others.
Going back to by walk of yesterday. I have lived in this area for thirty years but the route was new to me and I was able to marvel at the change in perspective from that of the cultivated parks and gardens and the beautifully and imaginatively kept and developed beach areas, and then to a rugged area of rocky coast and cliff and open grass land criss-crossed with walking and cycling tracks, well used by families as I witnessed under darkening skies and occasional shower. It was an appropriate point to return and by the time I arrived home I had been out for two hours. I then processed and uploaded some of the photos on the myspace profile site. I looked forward to continuing the journey along the coast back to my former home, where the area has already been photographed over the course of a year.
Later throughout the evening until I was too tired to continued I worked on getting up to date with mainstream work so that I can recommence the writing of the novel 2007/2008.
Before continuing with the updating I want to mention viewing once more, Those who Dare made in 1953 and one of the over forty Dirk Bogard films all of which I have seen in theatre or on TV, several of which concern the Second World War. This film involved a raid by an army unit on a German airfield located on a Greek Island during World War 2. It was my siesta time viewing on Monday so my attention was half hearted and therefore subsequent judgement questionable. On the whole the film portrayed the Greek peasant villagers as courageous and resourceful I was still left with that sense of them and us which was and to some extent remains the attitude of English people born of generation after generation to those who have come from other lands, and especially of other languages and shades of skin.
I went to bed tired but unaware of the drama to unfold in the beloved city of Oxford and of my enlightenment.
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