Newcastle Bookshops: Robinson's
Newcastle Bookshops: Newcastle Bookshop
Brian Mills died on 13 January 2011
Pirate radio
The Boat that Rocked is Richard Curtis's new film about the off-shore pirate radio stations of the mid-60s. In France, where I tend to see these things, it is known as Good Morning England (in English).
In those days the North East had its very own pirate station, Radio 270, although it was also just about possible to hear Radio Caroline North (anchored off the Isle of Man) and Radio Scotland (in the Firth of Forth). Radio 270 was usually off Scarborough, but occasionally drifted to a spot off Bridlington. It was owned by Wilfrid Proudfoot, a Yorkshire supermarket magnate, whose nephew was a grammar school boy. 270 was a former Dutch herring drifter called Oceaan 7.
The pirate's record collections were not very big and when they got hold of a new 45 they would play it repeatedly (or were they paid to do so?). 270 seemed to play Traffic's Hole in my shoe over and over again in the last weeks. Maybe they thought imagining a hole in my shoe letting in water would magically ward off a hole in the hull letting in water.
James Kirkup 1918 - 2009
James Kirkup
School outfitters
Young gentlemen in tweed coats
School books: The Thicket
Newcastle bookshops: Ultima Thule
(In 2012 I re-read On the Road and The Dharma Bums (which I preferred) and discovered from the introduction to my new edition that there is no consensus on how Kerouac should be pronounced or spelled.)
It seems Jon Silkin was also involved in setting up Ultima Thule.
Newcastle bookshops: Thornes
Newcastle bookshops: Davis Books
Davis's bookshop in Westgate Road was the largest second-hand bookshop in Newcastle in recent years. Mr Davis had previously run the SPCK shop in Durham so it is not surprising his own shop was strong on theology. Most of the stock was remainders - particularly in the latter years - but there was always a good selection of local history. Davis's also published reprints of regional classics. Looking up at my shelves I see Sopwith's Mining Districts, Wallace's Alston Moor, Fynes's Miners of Northumberland, and Forster's Strata. These were produced in a variety of bindings. Mr Davis optimistically told me he thought the better ones might be suitable for school prizes. I don't remember seeing any among the paperbacks on the table in the City Hall on Speech Day.
Photo from City Archive collection via Howard.
Newcastle bookshops: Steedman's
As a grammar school boy (like the Steedmans themselves) I sometimes called in here at the end of the day on my way to the Lit and Phil - though only for a few minutes as it kept old fashioned 9 - 5 hours. I remember the day I was admitted for the first time to the real stock kept in glass-fronted cases in the back room behind the little swinging gate.
George Randall records a visit here in the 1980s: "The customer enters a hushed, heated orderly shop, in an atmosphere somewhat like a bank. Decent copies everywhere. Only a typewriter in a back office impinges on the silence. Young Mr Steedman, dressed in a suit and looking like a football manager, leaves his look-out position at the front and, with perfect tradesmen's' manners, asks whether he can help. Steedman pere trundles about on vague errands. . . . During the course of my visit not a single customer came into the shop and the telephone never ran. At 4.20 a cup of tea appeared on young Mr Steedman's desk. Clearly the art of bookselling has been mastered here."
Basil Bunting
coast train blues
them electrickal trains as i done ride upon
the electric trains i did ride upon
aint there no more an the girl she's gone
that electric girl wi'the kandy lips
ma ' lectric woman wi'them kandy lips
sat wi'me i'the coach with her week old chips
on that whole coast route the one sound i heard
was the greasy kisses of ma electric bird
ma only love was ma electric bird
a diesel woman dont much sound ma scene