Whitley Bay (In Memory of My Mother)

Vintage poster from the 1920s encouraging holidaymakers 

to take the train to Whitley Bay [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Although, in a very real sense, Soho is my spiritual home and the place in which I feel happiest, dig deeper, as Heidegger would say, and you will find me standing on golden sands ... [2] 

 

 

II.

 

Whitley Bay is a seaside town in the North Tyneside borough of Tyne and Wear, England [3] - about ten miles east of Newcastle. It's perhaps most famous for its grey-black rocks that my mother used to love climbing on as a little girl and St. Mary's Lighthouse [4].

 

The town has a long history stretching back to at least 1100 when it is first mentioned in historical documents. But it wasn't until the late 19th-century that it emerged as a popular seaside holiday resort - rather than a coal mining town [5] - after it, along with several other small coastal towns, was connected by rail to Newcastle. 

 

At this time, the town was still known as Whitley and was often confused with the far more famous (and upmarket) town of Whitby, in North Yorkshire. Fed up with the problems this caused, including misdirected mail, in 1901 local residents were asked to suggest a new name and Whitley Bay came out on top (the town officially adopted this new name the following year).    

 

 

III. 

 

If it doesn't have the most illustrious roll call of famous names associated with it, Whitley Bay is nevertheless where comedy writer Ian La Frenais was born, in 1937, and he went on to co-create with Dick Clement one of the 1970s British TV shows most celebrated on Torpedo the Ark [6]. 

 

And it is also where my mother was born, 100 years ago today ... Whitley Bay remaining the place she loved best, despite her living in Essex for over 75 years and rarely returning to the North East after leaving to start a newly married life at the end of the 1940s.  

 

A print of the picture above, by John Littlejohns, still hangs in her bedroom even now, three years after her death [7].  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The original art deco style poster was designed by John Littlejohns in 1929. It was commissioned by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) to promote services to Whitley Bay and displayed at local stations as well as larger stations on the East Coast Main Line including London. The work is held in the collection of the National Railway Museum in York, which is part of the Science Museum Group. 

      The poster features Table Rocks Pool, situated just south of Whitley Bay and north of Cullercoats, showing people in fashionable bathing gear. This small natural tidal pool was developed and made safe for swimmers in the 1890s following a number of fatalities. It was later significantly expanded in size (to 70ft) and steps were added along with a hut to provide changing facilities, although, unfortunately, this blew down in strong gales four years after its erection in 1912. 

      Sadly, by the 1970s - as more and more English people deserted the British seaside and flew off to the Spanish Costas - the pool had fallen into disuse. However, it still remains visible at low tide even today.  

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing a line that Heidegger is reputed to have liked saying: 'Dig deeper and you will find yourself standing on Catholic ground.' See the essay by John D. Caputo, 'Heidegger and Theology', in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignan (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 270.

 

[3] Whitley Bay has been part of Tyne and Wear since 1974. Prior to that it was governed as part of Northumberland. 

 

[4] St. Mary's Lighthouse (1898) is on the tiny St. Mary's Island (aka Bait Island), just north of Whitley Bay on the coast of NE England. The small rocky island is linked to the mainland by a short concrete causeway which is submerged at high tide. 

      Sadly, it was decommissioned in 1984, just two years after its conversion to automatic operation. It is now a tourist attraction run by the North Tyneside Council. In addition to the lighthouse itself there is a small museum, a visitor's centre, and a café. In 2012, St. Mary's Lighthouse attained grade II listed status. Plans for further renovation have so far come to nothing due to financial issues and environmental concerns.   

 

[5] Exposed coal seams can still be seen in the cliffs north of St. Mary's Island and it's possible to pick up shiny black pieces of coal from the beach at low tide. 

      For younger readers who may not know, coal is a combustible sedimentary rock formed from fossilised plant matter subjected to intense heat and pressure over millions of years. While sparkling diamonds may be a girl's best friend, for me, it's coal that has a more magical allure with its lustrous sheen; and for D. H. Lawrence, the son of a miner, coal was a powerful symbol of the earth's hidden forces, carbon providing the elemental clue to human nature. 

      I mention Lawrence here not only for a literary connection to coal, but because, like him, I am also the son of a miner (loosely speaking); my father left school in Newcastle at fourteen in the year my mother was born and the General Strike took place (1926) and spent a very brief spell down the pits. Hating the experience, he took a job working in a paint factory instead. 

 

[6] I'm referring of course to Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (BBC One, 1973-74). 

      Certain scenes in The Likely Lads (dir. Michael Tuchner, 1976) - the feature-length spin-off of the TV show - were filmed in Whitley Bay. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the movie starred Rodney Bewes and James Bolam, reprising their roles as Bob and Terry. 

 

[7] Readers who want a fine art quality medium-sized print (52 x 62 cm) can find one (framed) on the King & McGaw website priced at £160. Produced in partnership with the National Railway Museum, every purchase of the print helps support this institution.  

