Charver whey-ayePhone

IT MAY BE SOME TIME before I can afford an iPhone so I knocked this up and sent it to apple, in the hope they'll think it's a good idea and give me a freebie. Click on the picture to read the text.

Learning difficulties

IF YOU GIVE the people on the right a ring and sign up for some English 'tution', you may end up writing as well as this. I spotted the poster in the window of a junk shop at the top of Shields Road today. Click to enlarge.

Polished off

I'VE JUST NOTICED this garage in Shieldfield now does car washing and valeting. Next time I'm there, I'll be sure to ask for the 'extras'.

Half-baked hotel

AMBITIOUS PLANS for a massive exhibition of scaffolding in the centre of the city have been scuppered, leaving the organisers £200,000 out of pocket. Art gurus at the Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative had planned to obscure Grey’s Monument with the metalwork for several weeks and also place a temporary hotel room at the top, but the scheme was thrown out when it was run past some normal people at the council.

A committee vetting the plan voted nine-to-one against it, with one councillor stating it amounted to an act of cultural vandalism. Unfortunately, Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative hadn’t bothered to seek planning permission before shelling out for the scaffolding.

They maintained that the ‘artwork’ - entitled Hotel Monument - would bring in tourists and greatly boost the local economy, with a figure of one million pounds being plucked from the air. Most of the outlay will come from their own coffers, but the public will be hit with a bill of £35,000.

Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative were criticised last year when they paid some Aussies quarter of a million pounds to sling some lumps of wood from a rope over the River Tyne for a couple of days. But they’d hoped the city centre location of Hotel Monument would mean the ‘artwork’ would be appreciated by more than the couple of hundred people who turned out to see the ‘Bamboo Bridge’.

However, their plan seems to have stumbled over the assumption that people would rather gaze at a construction site, than a bona fide piece of public art. Grey’s Monument was sculpted by the same bloke who did Nelson in Trafalgar Square, and is a Grade I listed building. People seem to like it as it is.

Waiving aside any consultation fee, Newcastle Stuff has some advice for the art boffins at NGI: next time, put a bail hostel or - better still - some student accommodation at the top instead of a hotel, and the council will bite your hand off.

Barrage of abuse

ALMOST TWO YEARS of disruption and misery for regulars at the Tyne pub have come to an end, with the completion of a barrage and lock at the mouth of the river Ouseburn.

The contraption - which looks like an upended Thunderbird 2 - is intended to control the tidal flow of the river and maintain its level at 2.6 metres. However, the construction work has also caused extensive flooding outside the pub, making acccess difficult and leaving the place even more so after a few drinks.

It has caused further controversy by coming in a million pounds over budget. But the council has shrugged off criticism, saying it is an important part of the regeneration of the Lower Ouseburn Valley.

With the river stabilised from its mouth near the Tyne pub, upstream to the Cluny, they’re hoping a Little Venice-style community of barges and houseboats will emerge; replacing the decrepit colllection of tubs currently moored on its banks.

However, whether stagnating the already aromatic water is the answer, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the good news is that there’s no longer any need for wellies, when visiting the Tyne.

Soap award

FIRED UP BY THE success of the Angel of the North and the Baltic, council chiefs have decided to make Gateshead easier to find on the map by applying for city status.

Apparently it’s up to the Queen to decide which town becomes a city, which she does every few years by means of a ‘competition’. The traditional qualification of having a cathedral is no longer necessary - which is just as well, because Gateshead does not have one of these. Nor will it have a city centre, if the bid is successful.

Tesco have acquired much of what was the heart of the town and are busy demolishing it to make way for a superstore, surrounded by smaller shops and businesses that are ‘sympathetic’ to their masterplan. Gateshead will soon become Tesco upon Tyne and unless the Queen can be bribed with points on her loyalty card, the bid would appear to be doomed.

You can’t fault the council for their optimism, because aesthetic qualities clearly don’t matter. Sunderland was granted city status in 1992 after winning a competition to celebrate the Queen’s 40th year on the throne, so by that reckoning a builder’s skip by the side of the road would be in with a shout.

But Gateshead has had city status on Tyneside at least, since the outbreak of World War II. Many older locals still refer to the town as ‘Soap City’, thanks to the activities of the Luftwaffe during the early months of the conflict. 

This period was known as the ‘Phoney War’, because few shots were fired in anger and the Royal Air Force dropped leaflets rather than bombs on Germany, urging its citizens to give up before anyone got hurt.

The Germans responded by dropping their own leaflets on the UK, singling out Gateshead as the place that would benefit most from life under Nazi rule. They promised the locals free bars of soap so they could wash themselves properly - much to the amusement of the people of Newcastle.

Come to think of it, Tesco’s extensive range of toiletries could actually stand the town in good stead, with its bid for real city status.