I am the sort of heretic who, if asked, would have supported the recent transformation of (part of) Battersea Power Station into a shopping centre. The same part of me that has been whinging recently about the stasis of cathedrals would have praised it as an interesting bit of repurposing, celebrating heritage by making something new of it.

I’ve been down to the Power Station a couple of times in recent years, before the main building opened, so the surrounding ‘distinctive’ (ugly) flats and mildly preposterous ‘community’ shops weren’t a surprise. But this time, I was able to venture inside, and I was surprised at what I found.

It is utterly soulless. It has the feeling of a shopping centre in a second-rate European railway station, the sort that behooves one to grip one’s backpack straps a little more tightly and quicken one’s pace.

This isn’t helped by the lighting scheme. It seems to have been designed to with ‘traditional’ warm white lighting set against mostly matte black fixtures and fittings throughout. I suspect this was designed to be sympathetic to the building, but instead it clashes at every turn with bright white retail lighting and flashy screens—while leaving corridors feeling threateningly dark. There are more narrow, dark, low-ceilinged corridors than one would imagine in a newly opened premise, which I guess is a side-effect of the conversion. This atmosphere might improve as the centre’s occupancy rate rises and injects some life into the place, but many of the warm-white LED fixtures have already acquired a flicker that suggests the LED controller is faulty. Low-level flickering lighting in a dark space gives an oddly rundown feeling to a venue that isn’t even yet fully open.

The grey-ish terrazzo flooring—somehow already looking dirty—only adds to the rundown railway vibe. Incongruous touches of brass and wood here and there, as though someone felt that the scheme needed warming up a bit, look more like non-matching “patched” bits than a design scheme.

For reasons surpassing understanding, the architecture is left to fade into the background. Look at the picture at the top: beautiful columns virtually unlit, while shop names, flashy screens and two incongruous food trucks are brighter than the sun. Why would anyone do that?

Maybe I’m judging it too soon. Perhaps it will seem better when more units are occupied, and the whole thing feels a little more lived in. I don’t think I’ll hurry back, but potentially in a couple of years this will seem like another “he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about” post.

Surrealist art tends to be the sort of thing I like, the sort of art that I wish I could take home. There’s something about its playfulness and inventiveness always makes me think a little differently, provoking reflection and contemplation in a way that other art sometimes doesn’t.

I don’t know very much about art or the history of art. I never studied it, and it’s not something that has cropped up in much of my reading. Nor is it something I’ve really sought to read about. But I do enjoy a good exhibition. And to my mind, this collection of surrealist art at London’s Design Museum constituted an excellent exhibition.

There were five objects that especially stood out to me: none of the pictures of these are my own, they are all outrageously stolen from various museum websites.

This is Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone, the archetypical surrealist object and the hero image used in most of the advertising for this exhibition. In the exhibition, it is presented alongside examples of Dalí’s Mae West Lips Sofa and Champagne Standard Lamp in a mock living room.

The telephone stood out to me as an object I’d previously seen and which raised a smile, but whose meaning I hadn’t grasped (or really considered) until it was presented in this exhibition. I hadn’t appreciated that Dalí considered both the lobster and the telephone to be inherently sexual, nor that he positioned the sexual organs of the lobster directly over the mouthpiece.

The absurdity, intrigue, and humour of those details made me appreciate the object anew.

I’ve been to see some of Gaudí’s work before, most notably La Sagrada Família, and while I’ve been awed by the way his work reflects the natural word, I’ve not always been wild about the aesthetic of the end result.

An example of Gaudí’s Calvert Chair is featured in the exhibition as part of a commentary on how his work influenced surrealist art. This is a connection I would never have made without it being pointed out to me. This was a bit of art education encapsulated in a single object, which gave me new understanding. Isn’t that the real power of exhibitions?

They make a bigger deal in the exhibition guide about the connection between Dadaism and surrealism, and feature some work by DuChamp, but to me, the Gaudí connection was less obvious and more interesting.

Conquest by Nina Saunders was, of all the objects I’d love to pilfer, the most obviously impractical option.

This is a 2017 piece with so much to say about the forces which impact the illusion of domestic norms and, depending on how you look at it, either destroy the perception, or force the perception to warp around them. This would certainly make an impact in my living room, and I think you could probably work out some comfortable unorthodox positions to sit on it too (though I’m not certain how Saunders would feel about that).

