When you think of medical schools in Newcastle, this one might not be the first that springs to mind. Since 2007, it has been possible to study in Newcastle for a chunk of the five-year medical degree award by St George’s University in Grenada. These days, one can study as much as four years of a five-year medical programme with St George’s University in Newcastle.

I passed these friendly folk on my way home from work. Most people in the UK think that cows lie down when it’s about to rain, but I’m pleased to report that beautiful sunshine saw me home.

One of the problems with posts like this, which repeat stories that are simply untrue, is that the lie can stick longer in the mind than the truth. One suspects that some politicians may be choosing to exploit that fact at the moment.

The 2019 General Election result showed that being sacked for lying twice was no barrier to gaining the public’s trust—but one wonders whether that trick can be pulled repeatedly.

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?

I’ve mentioned local artist Mul a couple of times in the past, but never mentioned this eye-catching piece which I walk past most days.

Covering the entire exterior of the Barca Art Bar on Gosforth High Street, this is Gossy Disco, created in July last year.

There are more and better photos here.

The blossom’s here and the clocks have sprung forward. Easter has arrived. Hope is in the air, growth and renewal are all around us, if we only let ourselves notice.

I can’t believe that I’ve never featured this sign on the blog before, yet I can’t find a previous mention.

This exhibition has recently transferred from the National Portrait Gallery to The Laing. Before visiting, I knew nothing about Yevonde, but I came away with a real appreciation for her life and work. She was a photographer who developed her practice in the period between the two World Wars, and who was a pioneer of the use of colour photography. There were several strands running through the exhibition that stood out to me.

The exhibition did a good job of helping me to understand how colour photography initially developed. It was a simple process involving taking multiple simultaneous images effectively through multiple cameras, with coloured filters in front of each one. These could then be developed using coloured inks and composited to create a colour image. It’s a simple and logical process, but one that was entirely new to me.

Yevonde developed a distinctive style for her colour photography:

If we are going to have colour photography, for heaven’s sake, let’s have a riot of colour.

My colour perception is pretty poor, but even so, the Vivex photography combined with Yevonde’s compositions seemed stunning vivid on the gallery walls, almost hyperreal. This is perhaps most celebrated in her work photographing women dressed as goddesses.

The exhibition included a small goddess-inspired dressing up corner, and during my visit, this was occupied by a woman who seemed to be having the time of her life, alone in front of the mirror. More power to her.

I was interested in Yevonde’s feminism, which was well represented in the exhibition. Most of the human subjects featured in her work were female, and it was suggested that much of her early interested in photography was driven by a desire to be independent.

The duties of a wife with a separate career have yet to be defined, and although complete unselfishness, has always been considered a sure foundation for domestic happiness, I am not convinced.

The curators placed one of the largest of Yevonde’s self-portraits alongside this quotation:

This is not the story of a woman’s life, but the story of a photographer that happens to be a woman.

Almost exactly a year ago, I enjoyed the Design Museum’s exhibition on Surrealism. I was therefore interested to see in this exhibition the interaction between Yevonde’s photography, and colour photography more generally, and surrealism. It is surely no accident that the often bright colour of surrealist work came about just as colour photography was beginning to make a splash.

All things considered, I thought this was a great exhibition. I learned things from it and gained new insights and perspectives on the art featured. It was well worth a visit.

Yevonde: Life and Colour continues at The Laing until 20 April.

What do you write in a Christmas Day blog post?

This is this blog’s twenty-first Christmas, and I’ve written ten previous Christmas Day posts. Most of them are entirely forgettable, but looking through them, two stood out.

In 2009, I ranted about the Dean of Newcastle ranting about Ann Summers. I wrote that

Christmas in particular brings out the worst in Christians. Many normally tolerant Christians see it as their duty to shout down those who don’t have god at the centre of their seasonal celebration, regardless of whether those people actually believe.

This brought back memories, but made me reflect that I’ve haven’t heard anyone complaining about Christ being take out of Christmas for years. I wonder whether the number of complaints has decreased, or whether I just don’t see them any more. It strikes me as the sort of argument I’d once have seen on social media, but that I perhaps don’t see any more as a result of abandoning those platforms.

Last year, I wrote that

One of work’s national leaders tied himself in such knots this week in his attempts to be religiously inclusive that he ended up robotically “wishing you all a wonderful set of end-of-year activities.”

No other Christmas greeting has ever made me laugh so hard and, while not his intention, perhaps that makes it the best greeting of all.

I had forgotten all about that and chuckled anew at the memory. I haven’t seen anything to rival it this season, sadly.

Looking elsewhere for inspiration: Diamond Geezer, an altogether more successful blogger for a similar number of years, normally sticks to a Christmassy picture.

So accept this shot of Newcastle’s Christmas tree. For more than seventy years, a tree has been sent from Bergen as a token of appreciation for support during the Second World War. This year, however, it seems someone noticed that we’re in a climate crisis, and that killing a tree and shipping it over 1,000 miles isn’t all that wise.

Instead, a new tradition began this year: decorating an existing, living tree that grows near the traditional site, and shipping a bauble from Bergen instead. Using a tree that’s still in the ground strikes me as going one better even than the King’s potted, replantable effort!

Newspapers often complain about television repeats at Christmas, and in some ways, this is a blog equivalent. The photos are new, but I’ve shared images of this waterfall many times, even as recently as last spring. Here’s an animated gif of the same place nine years ago.

William Armstrong, a noted manufacturer of armaments, used explosives to blast the rock and create the waterfall in the middle of the 19th century.

Armstrong is a fascinating character who is often cited as a supporter of renewable energy thanks to his interest in hydroelectricity and solar power.

But this can sometimes be overdone: both Wikipedia and The Telegraph have strongly implied that his eco-credentials were behind an 1863 prediction that coal mining in Britain would be over within two centuries. This is bollocks, as The Spectator’s contemporary report makes clear: he was merely predicting that ‘in a century or two, the United States, which possess coal-fields thirty-six times as extensive as ours, will supply the world with coal’.

I planned to use this post to moan that Rishi Sunak’s decision to approve a new coal mine during a climate emergency would mean that Armstrong’s prediction about coal production in the UK would be proven wrong. But that, too, would deviate from facts: Woodhouse Colliery is scheduled to cease production after twenty-five years, long before the 2063 ‘deadline’.

A landslip caused by extreme weather a decade ago badly damaged the Dene, and some paths are still closed off. It is hard to be optimistic about its chances of surviving the climate catastrophe we’ll be living through by 2063.