Friday 15 January 2010

1365 Whitley Bay and North Tyneside by Metro and Ferry. Amy Winehouse. Lost and Cold Case. Young musician of the Year

A glorious sunshine day with a cool breeze on the coast and along the river, but inland and in sheltered positions it was warm and indeed hot. However the coat was needed at times when I reach the sea front at Whitley Bay so the solution was to wear or carry according to the situation. I worked hard in the morning so as to be able to have a joyous afternoon, certain the weather would continue until I was ready and this feeling of wholeness continued into the early evening as I watched the young musician of the year thrilled by their abilities and at creating a second successful Stir Fry a la Grech and then in the early hours I watched a recording made of the 10 pm programme on how Amy Winehouse became as she is and I was overwhelmed by the inevitability of her self destructive genius and where the escalation further into the abyss was quickening.

I did not venture out until 1 pm having trained myself well over the past five years and once the decision was taken to complete certain work first I shut the outside out until I was ready and the tasks completed. I was able to keep my attention focussed. I completed the writing of yesterdays Blog with one revision, correction and read through so I may have made even more mistakes than usual. But as my writing is part of reflecting how I remember feeling and thinking at a contemporary moment as well as an aide memoir to remember and re-evaluate aspects of the experiences in the future, the unintentional mistakes and loose expression becomes as important as when I attempt something better crafted.

The next and main task was to write to the authorities for the community and hospital health records of my care mother. It will be interesting to see if they are immediately available or if there is any problem because she is my aunt, although I understood that as a complainant about her care I was eligible but obviously if they have been used and continued to be required by the investigation then this may not be the opportune moment to request copies.

I also enquired if there were known to be any separate records referring to me or my birth mother. I hope that when patients registered with a doctor, at least after 1948 when the NHS service was established. and when a patient then transferred, there might a register of this information. The position before 1948 is likely to be different but there is nothing lose from making enquires. Time was taken with sorting out the National Insurance numbers and the NHS numbers for the three of us and it was noon before I was ready to change and sort out what I would take and what I would not. I decided to have lunch, a single cheese and salami sandwich and a cup of tea. I had a coffee and two toast breads for breakfast. I watched Bargain Hunt while I eat, a programme I had seen before and even remembered some of the items, what the judges thoughts and how they went at the auction although not the individual prices or result. I was ready to go out.

I took with me my back pack although wisely I had decided not to bring a bottle of water, ice bag and a banana, because of its weight. The back pack was needed because of the camera but I also resented the constraint. I was out for four hours, about two and half hours of walking exercise.

I commenced by walking to the North Marine Park where I wanted to photograph what was left of the beds Spring planting. However because my priority was the post office I only covered those at the western side of the lower park before making my way along Ocean Road, deciding I would begin to photograph this year, the Pubs and Clubs, perhaps also the restaurants, given that they are forever chopping and changing sometimes with very expensive make-overs such as the Beach Bar and the Palma Cafe Bar recently. The who three story edifice of the Palma building as been reworked.

At the post office there was the expected long queue which put off some people who came in and went out immediately again. I felt confident about using the automatic machines with touch screens, which weigh, then price, which you pay individually, then receive the individual postage paid stickers, and only then, the accumulated receipt. At this point I could have continued the Shields walkabout with my camera, taken a bus or the Metro and the decision was to take the Metro to Newcastle and perhaps to Tynemouth or to Whitley Bay, the latter a journey of 26 station and an hour's travel whereas I could have walked to the Ferry and then walked to North Shields station or taken a bus, and then to Whitley, the third station along the coast. It was a journey I had never made since the Metro system came into operation.

South Shields town centre is usually full of elders with walking sticks and some mobility vehicles such is the impact of a life working in the pits or other heavy industrial processes. Today there appeared to be more young people about, perhaps it was the change of clothing into summer weather with bare midriffs and short skirts without leggings. I had been able to get a copy of Metro the free weekday morning paper which is usually unavailable from 11am. In the entertainment section there is a play at the Customs House which interested me when I first saw the particulars, about a widow who sells up to go to the sun, sounds familiar though and it ends on Wednesday. A possibility for tomorrow evening. "In Bruges" is showing at Bolden this week but only at 9pm and therefore a possibility for Thursday. I been to Bruges on a visit to Belgium spending two separate days there. I debated spending the afternoon in Newcastle, but I would have visited the Baltic and other galleries and this was the day for that. I continued to Whitley Bay. I was pleased that the TV critics shared my misgivings about Flood. I also noted a film about Amy Winehouse which was showing the same time as Lost part two of this new seasons. I would sort out later.