 

 

Hanging on the Telephone

Mr Watson - come here - I want to see you ...

These days, when everyone and their dog has a smartphone, the idea that an old-fashioned landline might once have seemed a real novelty and something of a luxury item, seems ludicrous. But, as this Polaroid of my father taken in the early 1970s shows, that's how it was; the installation of a home phone was a big deal; an event, indeed, worth getting dressed up for.

Not that my father cared about new technology or status symbols: we were one of the last households on Harold Hill to get a colour TV or a telephone line and, much to my mother's chagrin, we never did own a car (my father couldn't drive and had no interest in learning).

I'm convinced, therefore, that the posing of this picture was my mother's idea. I very much doubt there was anyone on the other end and struggle to recall an occasion on which my father ever picked up the handset again. And, always worried about the expense, of course my mother didn't allow me or my sister to use it either. The phone was strictly for show and emergencies.   

Perhaps this explains my own reluctance to make or take calls. I wouldn't go so far as to describe my aversion as a phobia, nor do I consider it a form of social anxiety. But, nevertheless, I've always hated conducting a conversation with a distant, disembodied, and virtual voice. Not only do I find it boring, but have what might be termed philosophical issues ... 

Thus, I'm far happier texting or emailing than speaking on the blower - much to the irritation of certain friends (sorry Zed). Indeed, if truth be told, I still very much miss the writing and receiving of letters. The sound of something coming through the letter box is infinitely preferable to the persistent (and intrusive) ringing of a telephone.

(It's worth noting that even Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a dog at home, considering it an unwelcome and unnecessary distraction.)

In Memory of My Father

John S. Hall (1912-2000) 

On June 6th my thoughts turn to my father, who died on this date seventeen years ago.

Here he is looking quite dapper at the end of the War, in October 1945, still a relatively young man in his early-thirties, though doubtless this was regarded as mature middle-age back then.

Fuck knows what he's thinking about - if anything.

Perhaps my mother, who would have been nineteen when this picture was taken; a picture he signed on the back and gave to her, so he must have been relatively pleased with the likeness. Possibly it was taken on his birthday, though I don't know that any more than I know where the photo was taken or by whom.       

One presumes it was taken in Newcastle, his hometown. For he and my mother only moved south, to London, after they were married in 1948. But, again, I can't say for sure. As far as I'm aware, my family history isn't full of dark secrets. But it lacks transparency and documentation and my father hardly ever spoke about his past - which is a shame, as, by the time I was born, that was the greater part of his life.

Having said that, I've always been grateful not to be overburdened with memories and free from extended family ties; to feel neither love nor loyalty to any relatives or ancestors. I think never having met any of my grandparents, for example, helped me as a philosopher to feel untimely and experience something of the joy of orphans who gain through loss.

But still, it's nice to recall my father at least once a year and thereby allow a little sentimentality to creep into this blog as a counter-theoretical form of discourse which, as Barthes says, is a necessary transgression that serves to prevent writing from becoming too puritanical (i.e. lacking in the warmth and softness of feeling that is often responsible for the pleasure of the text).  

Notes on the Material Remains of My Father

I respect and admire the fact that my father walked naked and light his entire life; owning nothing and leaving nothing behind when he died; no great legacy, no treasured possessions, not even an urn full of ashes.

In fact, his material remains pretty much amass to no more than a few black and white photographs, an old radio (or wireless, as he always called it), a pack of playing cards, and some rusty little tins in the garden shed covered in cobwebs containing assorted nails, tacks, and screws.

What's astonishing about these objects - particularly the old tobacco tins - is how powerfully they resonate when I draw close to them. Even though just humble, everyday, mass-produced items they have an authenticity to them, or a thingness, that any Heideggerean would instantly recognise and appreciate.    

Lawrence describes this as quickness - a quality that can be contrasted to deadness, but which doesn't only belong to living, organic or natural objects. That is to say, even a rather ridiculous-looking iron stove, for example, can be quick. Or, as in this case, an old tin of 2" nails.

Why? Because it exists in perfect relationship to its environment and to the rest of the things in the shed; a pair of garden gloves, a rake, a crack in the wall, a box of matches, a house-spider ... etc.

Further, the tobacco tin has had what Lawrence terms soft life invested in it via years of use and transferred touch. It has become one of those lovely old things that sparkles with magical allure and which remains warm with the spirit of a kind and quiet man who loved a smoke.  

This Be the Post

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. 
They may not mean to, but they do. 

From my mother I get: 

My urgency, my phobias, my obsessive character, my estrangement from the world and my prejudices (I do not eat tins of tuna, buy things from a market stall, or trust Cockneys). In a word, from my mother I get my complexity.

From my father I get:

My passivity and lack of worldly desire or ambition, my inability to prosper and almost Christ-like unconcern for those things belonging unto Caesar. In a word, from my father I get my saintliness.