Thursday, 28 June 2012

Spittal

Last week I mentioned Spittal and it occurred to me afterwards that most of my readers will never have heard of Spittal, so I thought that this week I would write a bit more about the place. The beach on the southern side of the Tweed estuary belongs to the village of Spittal while the beach on the north belongs to Berwick (as I described last week, any piece of litter chucked into the Tweed anywhere along its length eventually ends up on one or the other of them).  Spittal and Tweedmouth, the village slightly further to the west on the south bank of the estuary, have an uneasy relationship with the town of Berwick which dates back to the days when the river was the English-Scottish border. The south bank has never been in Scotland; Spittal and Tweedmouth used in fact to belong to the Bishops of Durham. Now that Berwick is in Northumberland they have been incorporated within the borough of Berwick, but they preserve a distinct identity and a reluctance to 'cross the bridge' is often heard on both sides of the river.


Spittal beach is one of the most attractive and most suitable for having fun on that I've ever seen in Britain, and accordingly it developed a reputation as a seaside resort. A very small seaside resort, a kind of bonsai version of Scarborough. The oldest inhabitants remember the annual excitement of the Kelso Trip, when hordes of children from the Scottish town of that name would descend on Spittal for their one day at the seaside, travelling by train to Tweedmouth station (long since closed down) and then walking the mile or so to the beach. Above is a photo of the 1930 shelter on the promenade, such a cute example of the period when seaside holidays and art deco flourished together that it makes me smile every time I see it. 



The picture on the right was taken on Boxing Day last year during the annual frolic of plunging into the sea for an icy dip to wash away that Christmas sluggishness. 2011 wasn't so bad, but in 2010 the participants had to run through the snow covering the sand even to get to the water. Nobody seems to have dropped dead from the shock to the system, but I noticed that the inshore lifeboat and a couple of its crew, who have some paramedic training, were standing by just in case.



If the weather had been better I could have brought you some photos of the Spittal Gala, which was held last week.The Kelso Trip used to be arranged to coincide with this. Every town in the Borders has some version of an annual gala or festival and the traditions go back a long time. Unfortunately the rain has been so unrelenting this year that the photographer from the local paper just had time to snap the contestants in the children's fancy dress contest before everyone was obliged to run for shelter from a torrential downpour and all of the other events were comprehensively washed out.





Of course Spittal was a centre of the fishing industry long before it was a holiday resort, but sadly the company that processed salmon there has now closed down. All that is left is this building in Sandstell Road, a fishing shiel dating back to at least 1735. A shiel is the name given to a small building used by fishermen to store their gear and to shelter and sleep while they wait for the salmon to arrive in the nets. They were once common along the Tweed but this is the only one to survive in its original form. An interesting feature of it is that the gable ends protrude higher than the present roof because it was originally thatched. It was finally abandoned less than thirty years ago and still contains some newspapers, mugs and odd items of clothing left behind by the last men to use it. A local group is working hard to gain the funds and recognition necessary to convert it into an information centre where visitors could learn more about the history of the fishing industry. More power to their elbow. Buildings like this which preserve the lives of ordinary working people must not be forever pushed to the bottom of the heritage conservation list in favour of yet another aristocratic mansion.


Friday, 22 June 2012

Nice Weather for Ducks

'Nice weather for ducks' was a common expression in my youth, but I haven't heard it for a while. It seems to be the only thing to say about the weather we're having just now. It's been wet. It's been very wet. It's been so wet that yesterday I had to put my jacket in the tumble-dryer as soon as I got home. Once the idea of ducks had come into my mind it seemed like a good opportunity to tell the story of this little chap.

I realise that a picture of a plastic duck doesn't quite fulfil my promise of 'a nice photo with every post', so here's one of a real bird that also copes well with the rain. There is almost always a heron to be seen around the Tweed estuary, standing motionless, staring down into the water, waiting for a fish, and if anything they are out more often in the rain. It's probably easier to see the fish when the sky is so grey. To learn more about the living birds of the area, look at the Farne Islands blog (on the list in my profile). It's always full of lovely photos and inspiring stories of the wildlife of the islands, but over the last few days even the Farnes writer seems to have run out of things to say except 'it's still raining'.

