A Night On The Toon

My eldest lad, Stephen is currently enjoying his student career in arguably the party capital of the United Kingdom.

I am of course referring to Newcastle.

Believe it or not, I had never been to Newcastle prior to 2011, when I first visited him up there, a shocking state of affairs if you think about it, considering my boast about being a seasoned traveller. I have tried to rectify this by visiting again and this weekend just passed, Mrs PM and I arranged to spend a night on the Toon with Stephen.

Newcastle is about three and a half hours away by car and this time I suggested that we catch the train instead of driving so that we could relax and spend the journey with more cerebral pursuits such as reading and in-depth analysis of the nuances of progressive rock (in my case at least).

In the end, my attempts to satisfy my intellectual side were slightly thwarted by what proved to be a very interesting train journey.

The train was full of people travelling to the various stops along the way, such as Huddersfield, Leeds and York. The people who were travelling to Newcastle were the most interesting; those visiting for a good time.

A group of boisterous lads walked past us and left one of their mates coughing his guts up next to the door. As he caught them up, I heard him say to one of his mates:

“Oy! You’re supposed to be looking after me tonight! What chance do I stand if you leave me choking by the door?”

This was one of a couple of stag parties that were on their way to Newcastle.

Right next to us were a group of young women who immediately extracted several alcoholic beverages from their bags when they sat down and proceeded to drink them with gusto. They were all yapping away as you imagine a group of young girls about to go for a night out on the town would do – but their animated conversation did not cause me or any of the passengers to scream “Please keep it down ladies!” in frustration.

All of the young women were deaf.

Each one of them was signing frantically, so much so that their hands were blurred. Their activity was punctuated by the odd noise but apart from that it was pure silence and animated mouthing and lip reading. One of the girls at one stage took something out of her suitcase and struggled to close it again, choosing to sit on it, in the aisle right next to me, and repeatedly bounce on it in a futile attempt to close it.

I couldn’t help myself; it was so funny that I ended up smiling. She looked at me and laughed and then mouthed “Sorry”. I mouthed “It’s OK!” back.

We arrived in Newcastle and checked into our hotel, arranging to meet Stephen there. He turned up looking slightly subdued.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked. He is normally a chatty young lad. And then it dawned on me.

“Are you hung over?” I asked.

“I’ve felt better,” he confessed. “I didn’t get in until 3am last night.”

After a late lunch we wandered around the city for a while. Mrs PM was tired so went back to the hotel for a snooze, leaving Stephen and I to go to the cinema to see Olympus Has Fallen.

I noticed that the volume of music from various establishments was extremely loud and remarked upon this.

“It’s only 5pm; these places sound like night clubs.”

“This is Newcastle,” said Stephen as if that was the sole reason for the activity.

After the film, we collected Mrs PM and went to a pub for a pre-dinner drink. The pub we chose was very noisy and full of large groups of men and women ready for a big night out. There were three hen parties and a stag party, the latter of which had reserved a table that was absolutely full of beer. Most of them were already drunk.

Maybe I’m getting old but it was just a bit too much for me. I suggested somewhere else but it seemed that everywhere was the same. All I wanted was a nice quiet drink and a lovely meal. We had earmarked a restaurant and by the time we got there it was absolutely full.

Eventually, we found a combined bar/eating establishment and managed to get a table. Although it was noisy, the food was superb and I spent the time chatting and watching the other customers. Most of them were young and wearing hardly any clothes. The men wore T-shirts despite the chill and some of the women wore very tight-fitting dresses.

I had to avert my eyes lest Mrs PM punch me in front of my son.

As the evening wore on, the place we were in slowly changed its emphasis. The diners slipped away and a DJ appeared just to my right, playing loud music, as younger people started to enter the establishment.

The sheer volume of music drove me to distraction and I suggested that we call it a night. Stephen was fine with that because he was still recovering from last night’s exertions.

The time was 11pm.

We left Stephen and strolled back to the hotel. Every building seemed to be bursting with life; youngsters congregated outside a seemingly endless number of late night drinking establishments, each louder than the rest, with all manner of loud music bursting out of them. Bouncers joked with perspective customers before letting them in.

