When I lived in Stockton, this life-sized sculpture by Irene Brown stood outside M&S. The sculpture was removed in 2013, when the High Street was being spruced up. M&S closed in 2018.

The sculpture isn’t really my sort of thing, but it is enormously popular with Stocktonites. There was great fanfare when the refurbished sculpture was repositioned outside the library in 2016, and where I took this photo yesterday.

I recently read a corporate document that promised the creation of ‘a user-friendly front door.’

I’m part of the intended audience, but I can’t explain what the sentence was trying to communicate. I don’t know whether the ‘front door’ is a website, a phone line, a physical location, a team of people, some combination of the above, or something different altogether. It is, apparently, to be an automatic door: it will be ‘using automation to make processes more efficient’.

I enjoyed the delicious irony of the authors failing to communicate while, at the same time, promising to be ‘user-friendly.’ I enjoyed the mixed metaphor of ‘automation’ making ‘a door’ ‘more efficient’. And, most of all, I enjoyed the fundamental absurdity of a ‘user-friendly’ ‘door’.

I was reminded—as I often am—of this from Jeanette Winterson’s 12 Bytes:

When institutional content tries to be more user-friendly, we get marketing-speak clichés like: stakeholders, bad actors, road maps, blue-sky thinking, low-hanging fruit, facilitators, roll-out … Conferences are the worst. I have been to some of them. By the afternoon I am sweating under the mental pressure of translating non-language. We need writers involved – and we need language that speaks to people. This isn’t about dumbing down, it’s about doing what writers do well – finding a clear, precise, everyday language that goes beyond utility, without jargon, with beauty.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3. I note with wry amusement that the AI conception of a ‘user-friendly front door’ has a knob on the left and a handle on the right, making it entirely unclear as to which way the door opens.

In The Times last week, Matt Chorley wrote about a focus group’s reaction to the Government’s oft-repeated plea:

In the meantime, Sunak presses on, vowing to listen to voters while refusing to change. “Stick with the plan that’s working.” On our most recent Times Radio focus group of swing voters, we asked about that slogan. “Which plan’s that?” scoffed one. “And what’s working?” said another, before they all descended into guffaws.

This was still ratting around my mind when I saw this laminated sign above a hospital bed—not in deepest mid-winter, but on a glorious spring afternoon:

This isn’t a one-off: it has become the norm in many NHS hospitals these days. It’s this graph of the relative collapse capital spending in the NHS made photographic:

‘Which plan? What’s working?’ might be the most apposite piece of political commentary in years.

Apple recently released an advert for a new iPad, and it seems it’s like a Rorschach test for our times.

The first I heard of this advert was when I saw this article in the FT, reporting that Apple had apologised for it. And so I sought out the advert. The message I got from it? Apple has managed to fit a load of different tools and functions into an extremely thin device. I wasn’t offended by it, but thought I could see why others would be: wanton destruction of perfectly good instruments, tools etc. In a world of limited resources, and from a company that preaches about sustainability, it’s not a good look, even if it’s all just visual effects.

But it turns out that I was wrong. The controversy was related to a different metaphorical interpretation of the advert. As Tedium explained:

Apple’s infamous “Crush” ad deeply misunderstands the role of the hydraulic press in meme culture.

I’m completely ignorant of the role of hydraulic press in meme culture. It turns out that there’s a whole industry around videos showing hydraulic presses crushing things. I did not know this existed. I’ve heard of Will It Blend—but I’m clearly behind the times when it comes to online video culture.

The ad doesn’t connect because the message it’s trying to promote is essentially completely at odds with our understanding of the hydraulic press, which we only understand as a device that breaks things in the most brutal way possible. There’s no intelligence at all, artficial or otherwise. It just crushes things.

Clearly, many people had viscerally negative reactions. TechCrunch called the advert ‘disgusting’. Where I saw a neat metaphor for packing functions into a device, others saw an enforced digital transformation:

Does your child like music? They don’t need a harp; throw it in the dump. An iPad is good enough. Do they like to paint? Here, Apple Pencil, just as good as pens, watercolors, oils! Books? Don’t make us laugh! Destroy them. Paper is worthless. Use another screen. In fact, why not read in Apple Vision Pro, with even faker paper?

Our social context can completely change the way we interpret the same piece of footage… and perhaps I’m getting old.

Twelve years ago, I told you about Teessaurus Park in Middlesbrough, a pocket of child-friendly green space in a highly industrialised part of the town. I wrote more about it the following day, and still think of it often. The sculptures feel very 1980s, and the whole idea of a park surrounded by heavy industry feels worthy yet dystopian.

It’s in the news this week because the Twentieth Century Society is applying to list the three most important sculptures, which were designed by Geneviève Glatt. This is in response to a local plan to close half of the park.

The C20 Society article about their campaign has much more background and history about the site, much of which was new to me. There are very few major public sculptures from this period by women which adds to the rarity value of the three they are seeking to list. The article also introduced me to the fascinating North East Statues website, which is a rabbit hole I’m now inevitably going to spend quite some time exploring.

Two years ago, I reflected on the post-lockdown closures of my local high street branches of Barclays, Santander, NatWest and Nationwide.

Since then, Gosforth High Street has also lost branches of HSBC, Halifax and Virgin Money. The last branches standing are those of Lloyds and the Newcastle Building Society.

And so, you might wonder: what becomes of the banks departed? Let’s work our way northwards.