Anyway, back to the plastic duck. I found it on the beach a few weeks ago and got tremendously excited because I'd seen stories in the press about a flotilla of plastic ducks lost overboard from a container ship which was being tracked as a way of monitoring the circulation patterns of marine litter. I rushed back home and searched online for a description of them. Alas, this one didn't quite fit. Disappointed but still full of zeal to help with the fight against the junk which is polluting our oceans, a subject about which I feel very strongly, I read more about the work of Curtis Ebbemeyer, the American researcher behind the duck monitoring project. I then got excited all over again when I learned that a lost consignment of Nike trainers was also being tracked. Wow, I found a brand new looking trainer on the beach not long ago!  I got so carried away that I emailed the project to ask if I could help. They were polite but seemed to feel that my outpost on the North Sea was unlikely to receive any of the items they were monitoring.

I was forced to the conclusion that the trainer was much more likely to have just been dropped by a visitor, though I still don't quite understand why it wasn't on his foot, and why it looked so clean. I've found plenty of other unexpected items on the beaches around the Tweed estuary.  A model Shrek. A nearly new palette of eye make-up and a full can of body glitter spray. A whole vacuum cleaner. Less surprisingly, an awful lot of odd gloves and balls of every size and description left behind by dogs who got tired of retrieving them. Most of all though the beaches of Berwick and Spittal are disappearing beneath countless tonnes of plastic drinks bottles. Every bottle thrown into the Tweed upstream ends up on these beaches eventually. Every few months Spittal has an organised litter collection on the beach, but that's nothing like enough to keep up with the problem. I sometimes imagine that eventually the estuary will be so silted up with litter that it will be possible to walk across it without using any of the bridges. I once read that this was the reason for the disappearance of many small rivers that used to run through cities, such as the Fleet in London - they just had so much rubbish chucked in them that the water stopped flowing.

So how did the yellow bathtime playmate end up on the beach?  The answer hit me over the Jubilee weekend when I saw an item in the local paper about a duck race being held as part of the festivities. The photo showed dozens of plastic ducks just like this one being thrown into the river for a light-hearted wager on which one would pass the finishing point of the race first. Far from coming all the way from a lost shipment in the Pacific, my duck was almost certainly an escapee from a previous local race. Oh well.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

The Olympic Torch

The Olympic Torch arrived in Berwick today. Here it is. Look, you can actually see the flame. It spent the day making the journey through the heart of the Debatable Land from Edinburgh to Alnwick, according to a schedule worked out to the minute by the people whose rather strange job it is to organise these things. The torch was to arrive in Berwick at precisely 16.33 and leave at 17.10. Everyone wanted to get the dramatic photo of the Torch crossing the Tweed Bridge, and accordingly the crowds on the bridge were so dense that the chances of anyone succeeding were slim. I therefore decided to take up my position at the top of Castlegate where the backdrop is less impressive but the crowds were thinner.

The amount of fuss that has been made in anticipation of this blink-and-you've-missed-it event is extraordinary. Funds have been produced from thin air to paint all the bollards on the bridge, to make sure they look their shiniest in all that media coverage of the Torch 'crossing the border', and to place tubs of flowers at strategic locations. No fewer than five bands were playing at various points along the thirty-seven minute route and hundreds of people appear to have been prepared not only to turn out to cheer but to pay £2 for a Union flag to wave at the same time. The merchants of flags, balloons and whistles who were working the crowds hard all afternoon made me think, rather incongruously, of the souvenir sellers who reportedly made a good living out of the crowds at public executions a few hundred years ago.

The procession surrounding the torch was one of the most bizarre public spectacles I've ever seen. It began with a big yellow bus whose destination board said 'London 2012' and continued with a big red bus representing Coca-Cola and a big blue bus representing Samsung, with promo girls on the open decks shouting rousing slogans to the crowd at a level of amplification that drowned out the local bands. A more modest car bearing the logo of the third sponsor, Lloyds TSB, brought up the rear. There was then a very long gap, a good five minutes, before the excited Torch bearer herself appeared, smiling broadly and generally looking thrilled to be there.

