My Dad's Diary : Sat 21st June 1947

"Rained all afternoon.

Bus strike started."

From Commercial Motor Archive:

"NORTHERN COMPANY WORKERS STRIKE

UNOFFICIAL strikes broke out last Saturday among company bus operatives in 10 counties in the North and parts of the Midlands. Some men staged one-day stoppages, others withdrew labour for the week-end and some groups started indefinite strikes. In certain instances, routes were curtailed because operatives who remained at work refused to enter areas where strikes were in progress."

In addition to the municipal bus service, Gateshead was served by the Northern Bus Company, operating mainly across the Tyne and into Northumberland, and by the United Bus Company which ran into Co. Durham. For getting to Newcastle we relied mainly on Northern for bus travel.

The Malta Sketchbook

View of Malta, 12 Sept 1995 
(Pencil and watercolour over two pages of 6 x 8 in sketchbook)

OK, let's try to get this blog back on tracks.

I've only been to Malta once; I didn't much care for it. I know many people like the island and there are certainly quite a few artists who go there regularly to draw and paint, but though I've toyed with the possibility of returning, I've never been able to persuade myself that it would be worthwhile. Unless it were with the sole purpose of going back to Tigne Battery (more of which later).

If you're a Malta fan, let me put my case before you throw up your hands in horror. When I was considering a trip there, I asked a friend at work who had been there what he thought of it. His reply was succinct: "It's beige," he said. And so it proved to be. The island and all the buildings are made of limestone which, unlike the limestones of the Greek islands, is not white but, well, beige. I did this drawing of the capital Valletta, on the first day there and found the buildings just blended into one another such that I eventually gave up trying to sort it out. It's not a bad drawing (not very good either), but it didn't satisfy me at the time and still doesn't.

We were staying in Sliema on the northeast coast of the island and a bus took us to the hotel from the airport. On the way there, we fell into conversation with a couple who told us they had been holidaying on Malta for 25 years. They loved it. But it soon became clear they never went out during the day, not because they were vampires but because they were something much more exotic - sequence dancers.

It seems sequence dancing clubs are very big amongst a certain section of the British population and wherever British servicemen have been stationed, there you'll find a sequence dancing club. To cater for their passion, package holiday companies take them on holidays all over the Med - Cyprus, Gibraltar, Malta and the usual bits of Spain. It being too hot during the day to trip any light fantastic, They Only Come Out at Night.

So dancing in the dark is obviously one reason for Malta's attraction. The beer is pretty good, too, being British styled but lighter for the climate. However, when we were there the pubs and even the cafes stuck rigidly to an afternoon closing schedule which made life quite difficult. One day while sitting outside a pub finishing off a pint, they came and took away the umbrellas and left us in the fierce heat., yet there was still a good half hour of opening time to go. Sitting in a cafe we'd just got our sandwiches before 2 pm; five minutes later, other customers were turned away.

The buses were wonderful old machines, beautifully painted and decorated with rosaries and religious icons but all of them went into and out of the main bus station, which meant that if you wanted to go anywhere other than Valletta, you still had to go into Valletta bus station, change buses and out again. I understand there's been a shake-up of the transport now: the old buses have gone and Arriva has taken over. My experience of Arriva in this country doesn't make me any more cheerful to hear that.

Oh, let's finish on the food. I had the worst pizza of my whole life in a restaurant in Sliema. The wait for it was considerable and when it arrived there was a huge bubble in the pastry which had made the topping slide off to one side, leaving a dry lump of pastry bubble at the other side. I was so astonished and so very hungry that I didn't bother to complain.

So there you have it: not what I hoped for from a holiday. I was on the point of giving up on the idea of getting any drawing done when I discovered Tigne Battery. More next time.

Voyage of Discovery

I waited until the day was waning. There were fewer people about and, as I got on the bus to Newcastle, there was a huge moon low in the sky, already brilliant in its fullness.

"Gateshead, please," I said. Why did I do that? My mind must have been on other things and now, here I was with a ticket to Gateshead Interchange, when I had intended to go directly to Newcastle.

At the Interchange, I got off and when the next bus came along, I got on that one.

"Newcastle, please."

In Newcastle, I realised I had no particular reason for being there.

I wandered round town, looking in the Waterstones Twins, where I found a BBC CD of Betjeman reading some of his own poetry. I decided to come back and look at it some other time. In W H Smith's, I flicked idly through the pages of Mojo, toyed briefly with the idea of using my fingernail to slit open one of the other sealed music magazines, but eventually found I hadn't sufficient interest. I lingered a while in Fenwick's deli, but couldn't see anything to tempt me for dinner.

I was definitely in full flaneur mode.

When the novelty had worn off, I got the bus home. "Black Horse, please." That's in the next fare zone, I reminded myself.

Last week I would have paid £3.50 for my travelling. Today it cost me nothing at all.

I have made my first journey using my Concessionary Travel Card. I am sixty.

Rat Man come, Picture go

Sometimes Falling, Sometimes Flying (oil on canvas, 30.5 x 30.5 ins)

I managed to finish the painting on Monday night, putting on the final glazes round about 1.00 in the morning. Luckily, the morning's heat from the radiator dried it sufficiently to get it wrapped up to take to town.

But first - the Rat Man cometh. A different one from last time, older and a little more careworn, but nonetheless effective for that. On his way through the house he stopped to appreciate one of my pictures leaning against the wall waiting to be stored away, and we had a little chat about the difference between a "nice hobby" and a means to earning a living.

In the garden he nodded when I pointed out the burrow and said oh yes under his breath. Then, with the eye of one who knows about rodent life, he quickly located the run the rat has been using through to Lucy Smooth's garden of plenty.

After dropping his weapon of mass destruction down the hole (the poison is called Neosorexa, in case you ever notice it on the menu somewhere) he left with an admonishment to take down the peanut feeders because peanuts act as an antidote to Neosorexa (worth knowing in case you ever don't notice it on the menu somewhere).

And still no charge, unlike in other less responsible Council areas.

The Rat Man had come unheralded and held me up a little. I now found it was too late to take the bottom bus - stop that sniggering - because it would be full of horrible kids from the school down the road, punching each other, calling each other names and possibly even filling the bus so that I and my painting wouldn't get on, even if we wanted to.

Which meant a trip up the hill in the gusty wind, desperately hanging onto a picture nearly three feet square.. No fun, I can tell you.

And the bus ride was no better. The bus was an older model, without the helpful buggy-parking spaces at the front, so I was forced to sit on the long front seat balancing the painting on my toes. And where do we stop within five minutes of my getting on? The College down the road, where horrible older kids get on. They don't punch each other or call each other names, but what they do do, is stand next to the luggage rack in front of me in such a fashion that anyone wanting to get off, or indeed into the bus interior where there are of course plenty seats, has to push their way between the College tossers and my painting.

I spent the next 20 minutes warding off backpacks, carrier bags and little old ladies who instinctively grab for the top edge of a handy painting, and still heard a terrific crack! as someone wrenched the picture sideways sufficiently to make one of the joints complain.

By the time I'd arrived in town and wrestled with the wind-whipped picture up to the gallery, I was worn out.

What joy, then, to meet up with Patsy123 there, newly returned from London. She was cold and I was fraught. A coffee (she) and a pint of Cheeky Wee Beastie (he) put everything to rights.