Wolfgang Paalen’s Le Génie de l’espèce felt like an object of the moment, inseparably representing both guns and death. It actually dates from 1939, very shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.

This made me think a lot about how humanity never seems to learn the lessons of the past.

I enjoyed the fact that the Campana Brothers’ chair made of plush Disney toys provoked a sense of immediate repulsion, despite being made of soft, friendly characters. If Wendy had been with me, I know she’d have said: “too much.”

’Objects of Desire’ continues at the Design Museum until 19 February.

Pyrex, the thermally resistant glass, used to be made in Sunderland. In fact, between 1922 and 2007, all Pyrex sold across the commonwealth—excepting Canada—was made in Sunderland. You’ve probably got a bit of Sunderland in your home right now.

The city is proud of this heritage, and so Sunderland Museum has created Pyrex100—an exhibition to celebrate a century since the start of manufacture in the city.

When I think of Pyrex, I think of glass measuring jugs. I was therefore unsurprised to see that the earliest Pyrex manufactured in Sunderland was a range of clear glassware. I had no idea, though, that glass teapots were a thing in the 1920s and 1930s.

Around this time, Pyrex was also a pioneer in marketing products directly to householders—mostly housewives at that time—rather than to their household staff. It’s sometimes startling to be reminded of the pace of societal change over the last century.

Though the designs of these pieces look suspiciously familiar, I was also unaware of Opalware. These were products made of Pyrex, and therefore strong and heat-resistant, but designed to look like china. They don’t look like they’d fool anyone, but I’m not convinced that I’d immediately pick them out as glass.

The crockery we use in our house is made of reclaimed offcuts of glass products: I thought this was a really novel idea when we bought them, but clearly I’m 70 years behind the times.

Commemorative Pyrex was a thing, too: here’s a 1966 World Cup commemorative glass. I would perhaps have expected to see this sort of thing in crystal, but seeing it in Pyrex maybe illustrates that Pyrex was once desirable in a similar way.

And this is the last bit of Pyrex ever made in the UK, which rolled off the production line as the factory closed in 2007. As this was the last commercial glassware factory in Sunderland, this also brought to an end something like 1,500 years of glassmaking history in the city.

You might, like me, have assumed that the word Pyrex shares the Greek root pyr (fire) with pyrexia and, indeed, funeral pyre, given that its main property is heat resistance, and it is glass forged in a fire. But this exhibition made me wonder about the ‘ex’, and so I came home and looked it up.

And prepare to clutch your pearls because—amazingly—the brand has nothing to do with pyr and everything to do with pies.

The Oxford English Dictionary quotes the original company’s assistant secretary as saying:

The word ‘pyrex’ is a purely arbitrary word which was devised in 1915 as a trade-mark for products manufactured and sold by Corning Glass Works… We had a number of prior trade-marks ending in the letters ‘ex’. One of the first commercial products to be sold under the new mark was a pie plate and in the interests of euphonism the letter ‘r’ was inserted between ‘pie’ and ‘ex’ and the whole thing condensed to ‘pyrex’.

It just goes to show that you can never rely on etymological assumptions.

Pyrex100 continues at Sunderland Museum… but it ends on Saturday, so you need to get there quick if you want to see it.

A stage play inspired by a documentary film about some political television debates from 1960s America doesn’t feel intuitively like it would have much to offer. One could reasonably assume that the effect would have been dulled and flattened by the distance in time and multiple re-interpretations from the source material.

Yet, this was exhilarating. Graham’s script dramatises the US debates between Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jr on the ABC network, programmed around the Republican and Democratic national conventions. It explores the behind-the-scenes drive within ABC to stage these debates—it’s about ratings, as ever it is—as well as the personalities and motivations of Vidal and Buckley.

Zachary Quinto and David Harewood were excellent in this production at London’s Noël Coward theatre: both are famous for other roles, but fairly unknown to me. The staging was inspired, using live projections to make relevant scenes at once theatrical and televisual.

Graham presents this series of debates as the source of all personality and opinion-led discussion of politics on television. Clever scripting—much of it seemingly based on well-chosen verbatim quotes—draws parallels with current politics. The whole play felt immediately relevant to modern politics and media… though the time-jump at the end felt a bit like it rammed that message home harder than was necessary.

Yet, the script as a whole was definitely the biggest star here, cleverly combining direct quotations and zingy, catty one-liners with urgent questions about society’s approach to politics.

I really enjoyed this.

‘Best of Enemies’ continues at the Noël Coward theatre until 18 February.