At number 59, Barclays remains empty, still with its previously-hidden Martin’s Bank sign on show. The premises have recently been sold:

At 117, Nationwide—whose adverts tell us that face-to-face banking matters—is now an upmarket cafe and soft play venue:

At 129-131, Santander is now banking on flame grilled chicken:

At 149-151, NatWest have left their exterior in a right state:

Within Gosforth Shopping Centre, Virgin Money is now mostly advertising an ‘urban park market’, which sounds like something you’d come across at CenterParcs:

At 178-180, Halifax is yet to find another function:

At 189-191, HSBC remains vacant:

Shall we check again in another couple of years?

While we were at Belsay Hall this week, Wendy and I were lucky enough to see this series of installations by Dr Ingrid Pollard MBE. There are twelve installations in the exhibition in all, from the large and arresting piece above—a large sandstone rock suspended on jute ropes—to printed acrylic panels filling in gaps where the original wallpaper has torn away.

Other works include printed voiles over windows, slate tiles carefully arranged in the library, and mirrors placed in the quarry garden.

Wendy and I both reflected on how challenging it must be for an artist to be commissioned to display work that responds to and exists within a Grade I listed building. We both thought that there were some interesting ideas in each of the installations, but none of them particularly connected with us, nor made us reflect differently on the space or our surroundings. Perhaps that was, in part, because this was our first visit, so we have no conception of how the artworks changed our response to the Hall.

We’ll have to visit again.

I’m not normally a big fan of historical fiction, preferring to read things set in the present day. However, Tom Crewe’s debut novel was so widely recommended that I thought I’d give it a go.

The novel is fiction, but it is inspired by the story of John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis jointly writing one of the first medical texts about human sexuality in the late Victorian era. Both of the male authors portrayed in The New Life are married, though each has particular sexual preferences: one has relationships with men, while the other is aroused by women urinating. Their medical text concerns homosexuality—or ‘inversion’ in the language of the period—and forms part of their wider view that world ought to embrace progressive social change. The arrest of Oscar Wilde reveals a greater level of establishment prejudice than they had perhaps anticipated, and indirectly threatens their work.

I enjoyed reading this, but I found the Victorian dialogue a bit wearing and the claustrophobic, stifling social norms hard work. I know that it could be argued that that’s the point, but I find it quite hard to empathise with people who are buttoned up to quite that extent… which is one reason I don’t really like historical fiction.

I did highlight a few passages:

We must live in the future we hope to make.

‘And you look very fine.’ She tugged playfully at his lapel. ‘A new suit! Is it horribly uncomfortable?’

‘Horribly. Freedom lost for freedom gained.’

‘And what are you? You are not so oblivious as to think there are only two of us. Is the law beyond scrutiny? It is a rotten, filthy law. That is the stain. The point of my conclusion, which you single out for scandal, is that there is a benefit, as you call it, in a proper comprehension of the past. The knowledge that what we punsih with hard labour — a crime for which men used to hang in our fathers’ time — was once praised, understood, practised, by the very men whose thought we teach our sons, whose heroics we pride ourselves on matching, whose marbles we line up for edification; may that knowledge not do some useful work in the world? How can it not?’

‘But Henry,’ she almost shouted, ‘you never did have me to yourself. It was on that basis that we married, that we thought up our marriage. No two people need be everything to each other.’

‘You have become everything.’

She stared at him defiantly. ‘I do not want to be, to anyone.’

Anguish locked in this throat. ‘You are. I am only loneliness without you.’

She stared at him still. ‘Then we should never have married,’ she said, quite plainly, putting down the plates.

A couple married for as long as they had been could know many things without ever talking about them. Sometimes it was the need to speak which signalled trouble.

It had mattered that his father was a doctor. As a child he liked the comings and goings at the house — the front door opening on a patient was like the beginning of a story — and he liked his father for being so wanted and necessary.

In 2009, I completed a geriatrics rotation, during which I helped with clinics on the Belsay Day Unit at what was then the Newcastle General Hospital.

It’s only taken 15 years to get around to visiting Belsay itself—and specifically, Belsay Hall.

Built a couple of hundred years ago, and recently restored, it was an unusual and rather interesting experience to visit an old hall which hasn’t been stuffed full of period furniture; it feels more like its decay has been arrested, rather than like it has been restored to a version of its former glory.

The handmade wallpaper may be peeling from the walls in places, but it felt like a hall with real character. The Grade I listed quarry gardens were also spectacular.

Wow. Wow. And for the avoidance of doubt: wow. Caleb Azumah Nelson writes astonishingly good prose.

It’s three years since I read his ‘stunning’ first novel, Open Water. I bought this second novel when it first came out, a year ago. I’ve been scared to read it because I didn’t think it could possibly live up to the promise of his first book, and I was braced for disappointment.

But wow.

Nelson writes prose that is also poetry. His turn of phrase, his toying with language, and his perfect elucidation of specific thoughts and feelings are incredible.

Despite that talent, the theme of this book is music and how it traverses the limits of language. It’s so lovely to read a recent novel that is sceptical of the power of language, that is not a peon to the written word. For it to be written in such beautiful language itself is a singular treat.

I can barely tell you the plot of the book because I was so taken with the writing that I almost didn’t notice. That narrator, a young black Londoner born to Ghanian parents comes of age, struggles with his relationship with his parents, and visits his extended family in Ghana. He revels in jazz, dancing—the solution of all of life’s problems—and playing the trumpet. I wasn’t as absorbed by the plot of this book as I was by Open Water, but I didn’t really mind.

The New York Times called Nelson’s writing in this book ‘overwrought or just bizarre’, so I’m more than willing to accept that this isn’t a book for everyone. But it was certainly for me, and I will wait with a combination of excitement and trepidation for whatever he writes next.