Born in 1837, Thomas Burt began working as a trapper boy, opening and closing trapdoors to let mining cars through, at the Haswell Pit at the age of 10. Just eighteen years later, he was elected the General Secretary of the Northumberland Miners’ Association—a post he held for the following fifty years.

In 1874, he was elected to Parliament, partly on a platform of truly universal suffrage—radical for a time when even campaigning for all men to have the vote was seen as bold. He lived until he was 84, but even that wasn’t long enough to see the franchise equalised across the adult population.

When the Northumberland Miners’ Association built its new headquarters in 1895, they named it ‘Burt Hall’ in his honour—which must have seemed a bit weird given that he was still the boss, and would be for another couple of decades. Naming a building after you and sticking a plaque on it thanking you for 27 years of service feels like a bit of a hint.

The statue of a miner on the top of Burt Hall is three-quarters life-sized, and was created by John Canavan, who doesn’t seem to be remembered for any other sculpture. The statue is based on one of the miners in the phenomenally popular painting ‘Going Home’ by Ralph Hedley. In 1889, the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle gave away a free print of the painting with their Christmas edition, which hung on the walls of many homes.

This colony of nine penguins sits on Redcar promenade. As I wandered past, I found myself contemplating the artistic intent. Two of the penguins are off to the side looking out to sea, and one—as can be seen in the background of both of these photos—appears to be inspecting another artwork.

The installation has, in fact, been moved three or four times since its 1994 installation, including once to make way for the bandstand. They were designed by the artist Tony Wiles, who was commissioned by the Council to create a ‘jolly’ addition to the esplanade.

The Council in question was Langbaurgh-on-Tees Borough Council—renamed in 1996 as Redcar & Cleveland. I’m surprised that I’ve never come across that historical nugget before—I don’t recall ever seeing a reference to Langbaurgh anywhere!

I’ve featured a lot of memorial fountains recently, and you may have thought that they’re looking a bit worse for wear. But over in Newcastle’s Exhibition Park, the clock erected in memory of Mr T H Nicholson in December 1927 is faring somewhat worse. The clock has been missing so long that even the Local Authority isn’t certain when and where it departed: ‘the clock was probably removed due to vandalism’ is as much as they’ve got.

I’ve struggled to find much record of T H Nicholson: even local history websites seem at a bit of a loss to who the clock was commemorating. The Newcastle Journal has a short entry about his funeral in December 1927, though restricts itself to listing the mourners rather than any facts about the man himself—though it does reveal his first name to be Thomas. His grave appears to be in St Andrew’s cemetery, just across the Great North Road from the site of this clock.

Given most of the connections in similarly aged Newcastle memorials, I strongly suspect he was in the shipping trade. There is a single sentence about TH Nicholson launching a ship on Tyneside in one contemporary press article. But—brace yourself for a handbrake turn—there is a much longer report on a Mr Thomas H Nicholson in the North Star in 1921:

“You are nothing more nor less than a contemptible hound; you shall go to prison for three months with hard labour!”

Ald C Stableforth, the chairman at Newcastle Police Court, made the above remark yesterday afternoon when he sentenced Thomas H. Nicholson, 104 Violet Street, Benwell, for inflicting cruelty on his three children.

Witness after witness said that the man not only thrashed his wife, but that he also severely punished his children and struck his infant.

Ald Stableforth said the magistrates had no doubt but that Nicholson had deliberately struck his infant and wife. It was the most disgraceful case he had ever encountered.

There are more, desperately grisly, details in the article which don’t bear repeating: suffice it to say that he’d be getting far more than three months in prison nowadays.

I’ve no way of checking whether the clock and the newspaper article refer to the same Thomas H. Nicholson. Surely they can’t be the same person, or the greater mystery would not be the missing clock, but the fact that the frame and plaque are still standing.

I often think of bandstands as morsels of Victoriana, relics of past forms of recreation in simpler times. Yet Redcar’s bandstand is so modern as to have solar panels on the roof.

It was installed in 2008. The story goes that during the filming of Atonement, the residents came to like the look of the bomb-damaged bandstand that formed part of the set. They liked it so much that local fundraising and an application for a lottery grant won them their very own permanent version.

I don’t think anyone can accuse it of being excessively ornate like some of it’s antique cousins—‘utilitarian’ might be the word—and I’m surprised it was constructed with steps rather than a ramp. But it’s great to see people invested in improving the public realm in their community.