Wendy and I have been for a wonderful winter wander alongside a short section of Hadrian’s Wall. We started at Housesteads Fort and walked a couple of miles to Sycamore Gap, before about-turning and wending our way back.

We feel so lucky to live so close to such spectacular and historic landscape. When we got up in the morning, we had no particular plans, but fancied a bit of a walk—and within 40 minutes or so, we were strolling a World Heritage Site.

The walk was five fairly easy miles, though with lots of undulations and on quite muddy and slippery ground.

Just as we were finishing our walk and trying to dredge up our Key Stage 3 history to remember when Hadrian’s Wall was built, we spotted the AD122 bus, which solved that mystery for us.

Wendy and I recently had occasion to buy two Merseyrail Day Savers, which set us back a total of £11.20.

“Blimey,” we thought, “that’s so much cheaper than the Metro!”

But it’s not. The equivalent Tyne & Wear Metro Day Tickets would have cost us £11.40, and—unlike the Merseyrail ticket—our fare would have additionally covered up to six children. It would have also allowed travel during the morning peak, which the Merseyrail ticket did not. And it would have permitted travel not just on the Metro, but also on local rail services and the Shields Ferry.

It’s funny how perceptions of fares don’t always match reality. Deals can be better (or worse) than they seem.

I’ve read Diamond Geezer’s blog for many years. He’s been blogging for a similar number of years to me, though is much better at it, not least in terms of consistency of posting.

For yesterday‘s post, on one of his many lockdown walks around his part of London, he decided to take a picture every twenty minutes. It sounded like a fun diversion, so I thought I’d do the same: an aimless ramble starting in Gosforth, my part of Newcastle, in somewhat less than clement weather.

20 minutes

Twenty minutes after leaving home, I found myself at Dentsmires Bridge across the Ouseburn. Just out of shot to the right are two men from the Environment Agency, looking concerned about the water level.

This bridge connects Woodlea Gardens, a residential street, to Heathery Lane, a now mostly pedestrianised track originally so-called as it cut across heathland, but which now mostly cuts across golf courses.

The proportion of Gosforth’s green areas which are given over to golf courses, serving a small minority of the population, is a topic I occasionally find irrationally aggravating. Not today, though: not only are golfers barred from enjoying the course by covid restrictions, the week’s rainfall has left the course so waterlogged that it may be some time before it’s usable again.

The Ouseburn is significant not just because I’ll pass it several times on my route today, and not just because I’ve blogged about it plenty of times, but also because it underlies the name “Gosforth” (though not obviously). The name comes from “Gese Ford”—a ford across the Ouse.

40 minutes

A flooded footpath on my rambling route beyond Heathery Lane meant some unplanned doubling back and a diversion through Whitebridge Park, a relatively recent addition to Gosforth which started to be built in the 1980s.

When house-hunting, Wendy and I were put off this area because of the slightly uncanny quietness of its many cul-de-sacs, and this remained true today: the only evidence of human life as I ambled through was a man eating a sandwich in a broadband van.

Whitebridge Park is also home to a play area which I think may be in the running to be Britain’s most depressing.

1 hour

After meandering through the 1960s Melton Park and past the thousand-year-old ruins of North Gosforth Chapel, burned down some five-hundred years ago, I found myself in Newcastle Great Park. With a grand plan from the early 2000s to build more than 4500 homes over a forty-year period, Great Park is a massive development—and not without controversy.

Here at Warkworth Woods, the first bit to be developed, the developers decided to cobble parts of the roadway, presumably to add to a ‘village-like’ aesthetic.

1 hour 20 minutes

Having crossed the A1, I reached the newer part of the Great Park development. Here, the world headquarters of the software giant Sage occupies a huge office—though not for much longer—and a school catering for thousands of pupils is due to open later in the year.

I skirted around most of the housing in this part of the development, sticking with the paths through the green areas (or, as the developers would have it, the “diverse mosaic of woodland, meadowland and network of drainage systems with hills, vales and streams”). These include a few patches of reedy bodies of Ouseburn water. On nicer days, this area is frequently busy with dog-walkers.

1 hour 40 minutes

With unfortunate timing, twenty minutes of further walking brought me to this rather unexciting pedestrianised route across the area known as Brunton Bridge. Speaking of bridges, however, I did have to cross the raging Ouseburn once again to get here.

