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t h e l o n g e s t d a y the shortest day |
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a Finn, interprets the English
North for me, a Dutchwoman. It was my home as a child. It is hers as an adult.
With seaweed and sand she builds and captures the mature shape that I became
only long after I left Cullercoats. In later
years I wrote of the northern sea and the bitter beaches and the shallow caves and the weeded
rockpools, making
lovers of imagination to charm me in boats and in bed, climbing the seacliffs in text and
washing my feet in the rippling tide of memory. And she worked it too, and
stole it in pictures
whilst I stole it in words. Later, for a while, my feet faltered as the shifting
gravel pulled me under but eventually I surfaced again to find myself washed
up, not on an island, but in green fields formed by the plough into a sea
of deeply-ridged waves. But still there is water even here in the centre of England.
For a while I drifted in the meadows, and even now I still do, but as it happens
time is carrying me back briefly to the north for this very first solstice
of the new 100. And so as the year spins a circle on the ·sun· I send back words from
my old life, not in a bottle, no not these days, but corked and thrown out
into cyberspace and beyond…..
|
The
day before – at Cullercoats on the North East coast of England |
Park
on the road leading down to the marine laboratory – rush to the sea – tide’s
out – hitch up trousers – paddle in – coool water as cold as it ever was – no
sun – but then what’s new?! – collect 3 token shells (can’t not do this) –
walk with friend on cliffs and beach – black dogs rolling in the surf – Sea! Sea!
Sea! |
|
The
day – at Kielder Water in the Northumbrian Hills |
The
dam divides blue from green just as this planet divides day from night and
sun from moon. Over the next hill, Hadrian’s Wall divided two cultures for
the maintenance of a third. In a wooden building shrouded in mosquitoes we
talk about the divide which keeps the differently-abled firmly on the far side
of the economic and social fence. It is total irony that here at a special
centre where the disabled might feel their strength we are in a black hole
and none of us can use our mobile phones. Still, I guess this technological
apartheid is old news to those who cannot even ride on a train because they
can’t get their wheelchairs on board. |
|
The
evening – A1 southbound |
Driving
through Gateshead I catch my first glimpse of the Angel of the North
and its sexless rusted hugeness on the skyline. Its exoskeletal chest could
be an iron lung, its sturdy legs callipers. Its wings are like those of a
biplane. It is beautiful borg. As the longest day swings to an end I grip the
wheel and think of cold salt water around my ankles, Sirkka-Liisa’s
photographs, and mosquito bites. |
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