The organisational abilities of London 2012 have not extended to arranging for all Torch bearers to run in their own home town. Only one of the seven bearers in Berwick lives in the town, but several other Berwickers are running in other towns. One of them was originally told to travel several hundred miles to the north of Scotland to do his stint, until a last minute change was agreed. Presumably this is because distances so far from London appear compressed to those sitting in Canary Wharf.  'It's all The North, isn't it? It's not like we're asking people to travel from Islington to Lewisham, that really would be unreasonable.'

Interspersed throughout the procession were numerous cars and motorcycles bearing members of the Metropolitan Police. Not the local Berwick constabulary, but the Met, which is the London police force.  They were behaving in a manner most unlike normal police demeanour, waving and smiling at the crowds, leaning over to shake hands with bystanders. The Met is apparently on some sort of nationwide charm offensive. The message on one of the cars informed us that we can now follow the Metropolitan Police on Twitter. (Imagine it. '3.07 a.m. I'm chasing a villain round the estate. Oh dear, he seems to have got away while I was typing this tweet.')

I've had a jaundiced view of the Olympic Torch ritual since I learned that it first appeared at the Berlin 1936 Olympics. To be fair, the flaming torch is a common motif in the Art Deco style of the period, and did not as far as I am aware have any special National Socialist significance. But it still makes the whole business hard to warm to. Invented by Nazis, sponsored by Coca-Cola, organised by Londoners who don't know where the Scottish border is - yet somehow still a good enough excuse for an enjoyable afternoon out. The Berwick Advertiser reports that one local lady has been telling her doctors for years that she just wants to stay alive long enough to see the Olympics, and is now excited beyond words to be celebrating her 90th birthday on the day the Torch passes through her home town. Good for her.


Thursday, 7 June 2012

The Diamond Jubilee: the final flourish of the Union Jack?

Berwick upon Tweed is covered in a rash of red, white and blue bunting for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The shops have been having a competition for the best window display with a Jubilee theme. On the left, the Barrels pub, known for real ale and good music, flies the flag. But for how much longer will the said flag be flown anywhere?

The Union flag (strictly speaking the name Union Jack only applies to the nautical version) was created by combining the flags of England, Scotland and Ireland. The 'blue' bit of the red, white and blue comes from Scotland. There is very little understanding of this fact among the English general public, and howls of outrage can be anticipated if and when an independent Scotland demands that England remove the Scottish element from its flag. Personally I think that the real grievance lies with the Welsh, whose flag has never been incorporated into the Union Jack. That big red dragon just didn't fit in with all the crosses. Since Wales now has its own movement for independence, there's not much point in trying to add it at this late stage. The red and white cross of England is a familiar sight at sporting events and I think that most of the English could get used to having it as their only flag without too much difficulty. Northern Ireland is another matter - what the residents of the Shankill Road would tie to their lamp-posts after the abolition of the Union flag boggles the imagination, but that's a question outside the scope of this blog.

Watching the television coverage of the Jubilee pop concert held outside Buckingham Palace, I was surprised when in the finale, as the red, white and blue lights played over the facade of the Palace and the red, white and blue fireworks exploded above its roof, the band segued directly from God Save the Queen into Land of Hope and Glory. This will probably have upset a fair few of the non-English citizens of the UK. The anthem Land of Hope and Glory is purely English. It is played at sporting events where England is competing independently of the other nations of the UK. There seems to be no justification for playing it at an event which was above all intended to bring all the Queen's subjects together in harmony, and the decision to do so was a piece of populism ('they love singing it at the rugby, don't they?') which showed no awareness of Scottish or Welsh sensitivities.
Alex Salmond has been careful not to pick an unnecessary fight by calling for Scotland to become a republic as well as independent.  The decision on whether an independent Scotland would wish to sever links with the monarchy is one for another referendum at a much later date, says the official SNP position, and in the meantime Scotland would become simply another member of the Commonwealth, retaining the Queen as head of state. Indeed the Queen's position as monarch of Scotland is arguably separate from her occupancy of the English throne. The two monarchies were by accident of inheritance united in the same person, that of James 1 of England and VI of Scotland, in 1603, and have continued to be represented by the same person ever since, but the claim to the two thrones, according to some constitutional lawyers, remains distinct. In 1953 there was a strong lobby demanding that the Queen have a second coronation in Edinburgh, in recognition of this fact, but that was dismissed by the English Establishment types running the show. King Charles III (or Charles IV for those with Jacobite sympathies) on the other hand is very likely to be obliged to make the journey to Holyrood for a second ceremony.