2 hours

The two-hour mark saw me crossing the Metro line near Fawdon, with an excitement only slightly tempered by having previously crossed a different part of the line only ten minutes earlier. This track route dates back to the Ponteland railway constructed in the early 1900s, which closed to passengers in 1929. It continued to serve freight, however, including the then-Rowntree now-Nestlé factory which is just behind the trees on the right of the photo above. It now makes Toffee Crisps. It might also make other things, but Toffee Crisps are unbeatable in my book.

The line carried passengers once again from 1981, when the Tyne and Wear Metro started operating along this stretch.

To get here, I also had to nip across the A1 again. The history of the A1 in the North East is surprisingly involved. When this section opened in 1993, it was the third bit of road on this latitude designated as the A1 in just sixteen years.

2 hours 20 mins

Red House Farm is an area whose history is all in the name: a residential development on what used to be a farm, of which essentially all that remains is an eighteenth-century farm house, which today’s route didn’t pass.

The Red House Farm Junior Football Club does what it says on the tin gates, having started in 1990 and since taking on hundreds of 6-19 year-old players, many of whom have gone on to be professional players.

2 hours 40 mins

Twenty minutes earlier than DG, I’m back home and slowly drying out.

Yesterday, I stopped for a coffee in the lobby of one of Amsterdam’s more upmarket hotels. I settled into a stylish yet surprisingly comfortable armchair next to a wrought iron room divider, and cracked open Fay Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She Devil. Before I knew it, though, I had stopped reading, and instead tuned in to the intriguing conversation on the other side of the divider.

At a coffee table was a man with a shaved head, who looked of a similar age to me, wearing a white shirt, and a somewhat over-tight unfastened blue suit jacket, pale blue denim jeans, and black suede shoes. Opposite him, with their backs to me, were a man and a woman, each in smartly conservative suits, with leather folios of notes and papers before them. All three were served cappuccinos.

My ears pricked up when the conversation revealed that the man in jeans was confirming and signing the paperwork for a €38m personal loan: that’s not a conversation one hears every day, and not one that I would have expected to hear in such a public place. It turned out that the loan was to fund the purchase of a luxury boat from the man’s father, at below market value as it was partly being offered as a gift. The man intended to use the boat for general recreation, but also had designs on renting it out commercially for cruises, as acquaintances with similar boats were reputedly wont to do.

I know very little about luxury boats. I’ve seen articles in newspapers and magazines about million-pound super-yachts, but I can’t even conceive of what sort of vessel €38m buys you – let alone the full amount including the ‘gift’. I’d believe you if you told me this was a conversation about a four-bedroom yacht that one might sail into a small harbour, and I’d also believe you if you told me this was a conversation about a mini cruise ship with tens of rooms that would require dedicated port facilities. I’ve really no idea. And I’ve also no idea on what sort of terms a €38m personal loan would typically be offered: it’s never a conversation that’s crossed my mind, let alone one that I’m ever likely to take part in (especially if I spend all my money on expensive coffees in posh hotels). And so I was intrigued. Fay Weldon was not going to receive much attention as I sipped this particular latte.

As the conversation progressed, the man in jeans explained that he was confident in the arrangement because he was near certain that his pay cheques would cover the loan repayments whether or not he got round to renting the boat out (goodness only knows what his job was), and if he should fall on hard times, he could sell the boat and easily pay off the loan given that it was for less than the market value. So to this nosey parker, listening through the divider, the deal seemed as sensible as a loan to spend €38m on a boat ever could.

Yet just as he was on the verge of signing the paperwork, the man asked a question which confounded me: “Given that there are no arrangement fees, why are you charging me such as low interest rate?”

The man went onto explain that he was concerned that he had misread the wisdom of the deal. The loan provider had sent two members of staff to meet him in Amsterdam from their offices elsewhere in Europe, at presumably high cost to their firm. The amount of money being borrowed was substantial. The low interest rate meant that the profit they would make on the deal would be small in comparison with the outlay. Why, the man wanted to know, weren’t they pushing for more? Were they expecting that he would default on the loan, and that they would recoup a greater financial prize from the fallout? Were his assumptions about the safety of the deal wrong? What did they know that he didn’t?

This question confounded me because it’s not common to hear someone clarify the reasons for suspected undercharging. I’m not sure I would have done so—not that I’m ever likely to borrow €38m—because I think I would have been concerned that the lenders would raise their price to meet my expectations.

