listen up north!

Dare to be Free

“Dare to be Free” – a continual desire and struggle for many – especially creative types. And setting up spoken word website listenupnorth.com is perhaps my way of challenging the system and creating an outlet and opportunity to put my own and other writer’s work out to an audience.

But throughout history to “Dare to be Free” could be a dangerous thing, especially if it was a challenge to the authorities and the status quo that kept them in power.

Such was the case of Thomas Spence (1750-1814). Utopian writer, a pioneer of people’s rights, pamphleteer and poet who was born on Newcastle’s Quayside. A man who was prepared to go to prison for his principles of grass roots freedom, community and democracy for the human rights of men and women all over the world.  It was Spence who coined the phrase ‘The Rights of Man’ and chalked it on a cave wall at Marsden Grotto. Thank goodness for another free spirit, poet Keith Armstrong, and his friends who formed the Thomas Spence Trust and campaigned for Spence’s recognition thereby ensuring that this man’s great endeavours were not forgotten.

 

The culmination of this was the unveiling of a plaque to Thomas Spence in Broad Garth, just off Newcastle’s Quayside last Monday, the site of Spence’s school room and debating society. No doubt Spence, who was jailed in London for 6 months without trial for the sale of seditious books, would have been amused to find the Mayor of Newcastle unveiling a plaque in his honour by releasing a large black and white rosette.

Keith read one of Spence’s poems and Gary Miller, singer-songwriter of NE Band ‘The Whisky Priests’, performed Keith’s poem ‘Folksong for Thomas Spence’ set to Gary’s music.

 

We adjourned to the Red House, an ancient pub along the Quayside - fittingly as it was in tavern such as this in Newcastle and London that Spence mobilised politically. Keith and Gary performed a tribute to Thomas Spence and two eminent professors told further of the life and times of Thomas Spence. Thank you to Keith and his friends for keeping the light of Thomas Spence burning for future generations. As Keith summed up: ‘This plaque puts Thomas Spence on the map for all of those pilgrims who hold human rights and political freedoms dear. It does not trap his free spirit – rather it gives his life and work fresh wings’.

There will be a display of Thomas Spence’s work on the 6th Floor of  Newcastle City Library from Monday 21st June to Monday 5th July.

Thanks to Tony Whittle for all the professional looking photos on this post – the rest are by me!

What Goes Down Must Come Up

Setting up my spoken word entertainment website listenupnorth.com should be a creative process but it’s so easy to get dragged down in all the admin – I still haven’t got to grips with that blessed bookkeeping and cash flow forecast.  My friend Stencil Helen says just make sure there’s more coming in than going out – but it’s going to be a long time before I’m in such fortunate position!  So I’ve still got a file full of receipts waiting for Teen 1 to return from uni  and earn some extra pocket money sorting them out. 

 

Then there’s deciding whether I should be classed as an e-commerce business because I’m allowing local businesses to advertise for free during the pilot of my website.  I am still awaiting an answer form the ico on that one.

Yesterday I had a lengthy meeting with my web designer and we are getting there with the spoken word website – for an embarrassing length of time I have been saying listenupnorth.com will be launched in a few weeks and hopefully now with Dean of Zimt on board I can really mean it.

On top of that, there’s the frustration of buying a portable recorder to make sound effects and finding that it doesn’t actually have an instruction booklet with it.  I have tried to download one from the internet but it keeps bringing up instructions for the wrong model.   Every day just seems to drift on and by the end there’s barely a thing ticked off my growing list of ‘to do’ items.

At least this week I managed to get actors together and start rehearsals for my latest drama, a supernatural thriller written specially for the web in 6 episodes.  I had nearly abandoned this project and everything else, after Dolly’s House was unceremoniously ousted from a group of interested actors by someone over-zealous to get his own work performed (2 March 2010). 

I have just got together new group of actors from 3 local drama groups and their so far favourable comments has helped to restore my confidence.    One of the actors said it was really freaked her out and I am still look for someone to play the 7 year old son, Tom, as the mother of my original choice thought it was too frightening and would give him nightmares. Hopefully that’s a good sign that it is actually scary – something which is very difficult to judge as a writer.  I  am about to hear a really talented actor read the part of Tom for me.  Although he is 15, I am hoping that he will be able to use his experience and act so that he sounds like someone younger.  I am going to see him tomorrow so fingers crossed.  Finding a mutually available date that everyone can meet for a rehearsal is probably the most difficult thing but hopefully between us we’ll be ready for recording in July.  So far we’ve had one read-through - just familiarisation and I am quietly hopefully that it’s going to sound good, just hoping that Jack, the Northumberland odd-job man can lose his Devon accent!

After such a busy time, it was good to take a day off for Wonderhubby’s birthday and on a scorching morning we arrive in The Northern Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty just outside Hexham.  Walking across meadows of buttercups and wild grass, we listen to skylarks and curlews, pass industrial remains of previous centuries and enter the top of Staward Gorge, National Trust woodland .  Finding relief from the heat, we walk along a high ridge looking down on both sides into precipitous drops and came to Staward Peel, the remains of a mediaeval fortification and in a prime position to spot any marauding Scots (as I like to remind Wonderhubby who was born North of the Border).

We work our way down the forest to the banks of the River Allen, out of the shade of the conifers to where sunlight streams through the oak and beech trees and makes beautiful dappled paths.  Wonderhubby is in his element with his latest present: a new programme to go in his GPS thingy for when you are out walking ( Tuesday 14th July).  What is it with men and maps?  Especially men with beards who like real ale and wearing bush hats .  Still I must say that in the depths of the gorge, it is reassuring to know our exact co-ordinates even thought the paths were clearly waymarked – but it’s best to make sure in case we wander off into the dense vegetation never to be seen again.  Then from the depths of gorge, we must make our way back to the top, a steep climb and return through the meadow, the sun now at its highest.  Soon we are glad to be within the cool stone walls of the The Carts Bog Inn with a pint of your finest landlord and a large steak for Wonderhubby’s birthday treat. 

Extraordinary Measures

Another scorching day but after last week’s frost – still not sure whether to put the woolly hats and scarves to bed in favour of sombrero and panamas.  At least the sun has made me more relaxed and I really can’t face going into the study to process the mountain of paperwork and accounts etc, so I have found a corner of the garden and settled with a notebook and pen to write more of my new monologue drama,  I am writing it for theatre at the moment with the possibility of also recording for listenupnorth.com when it’s licked into shape.I have just had my first scene read by an actor as part of the Short Cuts at The Live Theatre, Newcastle which gave be really useful feedback for its development.   Celia is about a middle-aged, middle class wife and mother going through the crisis of an affair (no it’s not me – honest!).  Although when my friend Sue Hedworth looked over what I had done so far at our creative writing get-together, she did ask whether Wonderhubby had seen it and whether he might think it was autobiographical.   

Also found time for a trip out to Belsay Castle and the Extraordinary Measures exhibition.  Despite a huge tantrum from Teen 2 on being leaned on heavily to actually spend an afternoon in the company of her parents, she really found it quite fascinating and a most enjoyable experience. It was great to see something with a completely different take on life: Ron Muecks’s resin sculptures lifelike down to the last pimple and hair in the Hall and around the grounds, Slinkachu’s miniature models in a giant landscape, Mariele Neudecker’s Giant Window in The Quarry and Ciaran Treanor’s Wild Horses. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course it’s always a great tonic to wander around the grounds and at this time of year we were treated to the beautiful vibrant colours of the rhodedendrons with flowers like huge bells. 

 

 

 

And over time some of the natural surroundings in The Quarry Garden have taken on art forms of their own.