Thursday, 31 May 2012

'Accent and Identity'



For this post I have shamelessly borrowed the title and logo of a fascinating research project undertaken at the University of York. I hope they won't sue me for this because my intention is only to encourage you all to learn more about their work. The project is called Accent and Identity on the Scottish-English Border, or AISEB for short.  The picture on the right is of a poster spotted in the window of the Fishermen's Mission in Eyemouth, seeking to recruit subjects for what sounds like an equally interesting piece of linguistic research being undertaken at Aberdeen.

I first learned about AISEB from a talk given by one of its researchers to the Berwick Civic Society back in May 2010. We listened rapt as he ran through graphs and played sound clips which provided hard scientific proof of what all of us in the Borders know intuitively from everyday experience. Accent follows the line of the political border. No matter that there are no physical barriers whatsoever between Berwick and Eyemouth, that the bus journey between them takes only fifteen minutes and runs every half hour, that many people commute across the border every day - the accent boundary between these two towns falls like a curtain at the point on the road where the signs say Welcome to Scotland/ England and the difference between the two sides of that curtain can be detected by wholly objective recording equipment.

The researchers concentrated on certain key features of pronunciation, notably the presence or absence of a trilled quality to the letter R, and the length of the vowel sounds, which most clearly differentiate Scottish and English speech. Not only is the difference between towns on opposite sides of the border but only a few miles apart quite distinct, the difference is becoming greater over time. The researchers recorded older and younger groups of subjects and found that the difference is more marked in young people in their teens and twenties. One delightful anecdote concerned a young couple who were in Borders terms a mixed marriage, where the wife worried about her husband's speech impediment - an impediment which the researchers found to be nothing more than his English pronunciation of the letter R.

There is some evidence that this process of increasing differentiation is a very long term trend. In his book about the Border Reivers, Alistair Moffat quotes from 16th century reports which comment that it is impossible to tell which side of the border a person comes from by their speech. These observations were made in the context of intense exasperation on the part of the authorities at the difficulty of keeping track of the shifting political and military allegiances of Borderers, who were sometimes known to change sides in the middle of a battle if it seemed advantageous. Evidently such fluidity was helped by the lack of association between speech and nationality. As the process of political centralisation advanced and the Borders were brought more under the control of their respective capitals, dialect became increasingly identified with national loyalty. The coming of compulsory education probably speeded up this development. Scotland and England have different education systems and it is awkward to transfer between them during the exam years, which means that most children experience a schooling which is either entirely Scottish or entirely English. Peer pressure in the playground brings about conformity in speech. The latest development is that - get this! - there is a statistically significant correlation between the strength of a person's support for Scottish independence and the objective Scottish-ness of their speech. Yes, even in Eyemouth, only five miles into Scotland. This may seem hard to believe, but the nifty computer programmes of AISEB have proved it.

The researchers at York merely observe, they do not presume to explain. Any comments and ideas on this subject would be welcome. In a future post I will write more about the speech of the Northumbrian side of the border.




Thursday, 24 May 2012

Royal Border Bridge

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"This is the night mail, crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order ... " Anyone old enough to remember the famous film about the post office trains with its verse commentary finds it almost impossible to stop themselves quoting these lines when they first see a train going over the railway bridge at Berwick. Obviously this isn't the night train, because if it was dark I wouldn't have been able to take a picture - duh!  And, as previously explained, this bridge does not actually form the border between England and Scotland. Despite this it was officially named the Royal Border Bridge when it was opened in 1850. The architect-engineer was the great Robert Stephenson, son of the even more famous George, who invented the first locomotive. Queen Victoria came to declare it open but refused to cross the bridge herself because she thought it didn't look safe.