I’m amused by the fact that a company would go to the effort of printing this notice on hoardings and also feel like this could make valuable feedback for an awful lot of written reports in my line of work these days.

The last editions of the Yellow Pages in the UK were printed in 2019, so no-one’s really ‘in the book’ any more.

Sometimes in life, familial and societal expectations can feel constraining to the point of crushing, like an ever-tightening corset. Fighting against the restriction can lead us to rebel more than we otherwise would, in ways that might be harmful or increase the discomfort: over-eating to resist the pressure to fit into the corset, for example. And that’s the central metaphor of this book.

I’m a bit uncomfortable with that metaphor. Food in this book is all about indulgence, resistance is about self-control, and there’s an inextricable link between food and size. I think that’s a bit lacking in nuance—and this is a book full of close observation, ambiguity, and life’s grey areas. In essence, I think Hazell’s novel is better than its central idea.

The plot takes us from a few weeks before Piglet’s wedding to Kit, through the ceremony, and to the immediate aftermath. ‘Piglet’ is a family nickname, stemming from a childhood occasion on which she ate the lion’s share of her sister’s birthday cake—an event with more behind it than first appears (or than her parents realise). Piglet and Kit are in their early 30s.

Piglet works as an editor of cookbooks at a publishing house, which provides much interesting background and colour in the first half of the novel but oddly evaporates in the second.

Piglet is from a working-class household, Kit is from a wealthy family, and there are some closely observed class dynamics bubbling away as the wedding preparations continue. These didn’t always ring true—much like in the film Saltburn, it sometimes felt like a projection of what wealthy people imagine working-class people think of them, rather than something grounded in essential truth. The novel also felt like it too often pulled its punches, especially with a rather limp, polite ending.

Yet, all things considered, I enjoyed this. I was absorbed and entertained by it, and I liked many of Hazell’s turns of phrase and observations. It’s a flawed novel, but one that I nevertheless relished spending time with. I’ll certainly look out for Hazell’s next novel.

The hit film Atonement, based on Ian McEwan’s novel, was partly filmed in Redcar, including the famous five-minute walkthrough of the Dunkirk beach. To commemorate the even, the film’s director (Joe Wright) and producer (Paul Webster) unveiled this steel sculpture by Lewis Robinson.

The artwork is successfully photo-bombed by sportswear brand Discipline. The juxtaposition of the boneheaded slogan ‘attitude wins the game’ with a tribute to a film about the complexity of profound guilt, reconciliation and the impossibility of true atonement is certainly eyebrow-raising.

At the weekend, Wendy and I went to see the son-et-lumiere installation Space, by the Luxmuralis collaboration, at Durham Cathedral.

It was visually impressive, lending the Cathedral an unusual ethereal quality, and changing the feeling of a building we know reasonably well. The sound was also effective, and at moments, the combination was genuinely breathtaking.

But we were slightly left wondering: what’s the point? What is the artwork trying to say? In one installation, there was audio of Richard Nixon speaking to the Apollo 11 astronauts, saying

For one priceless moment in the whole history of man all the people on this earth are truly one.

One wondered if this was a bit of a dig at the divisiveness of religion, exhibited in a Cathedral—but the whole thing left me with the impression that it wasn’t intended to be that deep (especially after I was handed a prayer card on my way out).

I think it may just have been spectacle for spectacle’s sake, and perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that.

When I first bought an iPhone, I remember regularly checking the App Store charts, searching for anything new or exciting to install on my phone. The top apps weren’t just installed on my phone, but also on all of my friends’ phones. It seemed like everyone had the same selection.

I don’t think that’s true anymore. As the number of apps has increased many-fold, and perhaps as the cultural milieu has become more diverse, I think the selection of apps on people’s phones varies to a much greater extent.

So I wondered: what proportion of today’s most popular apps are installed on my phone?

Of the top 10 free apps on the App Store, only one (ChatGPT) is installed on my phone. Of the top 20, only three are installed. Many of my apps rank lower in the charts, but I still have 18 of the top 50 installed—more than I might have guessed.

Of the top 50 paid apps, I have only one. I also have just one of the top 50 free games, and none of the top 50 paid games.

I’m not sure what any of this means, but it feels like a big change compared to fourteen years ago. Perhaps our personal devices have become a little more personal than they once were? Or maybe our collective attention is becoming ever more fragmented, threatening the shared nature of reality? Or perhaps both?

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.