I decided to stay on the train as it continued north of the Monument and Haymarket, Jesmond and Gosforth, two places I will visit with my camera sometime, and then turned towards the coast and none of places en route appealed as places to visit. I have only been two Whitley Bay a couple of times and I cannot remember ever stopping, perhaps once in thirty five years. It was once a major holiday centre for those in Southern Scotland, not rivalling Blackpool. This continues to puzzle me because South Shields has better Beaches and reaction facilities for the family. At Whitley as it is along the rest of the coast to Cullercoats which I visited last year and then to Tynemouth the beaches involve a long descent from the coast roadway, similar to that at Roker Beach Sunderland. The two week family holiday have long since stopped and the hotels along one main road to the front have become trendy bars and clubs - Havana, Banana Joe, with fake florescent coloured Palm Trees, Caprice, Easy Feet,, Zynk, Vegas, Jimmyz Bar, the New Quay, Envy, The Hairy Lemon, Sin, The Avenue,42, Deep and Heat were noted. Furtherest away from the coast is the shopping centre which comprises a mixture of traditional ships with butchers, bakers and grocers, and small shopping complex with parking above, Here there is a Wetherspoons called the Fire Station, set back off in small alleyway but the most popular is the pub in the main street The Bedroom with many street tables all occupied with everyone enjoying the sunshine and the company. On the front I walked northwards to the derelict Spanish City former amusement centre and stopped to look towards the cultivated lees which are very different from those unspoilt at South Shields. I decided to return home via North Shields and the ferry and leave a walk along the front to Cullercoats and Tynemouth for another day, I needed a cup of tea.

At North Shields there was a coffee house with comfy settee opposite the station and I enjoyed two cup pot of tea and a lemon drizzle cake slice for £2.40. Around the corner there was a bus stop with the choice of 333 and 19 going to the ferry. A 19 came and passed to the next stop, I got on but the driver worked out that I was on the wrong bus as this was going in the opposite direction. A young woman came and sat on the seats in manner which I returned to the first stop and a young woman arrived, sat down and appeared reconciled for a wait. I decided to walk having noted that the bus journey took seven minutes going first to the fish quay. On reaching the boat quay the ferry was in so I hurried and reached the entrance as the 33s bus arrived and one of several passengers was the young woman I had left at the bus stop. I worked out that the buses time themselves for the arrival and departure of the ferry.

On the walk to the ferry I observed a sickening encounter. Across the street from me, a few yards from the bus stop, a young women in her early twenties was telling someone not to be a f…… s….t. The person proved to be a boy about six or seven years of age with a scalped hair cut who had entered a shop selling sweets, comics and ice creams. Whatever he wanted he was told no and he started to cry and this produced not one but several mouthfuls of foul swearing towards the child who announced he was running away. The mother said good and told to him to p..s off. I had to cross over the road and then crossed over another road along side them. The boy who momentarily continued to run along without crossing the road, suddenly reversed and put his hand out to his mothers. She continued to verbally abuse him. There was nothing I or anyone could do. He could be removed from her care if his life is threatened or if he requests help to someone but what then?

In the situation of Amy Winehouse she had talent from her childhood and appears to have been significantly influenced by her father and his liking for the songs of Frank Sinatra and of Big Band Jazz. She was given a place at the most well known stage school in London from the age of 12 Then her father separated from her mother for a new relationship and normal adolescence became a nightmare and she left the school without examinations but was helped to begin her singing career by the head of the school and as a fifteen sixteen year old she moved from home to Camden Town where it is event from someone who worked with her that she was into dark sex when still most of us would regard her as more child than young adult. The programme did not mention her mother and it is interesting that later it was her father's husband who also did the talking on camera.

The programme explained the intensity of her relationships as she was launched with her first album and her voice and songs were first recognised as the work of a great talent. One journalist described how Amy explained that in the daytime she drank wine with vodka, and then in evenings she drank a concoction of mind numbing spirit without anything to lengthen the cocktail. She was drunk all the time, public as well as private. It appeared she was unable to cope with the fame she had craved for in her first interview essay to the stage school and it appears that she only commenced to experiment with a cocktail of drugs after she married. While some therefore point the accusing finger at her husband, the programme suggested to me a more complex collusion of mutual spirits, although the husband does not appear to have any talent other than as a partner in Amy's inner world turned outside.

It seemed go me that the programme touched on the truth and then moved away as if it could not bear the implications until towards the end when it admitted that she had reached the point when she was beyond anyone's influence and where because of her interests and inclinations she was unwilling to help herself.

She appears to have convinced herself that she needs to feel pain in all its forms to be able to create new songs about pain. She has not grasped that you do not need to experience the reality directly to understand and feel the pain of that reality. Whether she can translate such experience into new songs of the same quality of those in Black to Black we may never get the opportunity to know. Meanwhile the ghouls of the popular media track every second of her life in the hope she will give that ultimate picture, the moment of her total self destruction and she is so presently crazed that she will invite them to watch while listening to a new song about the experience she has created as her epitaph.

While the programme about Amy was recording I watched the new episode of Lost in which Ben tries to save his daughter from being shot by pretending she is not his daughter and does not mean anything to him. The episode moves forward to the future when Sayid has also escaped from the Island and is mourning the murder of his wife, the girl he had loved for a decade and found and married since his return from the island, only to lose. We then find that Ben has also left the Island and is on a mission to destroy the man, Charles Widmore, who faked the discovery of the no survivors plane crash and sent the freighter with helicopter to kill all those on the island especially the survivors of the crash. Ben arrives in Tunisia, makes his way to Iraq for the funeral of Sayid's wife and then helps him to kill the man who murdered her and he enters into a pact with Ben to destroy the architect of their misfortunes. Ben breaks into the Penthouse suite of Widmore to explain that he will kill his daughter so he will know at first hand the torment he has experienced. Meanwhile back on the island Jack finally accepts that the mission of the freighter is not to rescue them, and Sawyer and Claire decide to make their way back to the others on the coast, leaving Ben and Locke and Hugo going off to find the mysterious Jacob " to learn what they should do next"

On Sunday I had watched a programme celebrating the thirty years of British Young Musician for the year which has been a must for me to watch throughout its time. The programme highlighted some of the most famous winners and the first ho became a leading player as part of orchestra's around the world. Recent winners become instant celebrities with concert and media demands from around the world and the BBC has now arranged a support agency to help them cope, especially the younger ones who will still be at school. I then missed the first of this year's instrumental finalist but all is not lost as the full performances are online. In fact this year's presentation is a great disappointment, concentrating on the background of the four instrumentalists, this evening the strings, a 14 year violinist who was not ready for the performance stage, the head girl of the same musical school a harpist who nearly reached the final, a cellist who did not impress the judges with his music selection and an extraordinary guitarist, born England with one parent a Croatian and all now living in Norway and who is my first tip so far. His brother also entered the competition as a pianist The hour long programme spent over half on the background and only played snippets of 15 mins performances of three works by the four young musicians although the full performances are on lime. I will make time before the final on Sunday to view what is available.

I watched the first part of Cold Case on lime this evening while eating my meal having decided to have the chicken stir fry with mixed veg and chill sauce noodles back to back. It was as enjoyable as last night, more so as the ingredients were all prepared and I knew how to cook. I prefer over the home made curry's and the omelettes, but there is risk of over doing and becoming tired. I will try and spread the two helpings over the week. I then watched a recording of the second part after midnight/ This episode was even more grim and biblical than usual with a Nazi sect with a prospective Member of Parliament Leader burning to death the Aids infected black brother of a local priest. His, also infected. gay lover, and a Jew, infiltrates the sect and infects four of those involved in the burning of his lover by using his own infected blood when tattooing a new work to mark the first anniversary of the event, including in the design the Hebrew words, the message Burn "in hell". He successfully attempts to take and hide an incriminating tape of the fire and death and horrifically tortured in the search for the tape and becomes the Cold Case which the team sort out. More interesting is the ongoing struggle of Trevor Eve to help his wayward son, delinquent, drug addict, on the streets and with unresolved conflicts in relation to his father, knowing he needs professional and parental help, testing his parent beyond the limits.

I watch the Amy Winehouse recording and as the programme reaches is composite truth her father admits he is considering using the Mental Health Act powers in a last ditch attempt to break with destiny.

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