It's a dramatic sight, and the fact that I can just see trains going over this bridge from my kitchen window outweighs all of the less desirable aspects of my kitchen. Though I wouldn't want to live in any of the houses in Tweedmouth which are so hard against the bridge that curious passengers can look down and see what the residents are eating for their tea. The railway line was driven ruthlessly not only through the villages of Tweedmouth and Spittal but through the ruins of the medieval castle of Berwick. Imagine the fuss if they tried that now. The second picture shows the sole remaining wall of the castle (and a water-skier about to zoom through an arch of the bridge in impressive fashion). I confess to a sneaking admiration for the Victorian spirit of progress which felt that building splendid new structures was better than preserving every last relic of the past. Goodness knows there are plenty of other castles in Northumberland and southern Scotland. In fact I can suggest a couple of others that English Heritage and Historic Scotland could cross off their lists and leave to decay with no great loss to anyone.

A burden shared by Berwick and Dunbar is that they are the main reception stations for passengers who after a hard evening's partying in the Scottish capital have boarded a train at Edinburgh Waverley station in a state of noisy intoxication and end up being ejected from it by the staff with the help of police whom they phone and ask to meet the train at the next station. The seriously obnoxious revellers only make it as far as Dunbar, twenty minutes out of Waverley. The marginally more sober are tolerated for forty minutes and then dumped at Berwick. Such people then find themselves spending a night in police cells and appearing before the local magistrates (in England) or sheriff (in Scotland) the next morning. For those partygoers who were travelling back to homes much further south it must be a strange and disorientating experience to find themselves hungover in a court in the Borders, especially if it's a Scottish court using unfamiliar terminology. From a recent case reported in the local papers I learned that the offence which is boringly known in England as 'resisting arrest' is in Scotland called 'obstructing or hindering a constable in the execution of his duty', which has an archaic ring which I quite like. After all, the phenomenon of rowdy drunks is much, much older than the railway.  

Thursday, 17 May 2012

Seal Update

My March post about the young seal that had taken up residence beside the Old Bridge in Berwick seemed to be popular with readers, so I thought you might like to have an update. The seal is still there. Yes, two months later, it is regularly to be seen in exactly the same place. As you can see in this photo, it is quite aware of its human audience, and has indeed been accused by some of playing to the cameras. See how cute I am, it seems to say. By now the cameras mostly belong to visitors, the locals are so used to it that they hardly give it a second glance. But in the interests of my readers I went out in the kind of weather for which the Borders are famous to take these two pictures, in a wind so strong that it was impossible completely to avoid camera-shake, for which apologies.

Why is it still there? This is not normal seal behaviour. Mother seals care for their pups for only a few weeks before becoming preoccupied with the next round of mating, and by now this youngster will have been well and truly booted out into the cold, cruel world. Most of its fellows swim back to the Farne Islands after their fishing expeditions and haul out on the rocks there when they need a rest and a snooze. But for some reason this one has fixated on this sandbank in the estuary. For a while we thought that it might be ill and too weak to swim away. But you can see that it has got bigger and fatter since March, so it is managing to catch fish somehow.

So great is its devotion to this particular spot that it is often seen swimming round and round waiting for the tide to fall far enough for it to be able to lie there. This photo on the left was taken a few weeks earlier and shows the seal triumphantly perching on a barely exposed piece of sand.

If any readers know more about seals than I do and can offer suggestions about what's going on, I would  love to have your comments. I have been trying to read any books I can find about seals, but there are surprisingly few of them. The Seals and the Curragh by R.M. (Ronald) Lockley is a lovely account of the author's time living among seals on an isolated stretch of the Welsh coast in the 1940s. It has a mystical streak which he developed further in his later book Seal Woman, a fantasy novel about a love affair with a woman who appears to be half seal. Myths about such seal women seem to be found in the folklore of many regions. Any recommendations for seal related reading would be welcome.