I saw one young lad throwing up against a wall as his mates stood around chanting

“CHUNDER! CHUNDER! CHUNDER!”.

as if vomiting were a right of passage.

It was yet another poor stag suffering from a massive bout of overindulgence.

When we got back to the hotel, there was a wedding reception in full swing. Large numbers of well-dressed men and women in varying states of high-spiritedness and inebriation wandered about the hotel as we climbed the stairs to our first floor room. Loud music blared from a nearby suite marking the place where the happy couple were celebrating.

We were about to open the glass door to the corridor leading to our room when we spotted a man on the other side of the door staring at us like a member of the cast of The Walking Dead.

I opened the door and said “After you,”.

He muttered something unintelligible and quite literally wobbled through the door. It was then I noticed the vomit stains down his shirt – another victim of overindulgence.

Our night was fairly restful but, being a light sleeper, I was woken up a couple of times by various party animals returning to their rooms in the wee small hours.

We awoke early on Sunday morning and enjoyed a fabulous English breakfast with quite a few other diners, a lot of whom were nursing hangovers.

Mrs PM and I were fully healthy and followed breakfast with a stroll along the Quayside area, enjoying the scenery and the market adjacent to the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Unlike the previous night the city was peaceful and the night clubs and bars we passed were all quiet and closed up, seemingly resting until the masses descended for the next party.

We met Stephen for a final coffee and lunch and watched the Gateshead Millennium Bridge tilt upwards to allow a couple of boats underneath.

I didn’t know it did that.

Before we said goodbye to Stephen, I  handed over some money to help him cope with life as a student, making him promise to spend it on food rather than another night of debauchery.

“Of course,” he reassured me. “I’ve got work to do, you know – and I DO have to eat.”

On the train on the way back we shared the coach with a bunch of other lads who had been to Newcastle for a stag party and although they were a little worse for wear they were still quite boisterous.

I realised then that I am too old for that kind of thing and while Newcastle is a great place to visit, the social life is a little too intense for a decrepit old git like me. I can still enjoy watching it though – it is a great place for people watching.

That didn’t stop others my age, I have to say.

As Stephen says, this is Newcastle.

A Very British Post (Part One)

Today, I came across an article that discussed the traits of British people, those items that are typically British and the various stereotypes and icons that foreigners consider to be quintessentially British. Intrigued by this, I decided to dedicate a couple of posts to this very subject. The first is about the people (of which I am a prime specimen).

On my foreign travels I have met many people who have fixed ideas about what it means to be British. Some people have the opinion that Britain is a bizarre place full of eccentrics; others think that we moan a lot; still more think that we are so reserved that the expression on our face never changes.

Here is a list of some of the traits of British people according to some foreigners:

Bad teeth: apparently there is a school of thought, possibly originating in America, that we have odd, misshapen, crooked, yellow teeth that stick out of our mouths like those of a tiger shark. I am aware that Mike Myers depicted Austin Powers to have dreadful teeth in his three hit movies but in reality our teeth aren’t that bad. From a personal point of view, I visit the dentist every six months for a thorough check up and usually come away without requiring any treatment. I have to admit that compared to our American counterparts, though, perhaps our teeth aren’t perfect. You seldom see a “Hollywood” smile in Britain, where people have a row of perfectly sized, even teeth that are so white you need sunglasses to look at them.

Obsession with the weather: I believe this to be true. Usually, the opening manoeuvre in a conversation is to talk about the weather. Why? Well my own personal opinion is that the weather in the British Isles is so changeable that you cannot guarantee what it will be like at any time during the day, even in the summer. This is one of the reasons I am so annoyed when I see a weather forecast in the morning. Carol Kirkwood will tell me, on BBC Breakfast news, that we should have a warm sunny day. So I leave the house without a coat or an umbrella and I can almost guarantee that I will be caught in a spontaneous, localised freak rain shower that drenches me from head to toe. And this is not just in Manchester either. Once I experienced all four seasons in one day. I went for a walk in May a few years ago and when I set off, the weather was beautiful. Within hours it was raining and then suddenly I was hit with a freak hailstorm. An hour later it was sunny again. This is typical of our weather is also the reason we talk about it all the time.

Obsession with the royal family: The royal family, for me, are merely figureheads and there are two key schools of thought as far as they are concerned. First there are those who love them and are utterly obsessed with them. Second, there are those who regard them as obsolete and want them to stand down. I am somewhere in between. Personally. I am not interested in anything that they say or do; to me they are just self-important celebrities who mean nothing. I wouldn’t care if the Queen’s head was removed from postage stamps for example. I never watch the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day because she is so divorced from reality that everything she says is irrelevant. Still, those that love them do so with gusto. As soon as there is a royal wedding the whole nation comes to a standstill and we all get out our flags and wave – well the royalists do anyway. I just go about my daily life as usual.

Politeness and being reserved: Foreign people see British people as both polite and reserved and to a certain extent this is true. As a nation we are not brash or pushy and we do like to say “please” and “thank you”. Where this comes from I don’t know. You can guarantee that if we have a grievance, we will generally address it politely and will not explode in a tsunami of arrogance and rage – there are exceptions of course. The only problem I see with the “reserved” tag is that we are perceived as being unfriendly, which is far from the truth. I feel that British people tend not to want to intrude and impose on other people’s lives. Personally I don’t care. I am reserved to a certain degree (unless I’ve had too much beer) and am a very friendly chap.

Stiff upper lip: In a similar way to being reserved, we are regarded as being devoid of emotion, i.e. we have the ability to maintain a “stiff upper lip” in the face of adversity. To be honest, I regard this as hogwash. Maybe in the past it was a desirable skill but in today’s times this “stiff upper lip” mentality is probably only encouraged in royalty and the military. That said, most British men will never admit to crying. I do, but only when caught out by a surprise ending in a film. I have been known to leave a cinema, pretending to “have something in my eyes”.

Queuing: I was surprised by this because people queue in other countries. We are perceived as a nation who will happily stand in a queue for hours and despise people who attempt to push in (like Germans for example). If you ever see a queue abroad and notice British people in that queue, just for a laugh try to push in. You will certainly hear these people moan and very politely direct you to the rear of the queue. However, if you approach politely and ask to push in, you may be lucky. From a personal point of view, I despise queuing and will endeavour to do my very best to push in – or simply avoid them.

Humour, irony and self-deprecation: We love to laugh at ourselves and put ourselves down and we are very good at it. In my opinion, we are the funniest people in the world, so funny in fact that a lot of foreigners just don’t get it. Take Monty Python for example. There are British people who do not like Monty Python, but the majority of us do – and we understand why it is so funny. On my first trip to America, we were staying with a family in New Jersey. As soon as I walked through the door, I was cornered by the head of the family who said: “Before we eat I want to know two things. First, why is Monty Python funny? Second, what the hell is cricket?” I struggled to answer both questions but the most difficult was why Monty Python was funny. To me it just is. Take the “Argument Clinic” sketch for example:




Now I find this hilarious. Do you? If you do, then you “get it”. And what about irony? For example, there is a feeling in Britain that Americans just don’t understand it. I came across this on the web recently:

SAN FRANCISCO MAN BECOMES FIRST AMERICAN TO GRASP SIGNIFICANCE OF IRONY - Jay Fullmer, 38, yesterday became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony. "It was weird," Fullmer said, "I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and he pulled a face and said, "great weather, eh?" and I thought "wait a minute, no way is it great weather." Fullmer then realised that the other man's 'mistake' was in fact deliberate.

Fullmer, who is 39 next month and married with two children, aged 8 and 3, plans to use irony himself in future. "I'm like using it all the time," he said. "Last weekend I was grilling steaks and I burned them to sh*t and I said, 'Hey, great weather!'"

Here are some examples of British humour from some of my favourite shows:



















I’m sure you will agree – very funny.

Finally, I would just like to ask any non-British people reading this post what they think are the traits of British people (be nice, please).

I will return with a post about British food.