To make up the numbers following my failure to post a picture on Sunday, here’s one taken today of the former British Gas Engineering Research Centre and Mechanical Engineering Firm in Killingworth. The arch on the right of the photo adds a touch of drama to a small entrance bridge, while the roof exhibits three water storage tanks and three Venturi formed ventilation tubes.

The building dates back to the days of Killingworth Township, which is an interesting example of a planned town. This intriguing old leaflet describes the Township, which connected residential towers to a carefully planned town centre via raised walkways, so that traffic and people never had to mix. Unfortunately, this also made life a bit claustrophobic, as well as generating a high-risk area for attacks and muggings: on high-rise walkways, there’s nowhere to run or hide if confronted. As a result of their damning unpopularity, the whole lot has now been flattened.

But the impossibly futuristic Engineering Research Centre, attracted to the Township shortly after it was built, remains.

It seems hard to believe that here in the 21st century, I still apply for study leave by posting a carbon-copy quadruplet A3 sized form… It’s almost difficult to believe that the deanery can find a printer that still makes carbon copy forms, let alone that printing thousands of them is a cost-effective way of administering a process. And that’s before the cost of posting them back and forth is included!

As I post this, I note that I missed posting a photo yesterday. Sunday seems to be the day I forget most frequently… I’m not sure why! I’ll post another later to make up the numbers!

There’s not a lot I can add about this plaque… other than that it’s in an odd place, on Platform 4, rather than near the entrance or in a prominent location!

Newcastle has a history of pioneering leadership in the field of paediatrics. In fact, one of the UK’s first paediatric hospitals, the Fleming Memorial Hospital for Sick Children, opened here in the 1860s.

By the late 1890s, we had a second paediatric hospital, the Sanderson Children’s Hospital, where some of the first groundbreaking work in paediatric orthopaedics was carried out.

And, in the last century, Sir James Spence – the UK’s first full-time paediatrician – founded the social paediatrics subspecialty, and revolutionised our understanding of child mortality (and much more besides) through the Newcastle Thousand Families Study.

The Great North Children’s Hospital – of which this is a particularly bad photo – is a £100m development opened in 2010. It is but the next step in this illustrious journey. It’s designed to be as un-hospital like as possible, even including a teenage “penthouse” on the top floor, with a pool table, massive flat screen TV, and some of the best views in the city. It also has unrivalled medical facilities, of course, including a genuinely world-leading “bubble unit” for kids with severe immunity problems.

Who knows what the next step will be?

There have been lots of analyses of the retail cult of A&F written over the years, and this one from Emine Saner in The Guardian is as good as any. If you’re not young enough to be familiar with A&F (that is, if you aren’t in your mid-teens), this is a great primer.

John Simpson Kirkpatrick was a man from South Shields who deserted the merchant navy, and then enlisted with the Australian army at the outbreak of the First World War. He landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915, and found Duffy the donkey within hours of his arrival.

Over the following weeks, John and Duffy ferried wounded soldiers back from the front line and no man’s land while under Turkish fire. It’s said that he sang and whistled while rescuing his comrades, ignoring the rifle fire and flying shrapnel all around him.

Unfortunately, this was to prove his downfall, as he was killed by machine gun fire on his 24th day of ferrying the wounded, aged just 22. His actions saved the lives of over 300 soldiers, and he was recommended for the Victoria Cross, though this wasn’t awarded – a decision that remains contentious in Australia (and South Tyneside) to this day.

Duffy the donkey survived the attack, and continued to ferry wounded soldiers after Kirkpatrick’s death, under the guidance of Richard Henderson. As the soldiers couldn’t bear to leave him behind, Duffy was evacuated to Greece when the army retreated from Gallipoli. He then disappeared, much to the disappointment of the soldiers who wanted to parade him as a war hero in Australia. Reports differ as to whether the Greeks stole Duffy and sold him (donkeys were worth a lot of money), or whether he broke free and ran into the sunset to live out his days in the wild.

This statue of Kirkpatrick and Duffy by local miner-turned-artist Robert Olley stands on Ocean Road in South Shields town centre.

Recently, Regus gave me a free Businessworld Gold membership, which gives me free access to their business lounges. Today, I thought I’d pop into a nearby Regus to check it out. I had some work to do that needed close concentration and I didn’t want the distractions that often come from being in the office, so I had planned to spend the afternoon working from home, and this seemed a reasonable alternative. I was slightly concerned that it would be a bit rubbish, but figured that I could just carry on home if it was.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised. I installed myself in this ThinkPod, a sort of cocoon containing a desk, chair, reading lamp and power sockets, and worked undisturbed in a quiet environment. There is, of course, free wifi, which seemed pretty fast. There were comfy seats and free hot drink drinks available, but I didn’t use these.

Basically, it was like working in a good library, but more private and more comfortable. It was much nicer than working in a coffee shop, which I’ve done a few times in the past year. I’ll definitely go back over the next year while my free membership lasts, and with over 1,000 locations in 95 countries I can see that this would be invaluable when working away from home .But I’d never dream of paying £25/month for UK access, nor £35/month for global access which appears to be the going rate.

I was really attracted to the idea of this book: 39 passengers on a lifeboat struggling for survival, making tough choices, and operating within a tricky ethical and moral framework.

But the book didn’t live up to its promise. The characters were poorly developed, and I simply didn’t care about them. The single first-person narrative structure lessened the reader’s ability to interpret the situation from multiple points of view. This problem is worsened by the narrator being a dull, submissive, self-centred bore. There are too many flashbacks to the time prior to the sinking of the ship, and too much of the story is set after the final passengers have been rescued. The dilemmas were framed in the predominantly Christian ethical framework of the early 20th century, which was very limiting. And, predictably, there was a church figure amongst the passengers on the lifeboat. Even reading that last sentence alone, you can probably guess his fate.

This is a short book, but it was a struggle to plough through. It had enjoyable moments and passages, but the narrative structure of the story and the period in which it was set both conspired to constrict the moral and ethical superstructure to such an extent that it ceased to be interesting.

In summary, the premise is great, but the execution is poor.

The Lifeboat is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

This is Newcastle’s Sandman Signature hotel, which is Sandman’s first hotel outside of its native Canada.

It occupies the former headquarters of Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, which was by far the UK’s biggest brewer for much of the nineties and noughties. It made everything from Foster’s and Kronenbourg to John Smith’s and Kingfisher – plus, of course, local favourite Newcastle Brown Ale. In 2008, it was taken over by Carlsberg and Heineken, and within a couple of years the company was rebranded as Heineken UK Ltd, closing the book on a company heritage that dates back to 1749.

The hotel is part of the Downing Plaza development that is using striking architecture to create a gateway from the city centre to Newcastle’s nascent Science Central development. This development, on the former site of the Newcastle Brewery itself, will host Newcastle University’s sustainability research institute and other established science-related businesses alongside space dedicated to hosting and aiding science-related start-ups. There will, of course, be the typical retail and leisure sites mixed in there too.

It’s a bold two-decade plan supported by a shopping-list of different organisations, and with ownership of the site shared between the city council and the university. It will be great to see it come to fruition!

As a public health doctor, I was very pleased to see the Stoptober team out in force when I popped to the supermarket today. I wish anyone taking part every strength and every success!

If you smoke but haven’t yet signed up, there’s still time to get involved: sign up at the Stoptober website.

If you don’t smoke: good for you!