1223 Northern Rivera

This is been an interesting 24 hours in which I completed the introduction to Northern Rivera, (se below) just three pages of words and ten pages with 20 photos. There are just five copies being printed and I made a mistake with two pages of the photographs forgetting that I had previously decided on the inclusion of different photos. I have also drafted the first two pages of the first chapter which is called times past and will features words and pictures commencing with the Arbeia Roman Fort, the Latinised Aramaic as the last recorded Roman Troops, to be stationed were boatmen from Syria and the River Tigris in particular, as by then the fort had a supply depot for the 17 forts guarding Hadrian's wall, with good arriving at the port of South Shields, store at the fort on the hill and then shipped by boats along the river Tyne to various distribution points to the Wall. The chapter will then cover the work of St Bede at the monasteries of St Peter and Paul, smuggling into inlets and caves the creation of Jarrow as a ship building town, growth of the ports of the mouth of the Tyne and Sunderland, the coastal Coalfields at South Shields and Whitburn, the Jarrow Crusade, former mining village by Souter Lighthouse, using Cleadon Mill for target Practice in World War One and the day a German Bomber fell into the sea near to where Lewis Carroll worked on his stories.

It is also 24 hours when I watched an American made film in Japanese with English Subtitles directed by Clint Eastward and then a Russian counter terrorism adventure, also with English subtitles, and received my voucher for a free first class return travel on GNER anywhere on its line during January. Another trip to Croydon and London me thinks. It has been 24 hours of almost solid rain with a day long gloom which discouraged venturing far, although I did take a trip to Sunderland to a bank try and resolve issues regarding the small estate of my mother. I stopped first at the supermarket for some bread, prawns in shell, salted peanuts and fresh fruit, and the latest DVD from the Daily Mail. On my way to the car a man in front about my age paused, and I had to slow to get by as had another man before me, at which a woman behind commented jokingly about needing to slim, I think aimed at the man who paused although I am larger and the man in front even bigger. He turned round had asked me if I had heard the one about the man who could not fit inside a hula hoop. I mentioned my efforts to reduce weight whereupon he said he now owned a car for the first time in his life and had put on two stones since giving up the bicycle on which he had done100 miles each week. It was raining with a cold wind but this was the true spirit of the Tyne. Talking of spirits I learnt that one of the inscriptions found at the site of Arbeia for the God of the Spirits of Conservation.

On my way to Sunderland I heard that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to admit to Parliament that a junior at the Child Benefit HQ had sent by a private firm of carriers two computer disks on which all the names and addresses, socials security and bank information for every child in the UK had been compressed and appears not to have immediately disclosed that the information went astray, sending two more disks to the National Audit Office in the same way and who had requested the information. The information covers half the families in the British Islands. There can be no bigger scandal in the history of bureaucracy, moreover the implication of the statement suggests there was an attempt to cover up within the organisation, but the Government appears to have learnt from the blunder of the Home Secretary regarding the number of illegal immigrant employed by the government in its security services. Well Gordon, this is the job you wanted so much, now prove you are up to it. An independent inquiry has been established but will not report until next year. What I want to know is why the National Audit office wanted such detailed information?

Introduction to Rivera. The photos will be added to my photos in due course.

"For over thirty years, half my lifetime, I have lived and worked, close to the Rivers Tyne and Wear, travelling by road, almost daily, along part of the coastline, which is approximately seven miles between the points when the rivers reach the North Sea. It has taken all this time to fully appreciate the spectacular shore of former smuggler's coves and inlets, the bird covered stacks of rocks, the glorious spectacle of the sweeping sandy bays, on a bright winter's, spring or autumn day, the six magnificent parks, and the other stretches of public and agricultural land, the two ancient sites of British Christianity, of St Peter's and St Paul, and the way in which public and private interests are working together to complete the transplant of the former industrial landscape of shipbuilding and coal mining into an organic mixture of global enterprise, varied new residential communities, focussed adult education developments, together with vibrant recreational and imaginative cultural experiences.

There is still much to accomplish and there is sometimes vigorous debate about overall priorities and individual projects, in an area, and a region which in the twentieth century experienced great loss from two World Wars, and still mourns its courageous young men and women as they continue to form the backbone of the British army, navy, and merchant force, and time and time again, had to recover from the devastation of a community, such as the people of Jarrow, brought together to build 1000 ships, and then faced a decade of dole because of economic change and political intrigue which denied them a steel plant (1).

As I walked along the manicured green by the Souter Point Light House, it is easy to forget the tiny houses which once formed a mining village around me, or as I eat lunch among flowering shrubs and sheltering trees of the Whitburn Coastal park, that men and boys toiled under the sea and that before the nationalization of the coal, over one hundred lost their lives in preventable accidents, or as I stood among the attractive business like buildings of the new Sunderland University complex on the bank of the river Wear, close to the National Glass centre, to remember that once there where giant factories producing glassware for the world, and then learnt that the last factory, where every piece of Pyrex ovenware was once produced, had closed its gates, because the company was moving production to France.

I believe I can demonstrate through pictures and simple words, commencing with the ancient Cathedral and University city of Durham, to the industrial port of Sunderland beside the banks and mouth of the river Wear, and then along a coast with features rivalling that of Devon and Cornwall, and then inland once more with the twin beacons of the ruins of Tynemouth Castle and Priory on the north bank. and the now hidden ruins of the what was once the biggest Roman supply fort in Europe on the other, in South Shields, and onto what has already become the great tourist city centres outside of London in the United Kingdom, Newcastle with its twin local authority Gateshead, that this area can now claim to have become again the Northern Rivera, a new era for the North East riversides, and which also includes those at Middlesbrough, Stockton on theTees.

The towns and cities of Durham, Sunderland, South Shields, Tynemouth, North Shields, and Whitley Bay, Newcastle and Gateshead, are excellent places from which to explore the region with to the North, the deserted coast of Northumberland and the film set Castle at Bamburgh, overlooking the dawn of British Christianity at Lindisfarne and the other Farne Islands, and inland the vast forests and sheep lands, and the grand reservoir lake of Keilder, merging into lowlands of Scotland, with its capital city, an hour away by train, and to the immediate west the Pennines and northern Cumbrian Lakes, with in the south west the country towns and wild open hill lands of Durham on over the mountains to southern Lakeland, while in the South there are pretty villages of the North Yorkshire Moors, the land of Heartbeat and All Creatures Great and Small, leading to the picturesque Robin Hood's Bay and Whitby, with the once grand seaside splendour of Scarborough, and the extraordinary city of York Minister, also an hour away by train.

I first settled here in 1974, a stranger without having had any meaningful sense of a home land before, and quickly came to love and hate which is the stuff of all great passions, and where now as I reach my three score years and ten, I marvel at where I am and able to enjoy in a comfort what many others do not. For 2007 I have concentrated on the embankments of the river Tyne to the River Wear between Jarrow, South Shields and Sunderland.

I hope the photographs convey something of the variety of flavours of a day's walking, or a week's leisurely experience, covered in the following work.

In future years I hope to travel and part walk the length of the Tyne, stopping to cover the amazing developments in Newcastle and Gateshead, all the way to Keilder, and then concentrate on the City of Sunderland to Durham
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These walks and travels are part of a contemporary art installation project 101.75 in which I am reflecting on my lifelong experience in the form of A 4 size cards, one for each hour until the age of 65, over 600000 cards in over 20000 sets representing each day, with between a quarter and a third of the work completed, divided between material which will be accessible and that which is confidential and will remain private, plus photographs over which of 250000 have made been made, and some unedited audio and digital film.

Everything I do is designed to be shared and enjoyed by anyone and everyone."