venta

This weekend, it was off to North Shields (read: Newcastle) for a meeting of my occasional rapper team, Boojum. It's a long drive - allowing for a short stop at Services, and a mild pause while I picked Angi up on the way, it was pretty much six hours door to door (the doors in question being my work's door, in Reading, and Jean's door in Shields).

I grew up in Darlington (around an hour south of Shields) and I've rarely been further north than home in some years. For some reason, I've always felt far more affinity with Northumberland and Durham (the area of north of my home) than Yorkshire (the area south). The further I travelled up the A19, the more the place names fell like a litany of old friends. Peterlee and Easington. Shotton and Percy Main. Monkton and Hebburn and Jarrow. Not necessarily nice, pretty places - or even places I've visited - but names that passed familiarly on signs.

I used to visit my godparents in Chester-le-Street during school holidays, and together we trundled round the area; local museums, and nearby towns, but also afternoons walking along the Wall and evenings spent among the weird rock formations on the beaches. I waved to Penshaw as we passed, and, bearing in mind the heat, had to be restrained from veering off to Seaham to paddle in the coaly water.

We pulled up outside Jean's at half ten, with the sky still light and streaked with pink. As we unpacked, a couple opposite unloaded a small child from a car. I heard the guy saying to the little girl "... daft, you've got it round the wrong way"; "way" had somewhere between two and three syllables. The accent, again, is further north than that of Darlington, but still instantly makes me feel at home.

This weekend Boojum deviated from the usual plan of practising during the day and dancing in the evening (bloody world cup, it completely spoils the pubs); instead we left early in the morning and went out to play on the trains. We went out to Haltwhistle, and danced in a few pubs there and the Working Mens' Club, before heading on to Hexham, Wylam and home again. Our first port of call in Haltwhistle was The Railway - with hand pulled beer at £1.30 a pint. I wish I'd taken a photo of the hand-written poster on the wall; as far as I'm aware it confirmed even more exactly than the prices where in the country we were. It gave the prices of tickets for The Railway Leek Club Meat Draw. (In case anyone can't parse that: The Railway has a Leek Club; your competitive leek growing is serious stuff still in the far north. The Leek club has a monthly Meat Draw; that is, a raffle where the prize is meat (or admittedly, in this case, actually a voucher for the local butchers).

Today, heading back down through the Tyne Tunnel we deviated slightly off route to a large and windswept field, playing host to an International Kite Festival. To get to it, we drove through parts of Washington, whose town sign cheekily says "The original Washington". We also passed by signs for Albany, Concord, New York... although I have no idea whether they also claim to be the originals.

The kite festival was amazing - hundreds of ordinary kites flown by kids and amateurs, and many more complicated kites flying "officially" in the arena. We watched a display of the tiny, paper fighting kites popular in India - these didn't have the powdered glass on the strings, so brought their victims to the ground instead of cutting them free. We saw enormous Chinese dragon kites, an unusual Japanese Okinawa kite (which looked like a flying carpet). We saw a one-off kite made to look like a dog, which trotted along the ground - even bounding up to the commentator to be patted - before leaping into the air again, and the most recently acknowledged "new" kite design, which appeared to be made from eggboxes. Eventually, we tore ourselves away from the show of stunts on kite-powered go-karts and got in the the car for a beastly hot drive south again.

It's not all grim up north.

Thanks to