Yet on my way to Amsterdam, I’d just finished reading Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. This book makes the case that receiving feedback is an interactive process, and we should always seek to understand the point of view of the person giving the feedback. The interest rate on this loan is clearly a type of feedback from the lender.

By discussing the rate with the lenders, the man in jeans could either avoid a huge and costly financial miscalculation on his part, or could set his mind at rest. If the lenders had jacked up the rate in response to his question, he could always have taken his business elsewhere—and, of course, the lenders were unlikely to do so for exactly that reason.

The decision by the man in jeans to have this conversation could have only positive effects: and yet, it is a conversation that I would naturally have shied away from. I suppose, given that he was taking out a €38m loan, the man was probably more used to large scale financial transactions than me. It wouldn’t be an absurd supposition that his day job may be in the financial sector. Perhaps that is why he had he confidence that I would have lacked to initiate this conversation.

But that’s a very easy get-out for myself. What other conversations do I shy away from for illegitimate reasons? Do I avoid asking things that could help prevent me from making unwise decisions because I lack the confidence to ask them? There’s some food for thought and reflection.

And the answer to the man’s question? Simple, really, according to the lenders. Pricing for loans is risk-based. The loan is secured on the boat which is worth more than the total value of the loan regardless. The terms of the loan state that appropriate insurance must be in place. Even if the man fails to make his repayments, the risk of the lenders not receiving their capital back is very low: such low risk investments for such large amount of money are rare. And besides, even at a low interest rate, the lenders stand to make hundreds of thousands of Euros in pure profit, because a small percentage of a very big number is still a big number.

Before long, the paperwork was duly signed and all three were on their way. The meeting lasted twenty, maybe thirty minutes. If I were one of the lenders, travelling internationally for such a short meting would feel like a waste of time, even though I’d just brought in a huge amount of profit for my firm. But as someone travelling solely for pleasure, I think this was possibly one of the most thought-provoking and educational coffees I’ve sipped in a very long time.

Most of the pictures in this post are not my own, though I did post a nice picture I took at the Rijksmuseum in ‘real time’. In this post, the first picture (Amsterdam) is by Boudewijn “Bo” Boer; the second (a ship’s wheel) is by Maximilian Weisbecker; the third (Amsterdam again) is by Javier M; and the fourth is my own picture of a boat’s wake, co-incidentally taken from the back of the DFDS ferry to Amsterdam (though not on this trip). All are used with grateful thanks, and under the terms of their Creative Commons licences.

Earlier this week, I was in Barcelona for one of my occasional solo weekends in Europe. Normally, I like to spend these brief breaks doing absolutely nothing: I like simply to wander around with no particular destination in mind, taking in the sights and sounds of somewhere new and occasionally stopping on a bench or in a coffee shop to read for a little while. I enjoy spending time with my own thoughts.

This time, however, I made an exception to my rule. When I told people I was going to Barcelona, several people exhorted me not to miss the Sagrada Família.

Construction began on the Catholic ‘Church of the Holy Family’ in 1882, and from 1883 Antonio Gaudí became its chief architect. Much of his life was dedicated to design and construction of the church, and indeed he lived on site for quite a number of years. Following his death in 1926, construction has continued—often slowly, and often with considerable controversy—and it is currently estimated that the building will be finished in 2026, give or take a few years for the final bits of decoration to be finished.

Prior to visiting, I wasn’t particularly familiar with Gaudí’s work. I’ve never previously visited Barcelona, where his influence is pretty much unavoidable, and I can’t claim to be well-read in architecture, so it’s probably no surprise that I don’t think I’d ever really come across Gaudí before. Nevertheless, I couldn’t ignore the exhortations of friends, and so bought myself a ticket to visit.

In fact, due to the illogical position that “entry only” tickets had sold out, I ended up buying an extra-expensive ticket which included an “audio guide”, as if to add an extra layer of interruption to my planned day of wandering and contemplation.

The reason I’ve felt compelled to write about this visit is that I’ve never before felt so profoundly conflicted about a building. Several friends who encouraged me to visit have since asked what I thought of it, and I’ve struggled to string together a semi-coherent response, because I have such strongly logically inconsistent opinions. And so I thought I would try and set down here the answer to the question of what I thought of the Sagrada Familía. But, as with some of my other recent posts, I’m only publishing it twelve months later, so you may have been waiting quite a while for an answer.

