I’m recommending another Guardian article this week: Rebecca Ley’s story of coping with her Dad’s vascular dementia is touchingly honest, and well worth reading.

Tyne Tees is one of the few areas of the UK where Ceefax is still available… but not for much longer! In 12 days, this region will complete digital switchover and we’ll lose Ceefax forever.

The degree to which this really doesn’t matter to me personally is exemplified by the fact that it’s taken me about 10 minutes to work out how to get it on my current TV…! But I used to use it quite a lot, so I feel a little bit sad to know that it will no longer be there!

This is a drum clock manufactured by Potts for the concourse at Newcastle Station, where it still hangs today. It’s about 120 years old or thereabouts. For a long time after I first moved to Newcastle, this clock had no hands. I don’t know whether it was broken and later repaired, or whether the hands were removed for restoration. But after what seemed like years of it being a broken clock, I remember being somewhat surprised to find it in full working order one day.

One of the more widely circulated pictures from the large storms that have battered Tyneside in the last few months is this shot of the very same clock, in which the roof of the station is leaking to such a degree that it looks like it’s raining inside!

Another arch today: this impressive 11m tall Chinese arch marks the northern entrance to Newcastle’s Chinatown. It was constructed in 2004 by engineers from mainland China at a cost of £475,000, and has a pair of guardian Shishi statues. In 2008, the street lighting in Chinatown was replaced by pretty Chinese lanterns, which I might well feature another day!

I was surprised to discover that England has only five “official” Chinatowns. As well as the one in Newcastle, there are Chinatowns in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham.

Before I started Only Time Will Tell, I hadn’t read an Archer novel since I left school, a little over a decade ago.

While reading this tale of a young Harry Clifton growing up, from pre-school boy to seaman, I was reminded of the phenomenal power of Archer’s storytelling. Judging his work as a piece of plot-based writing, it isn’t great: there are moments of spectacular unlikelihood (the wedding being one that stands out); there are literary cliches of characters littered through the text, from a slightly-eccentric brave old war veteran, to a caddish owner of a sleazy nightclub; and there’s a sense that Archer’s politics bleeds through the whole book, from the plot line to his turn of phrase. Even the narrative structure is a little hackneyed, with parts of the plot narrated from different characters perspectives (with some repetition, just so the important clues to future events aren’t missed).

Despite all of that, this is gripping stuff – a real page-turner of a book. Archer has that rare gift of making the next step in the plot absolutely predictable, setting up a sort of loose dramatic irony, in which the reader can sense what’s coming next long before the characters can. There’s a sense, as with most of Archer’s novels, that each development in the plot is a well-worn device being redeployed in a new setting. This continuous fulfilment of expectations isn’t dull, though: like a great piece of music, the certainty of knowing what the next note must be adds to the enjoyment… though just an occasional confounding of expectation might heighten it a little.

There’s no author I’ve discovered that has the story-telling ability of Jeffrey Archer. This is a book that knows it isn’t a literary great, and has no pretensions to being one. This is a masterclass in “spinning a yarn” – and it’s a very enjoyable read.

Only Time Will Tell is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

These are the arches of the Fine Art building at Newcastle University, which lead into the Quadrangle. Until recently, there used to be noticeboards between the two arches on which exam results were posted, but these have now been removed, and it is quite amazing the degree to which this simple action has changed the feeling of the space.

Below is one of the University’s publicity shots for it’s new medical school in Malaysia – NUMed. In an homage to the Newcastle base, they’ve even replicated the arches…!

This is Josef Craig’s gold post box, celebrating the 15 year-old’s world record breaking gold medal performance in the S7 400m Freestyle. He’s certainly become something of a local hero in Jarrow – the bloke painting the postbox said that so many people had come up and told him about Joe that he felt like he knew him!

This is a bit of Hamsterley Forest, County Durham’s largest forest.

It was planted in the 1930s, and housed one of Britain’s work camps – formally an “Instructional Centre” – where unemployed men were forced to do heavy manual labour. At the time, unemployed men were seen as “soft and demoralised”, and were forced to attend these camps to be “hardened and reconditioned” for twelve weeks under threat of their dole payments being stopped. Conditions were grim: the men were unpaid, lived in wooden huts, and did heavy manual labour for twelve hours a day. They were subject to military-style discipline under the guidance of retired police officers and sargeants major. The camps were so reviled that some newspapers of the day called them concentration camps.

In all, 200,000 men were sent to these camps – only 10% secured employment afterwards. It is, perhaps, surprising from our point of view that these camps were introduced by Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Government.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, some of the camps – including Hamsterley Forest – became prisoner of war camps.

Perhaps surprisingly, part of the Hamsterley Camp still exists – though these days, it’s been converted into a Visitors’ Centre for the forest. The forest offers a range of activities for visitors these days, including mountain biking, the RAC rally, and fell running. I wonder, though, how many visitors are aware of the forest’s dark past?

Tonight’s the Last Night of the Proms, so I thought it would be appropriate to feature something musical. This is Roman Bar Column, one of a number of bottle-themed waymarkers in the Ouseburn Valley created by local Fine Art graduate Lewis Robinson. I say he’s a Fine Art graduate, but that was nearly a quarter of a century ago, and he’s done an awful lot since then.

Here’s a closer look at that violin:

Now I did say that these sculptures were bottle-themed, and you might be wondering how this ties in. Well, on the other side of the sculpture, you’ll find this:

When the sculpture was first plonked here in 2002, this was a neat visual pun as it was opposite one of Byker’s most famous pubs, The Plough Inn, which dated back to the late 1800s. Unfortunately, this closed down a few years ago, and the building is now occupied by Albaik, a (highly rated) Lebonese restaurant. This rather ruins the gag.

Now, given that I was at the top of the Ouseburn Valley, and given this blog’s history, how was I supposed to resist a picture of the Ouseburn?

This was taken from the top of Byker Bridge, and shows the river curving round Ouseburn Farm. There’s more about Byker Bridge, and some photos from the bottom, back on day 224.

This is the Gateshead office of Schawk!, a global brand development company. I only know that because their name is so arresting that I felt the need to take a photo of their building, so they clearly did a good job of branding themselves.

Right next door, there’s a bit of branding that I think is unique to the North East:

Wadds is a local glazier. When businesses had their windows smashed, Wadds would (of course) temporarily board over the windows whilst manufacturing a replacement. Wadds would decorate these boards with a distinctive stencil saying “Wadds was here”. I don’t think they do it any more, but still, the “Wadds is here” sign on their HQ is a bit of an in-joke as well as a statement of fact!

And finally, just down the road there is a bit of branding to which I think the man from Del Monte would say “no”: