Novocastrian

Monday, 2 November 2009

Thursday, 29 October 2009

In those days all the cool dudes wore Levi's Sta Prest trousers for school. They looked like the regulation greys of the school uniform, but they were Levis! You wore them with Chelsea boots or the variant that had a zip up the side. The place to get them was City Stylish in New Bridge Street. Despite being a fashion 'boutique' several of the assistants looked like your granny and served from behind old-fashioned counters. Every now and then they would run out of Levi's and claim that this was something to do with the Vietnam war.

Bryan Ferry remembers City Stylish: "There were . . . other clothes shops . . . that I used to go to in Newcastle. One was . . . trashy but I really liked it; it was called City Stylish, and there you could buy incredibly pointed Italian shoes, and also Teddy boy wedge-soled shoes. All the more outlandish clothes came from City Stylish: pencil ties, really good Teddy boy clothes and extreme Italian suits - tiny thin lapels, lots of buttons down the front and very narrow trousers. Pin-stripes - very good; wild clothes . . . I really liked that shop; I used to go and look in the window every night when I was in Newcastle."

Michael Bracewell Re-make/Re-Model: Becoming Roxy Music DaCapo Press 2008

Thursday, 22 October 2009

School books: A Case of Knives

In H.W. Sutherland's A Case of Knives (1964) John Exnaboe is a secondary modern school teacher in 'Feworth' (Felling/Heworth). He lives in West Jesmond with his 'south country' wife Margaret whom he met as a student at King's College (Newcastle University). The troubled character of their marriage is expressed in the asthma suffered by their baby son. John collects violins which seem to represent his frustrated aspirations to escape the limitations and conventions of his precisely portrayed "upper working class" upbringing in South Shields. He is also a writer, and the acceptance for publication of his first novel arouses the jealousy of his friends and colleagues.

When his mother becomes ill John is obliged to take his family and return to Shields, discovering in the process that his son can breathe freely there and his wife oddly seems happier than she had been in Jesmond. Eventually he becomes a not very impressive, but well-intentioned, headmaster while Margaret discovers purpose in life in a teaching job of her own.

It's one of those not-much-happens kind of novels, with a bit of 1960s 'kitchen sink' thrown in. A lad from Shields should realize that he has responsibilities in life, watch his drinking and avoid the temptations of other women. But there are also some interesting sub-themes. John suffers from reminiscences: of his father's death, and, while on National Service, of forbidden love across the class divide and with an enemy alien in the ruins of a defeated Germany. South Shields is portrayed not simply as a place to escape (in the manner of James Kirkup), but as one where people of many different cultures have found a home (so much so that his own odd surname goes unremarked). There's also plenty of local colour and (of what is now) nostalgia: Margaret is late for her first day as a teacher because the trolleybus she is travelling on becomes detached from the overhead wires on Byker Bridge.