La Sagrada Família is a building of awesome scale: it dominates the landscape in a way which seems almost out of place in a city. The basilica covers an entire city block and, even in its incomplete form, has an imposing height to figure alongside its great mass. I was staying in a hotel three miles away, and could still clearly see the building from my hotel’s window, across the city’s rooftops. From this distance, there is something oddly other-worldy and inhuman about it. Seeing its mass within Barcelona’s grid system, conforming to a city block’s size yet still being utterly disproportionate in scale, reminded me of nothing quite so much as one of those occasionally odd buildings that would spring up in Sim City 2000.

I approached from the east, walking along Avinguda Diagonal, meaning that the basilica came in and out of view according to the gaps between the buildings. The closer I got, the more spectacularly ugly the spires appeared, covered in horizontal openings. These opening serve to let the wind blow the tubular bells yet to be installed within, and also to lend a ‘natural’ appearance to the architecture: something repeated throughout Gaudí’s work.

I have no doubt that to create huge spires which are open structures from stone requires true architectural genius. How could it not? They are clearly both intricately constructed with an eye toward delicacy, and yet strong enough to withstand enormous forces acting upon them. Delicacy and strength rarely go together.

And yet, to my eye, they look like nothing quite so much as insect nests that I’d call Rentokill about. They strike me as thoroughly aesthetically unpleasant. This impression was only reinforced when I got close enough to see that they have occasional fragments of text carved into them at huge sizes visible from the ground. They really are arrestingly ugly.

The Basilica will eventually have three facades, capturing different points in the Holy Family’s life as described in the Bible. The first I came to, and indeed the only one constructed in Gaudí’s lifetime, was the Nativity facade. This astounding structure makes stone look as malleable as clay. The entire facade is covered in leaves, plants and statues which are so detailed and intricate as to be quite astonishing. Gaudi’s original plans for this facade was for the stonework to be painted to make it even more lifelike, which hasn’t happened and (for reasons I didn’t quite pick up) no longer seems to be part of the plan. Many of the features are no longer original, having been damaged in protests over the years, but none stands out as inauthentic.

Yet, for all the obvious skill and talent which has gone into the construction of the facade, it looks like the dictionary definition of religious kitsch. The interpretation of the Nativity is, even to an unbeliever like me, almost offensively literal. The facade looks as though the intention was to jam-pack it with decoration, and anything and everything that could be literally represented in stone has been stuck on, with no particular thought to any religious or spiritual significance. Hence, “Joseph was a carpenter” becomes a sculpture of a carpenter with a young boy looking on.

The skill and detail is astounding – but the overall effect is that of a desperately tacky and overwrought Christmas decoration that might be erected each December outside one of the US Bible Belt’s megachurches. Or perhaps, if a little more gold were added, like something Donald Trump would construct at one of his homes. It struck me as being in the most awful taste.

On the opposite side of the Sagrada Família, directly across the transept from the Nativity Facade, one finds the Passion Facade. This provides an extreme contrast to the exuberance of the Nativity Facade: it is relatively sparsely decorated, angular and severe. There is a clear intention to provoke a contrasting emotion among viewers of this facade as compared to the Nativity Facade: indeed, Gaudí’s intention was to provoke fear among viewers.

On the Passion Facade, the architecture is more exposed as as result of the reduced decoration, and it struck me as all the more impressive for this. The visual trick of making thin ‘ribs’ of concrete appear to support the (still ugly) massive spires above is neat, inspired, and clearly related to the ecclesiastical meaning of the events the facade represents, which gave me a much greater sense of overall coherence than the literal presentation of the Nativity Facade.

And yet, the literal interpretation is still very much in evidence, particularly in the angular sculptures by Josep Maria Subirachs. These sculptures are so angular that the figures portrayed all appear to have cubic heads. This provides an echo of the surrounding angular architecture, but has the unfortunate side-effect of rendering the figures pretty emotionless. This was particularly striking for me in the figures of Jesus—who looks mildly fed up—and the figure of St Peter—who looks a bit sad.

The most interesting consideration in the Passion story, at least for me (but I would also have thought it pretty fundamental in Catholicism) is the emotional toll on the primary characters. The scale and complexity of their emotional states is mind-boggling, and this complexity well-represented in enigmatic portraits through the centuries. Rendering them as figures out of Minecraft provides a neat continuity with the architectural style, but man it sucks all of that emotion out of the scenes, and leaves them once again being little more than a story-telling diorama.

There’s also the confounding inclusion of a magic square stuck on this facade. I can’t fathom why this grid, not obviously associated with Catholicism or Christianity, is incongruously included in a prominent position on this facade. The solution to the magic square is the age at which Jesus died, but why represent this using a technique associated with both paganism and mathematics, rather than something more obviously religious? It is particularly out of place given the generally sparse decoration.

Entering the basilica, I found the interior to be utterly breathtaking. The scale of the space is hard to comprehend, and it seems almost implausible that the narrow branching columns within can support the load of the ornate roof which seems to be hovering at something like sky-height. And then one remembers the massive spires towering even above that, supported by those self-same columns. It is genius.

The basilica is flooded with light from the stained glass windows, brightened by the more delicate leadwork than is commonly seen in older church buildings. The dominant colours of the windows on each side of the Basilica are carefully chosen to bathe the inside in particular hues of light, giving it a strangely ethereal feeling. It is an awesome space, arresting and moving all at once.

Unfortunately, the decor of the interior continues the profoundly kitsch theme, mostly notably with four huge back-lit medallions representing four saints situated high up on the four largest columns. These wouldn’t look out of place on a fruit machine.

The comparison may be unflattering, but the construction of the interior reminded me of Richard Rogers’s Terminal 4 at Madrid Barajas airport. Of course, it is all the more impressive to see this sort of structure built from stone, and on a much greater vertical scale, than it is to see the steel equivalent. But it is interesting to contemplate the way in which Terminal 4 was lauded for it’s shockingly open and modern design, and yet note how similar it is to something designed almost two centuries ago.

Underneath the basilica, there is a museum which explains much of the architectural significance of the building, which is well worth a visit (particularly if, like me, you know nothing about architecture). I was particularly taken by a series of scale models which demonstrate how the structure was derived from the classical Gothic architecture originally proposed for the Sagrada Família, before Gaudí got involved.

As I wandered round the basilica, I kept trying to reconcile my mixed feelings. How could I be awed and appalled at the same time? Exactly what was it about the decor of the building that made me feel so uneasy? Why couldn’t I just appreciate the undeniable beauty that was before me? I kept thinking back to something I read in Alain de Botton’s uncharacteristically disappointing book, Religion for Atheists:

The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.

The kitsch literal descriptions of Biblical events that flow throughout the Sagrada Família seem to invite no more contemplation than wondering whether or not the tales were true. They did not inspire, in me at least, any deeper reflection on their meaning, and nor was the imagery arresting and memorable. I found myself thinking that if Disney made cathedrals, they’d be much like this basilica.

Safe to say, then, that the exterior decoration was not at all to my taste. Not at all.

And yet, for all that, there was a style and theme that carried throughout the building. There was a vision of how it should look, and despite over a century’s worth of opportunity to dilute that vision, it is clearly being maintained. There is something deeply admirable and impressive about this scale of implementation of a vision, even if that vision seems as tacky as hell. It may not be inspirational to me, but it must clearly be inspirational to many people to have persisted for so long. It is hard not to be awed.

As for the architecture and the space it creates: it is incredible. The scale and ingenuity of the project is inspiring, and the interior is breathtaking. It is almost unbelievable that something so firmly modern could have been designed so long ago. There is no doubt in my mind that Gaudí was a genius.

There is a lot of debate about whether the basilica should ever have been finished. It is said that Gaudí always refined his ideas as he built, and that the plans would have changed considerably after his death as he continued to refine them during building. So, the argument goes, this is not truly Guadí’s work any more, even though the plans and design were his. I mention this because it strikes me as an interestingly prospective Ship of Thesus question. But whether or not it is Gaudí’s work, it is clearly the fulfillment of a cohesive vision, underpinned by architectural foresight, understanding and masterwork that may well have been unrivaled. The basilica cannot fail to impress.

So, what did I think of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família? My utterly contradictory conclusion is that the basilica is a masterpiece, an incredible and breathtaking work of profoundly kitsch bad taste that is both truly beautiful and as ugly as sin.

In May 2012, I blogged about visiting ‘the Ped’, more formally know as the Tyne Pedestrian and Cycle tunnels, which first opened in 1951. A year later, the tunnels closed to undergo a two-year, £7m refurbishment.

The refurbishment didn’t go according to plan: it ended up taking over six years and costing £16m. After adjustment for inflation, that’s about 60% of the cost of building the tunnels in the first place.

Today, I thought I’d revisit and see what had changed.

Both the north and south entrances to the tunnel retain their rotunda-like buildings, that have something of the feel of stations. Entrance remains free of charge. In 2012, the south end was looking perhaps a little tired.

Today, the paving on the approach has been considerably improved, with much clearer cycle paths. The overall appearance has been smartened up, though the heritage plaque seems to have been lost and a TV screen of questionable function has been installed. The shutters are also of note, not only for being new, but also because the tunnels are no longer open 24 hours as was previously the case. They now only open 6am to 8pm, at least “until further notice”.

Note that the entrance is labelled ‘Jarrow’: this on the Jarrow side of the river. One might have thought it more logical to make it plain that the tunnel is for Howdon, but that would I suppose conflict with the station heuristic for which the designers seem to be reaching.

On entering the rotunda, one was formerly presented with two historic wooden escalators, each labelled with its intended direction of motion, and each labelled with one of the historic county crests of the two historic counties the tunnel connects. At the time of installation, they were the world’s longest escalators, and were only overtaken in the UK by those installed at London’s Angel tube station some forty years later. In 2012, they were the longest remaining wooden escalators in the world.

Today, only one of these remarkable escalators remains in place at each end of the tunnel, the other torn out to make way for an (as yet uninstalled) inclined glass elevator. At the southern end, the ‘County Durham’ escalator is the lucky one… I forgot to check the northern end.

The remaining escalators, which didn’t work in 2012, have now been fixed in position: note the open ‘gate’ with its post driven in a step at the top the escalator below. They are now, I suppose, unique heritage staircases rather than escalators.

Note too that the safety information posted next to the unopened glass lift is unusual: the imperative is not to avoid lift use in the event of a fire, but to listen for instructions as the lifts may be used for evacuation. The ‘mood lighting’ is eye-catching, but not especially to my taste.

As I walked down the escalator in 2012, the strong scent of damp rose to greet me. Not so in 2020. The atmosphere barely seemed to shift. The considerably brighter (and working) lighting made the experience feel considerably less unnerving.

At the bottom, one reaches a sort of ‘lobby’ at the entrance to the slightly wider cyclist tunnel and the slightly narrower pedestrian tunnel. In 2012, this was a grimy space.

Today, these spaces are considerably cleaner, brighter and more welcoming, but still retain the essential character of the space. Today’s photo is of the ‘lobby’ at the opposite end of the tunnels: they haven’t switched positions!

In 2012, the tunnels didn’t just smell damp: the ground was physically wet. The lighting was in a poor state of repair, too. The atmosphere was dingy and unwelcoming.

Today, the experience could not have been more different. The tunnels were clean, dry and well lit… and perhaps mildly ‘other worldly’.

In 2012, there were a number of upsetting and unnerving damaged bits of wall along the way, which felt to me as though they were raising uncomfortable questions about the structural integrity of the passage.

By contrast, today there are a number of new emergency help points with flip-down seating, sensitively designed to blend in with the curvature of the tunnel wall.

The midpoint of the tunnel is clearly marked, as one passes from the historic County of Durham to the County of Northumberland. In 2012, this was marked by some weird rusty metal plates.

Today, what I assume may always have been ventilation shafts are capped with a more aesthetically pleasing metal grid.

In 2012, for those with bikes (or those who couldn’t face the hike up the broken escalators) a vertical lift was provided on a branch off the main tunnels at each end.

These remain in situ, though I think they may have been replaced with newer models.

The works have also retained the ugly, but probably historically relevant, fish sculpture outside the northern rotunda.

All things considered, I think this is a good job. It’s disappointing that two historic escalators have been ripped out and two turned into staircases, but it is probably unreasonable to expect 70-year-old machinery of this type to keep on working forever.

The difference in the feeling of the tunnels is night and day. They now feel bright and welcoming, and the modernisation hasn’t sacrificed the essence of the tunnels. From the care taken over the retention and repair of the tilework to the way that the historic painted signage has been kept and restored, this has clearly been a project on which respect and love for the craftsmanship of the original workers has not been in short supply.

Of course, it’s a shame that circumstances dictated that the restoration took so much longer than planned at such an increased cost. I hope that they get back to being continuously open soon enough, and that the restricted hours “until further notice” doesn’t turn into permanently restricted hours. I hope, too, that the inclined lifts enter service in the not too distant future.

But, overall, I’m left with the impression that this was an elegant and sensitive restoration of a mighty piece of civil engineering beneath a historic and beautiful river.