Pig Sty Avenue

vikings , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Many years ago a man got drunk, bought a pound of pease pudding at Hilkerts the pork butchers, and somehow managed to scramble up the plinth far enough to be able to plaster the pease pudding on a viking's arse. He was arrested. It might have been an protest against modernist art. At this remove, who can know?

Nearly 40 years ago, November 1965, Dad and his brother, my uncle Freddy, were looking for work. The building of the Lukes Lane housing estate was just commencing, and they went and spoke to a foreman there. "Hmm, " he said. "Nowt just now. Could you come back in the spring?" Freddy replied: "Do we look like fucking cuckoos?"

Behind a Newcastle Pub , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . In a comment to this photo on Entrance to Hell , Laughtonb suggested a pool of photos which were exits. So, we now have Exit from Purgatory . The whole idea could be cheery.

The Duke of Wellington, Howdon , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . It's in a post-industrial desert now. Imagine how it once was, what a welcome sight at dinner time after a morning in the dock bottom.

Yesterday we walked along the Don, and into Jarrow town centre. We went through the Pedestrian Tunnel , like bairns, just for the hell of it. I haven't been through it for years, and it was shorter than I remembered it. It was once much busier, when there were a lot more shipyards operating, and there were a lot of fellas heading under the water to work between seven and half past every morning. We were on foot, of course, but I remembered that going through the cycle tunnel is quite exciting, the tunnel gives an impression of moving at great speed. On the Howdon side, there's a wasteland of light industrial sites and feeder roads for the car tunnel. But there is the Duke of Wellington, where we had a pint, and thought about how it would have been 100 years ago in that pub, when the area was all shipyards and the air thick with rivetting, the pub packed each dinner time with shouting men. Yesterday, there were half a dozen people in, the sun streaming peacefully through ...

...because the sun is shining and we're off for a walk along the Don. Thanks to Apprentice and Alex for suggestions. I think I'm a bit, well, old for Diggnation and Dailysonic - but I can see the appeal. Marks out of ten, though, Brend', for Bonfire Radio , which I'm having a lot of fun exploring. " Bunny rabbits, Satan, cheese and milk... ", forsooth! And iambigred 's found its way into the Twelve Merry Blogs, of which there are now Five. Though perhaps that blog's author should check out this Frank Zappa album . Oh yeah, and then there's capturenewcastle , which has some corking photos from the Town.

Autumn’s knocking on the door: it’s windy and looks like rain. You can smell the summer getting too old. I’m really looking forward to September, because the Baby’s due at the end of the month. Not that we’re relishing the thought of childbirth too much, trying not to dwell on the scary, screaming shitty hours Herself’s to go through. At the ante-natal class last week they asked for a volunteer to try the gas-and-air, so naturally I gave it a go. Shite. Didn’t touch the sides, and I wasn’t in great pain, as a labouring woman will be. “Demand Diamorphine” is my advice. Meanwhile, podcasting. It’s a lot like the blogosphere, which is to say decidedly patchy. Decidedly. For example, there’s Chris Reardon . Very professional DJing, but middle of the road music and sub-local-radio chat. Not my cup of tea, anyhow. From the BBC , obscurely, there's The Weekender , from Radio Northampton, of all places, which lasts half an hour and has some excellent Indie music; the gig-guide ...

The corridor to the classrooms at Imsallata. Happy days.

As administrator of Entrance to Hell , Brendadada wrote "...anyone posting a mugshot of themselves in a horny headband is definitely deadheaded." Indeed. Well, I thought, what does she mean 'bog awful photos'? But of course, we know. There are some photos on flickr which are just bog awful. Lifeless. Flat. Futile. But somebody's gone to all the trouble of snapping them, opening a flickr account, uploading them, tagging them... So, they deserve some kind of recognition. Surely some photos are so bog awful they actually begin to acquire a strange dignity? Well, Bog Awful Photos is their new home. The password's atrocious . Pass it on. I'm full of it this morning because Pig Sty Avenue's Flickr has just gone Pro. There's nowt left but the bog awful photos on my hard drive to upload, so I'll need to get out and get snapping.

It's a poor, pissed-upon, depressing, embittered kind of a place. I can say that, because I 'belong Jarra'. God help you if you don't and say a word against it. Ellen Wilkinson rightly called it the Town That Was Murdered , and that was seventy odd years ago: the victim's corpse has been a long time decomposing; you couldn't say it's ever been resurrected. It's ugly and sullen but it's beloved. The people are the toughest and the finest and the funniest and the kindest in the whole wide world. This town gave Christianity one of its greatest scholars ever, a bright lamp in what were once called the Dark Ages. Palmer's shipyard built an astonishing number of ships, for a navy that once ruled the world. And when capitalism destroyed that we marched in protest and that Crusade is still a Socialist icon . A new Flickr group was set up today for photos of the town. But recording it is easier said than done. As I go about the place with my...

dentist's waiting room , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I was at the dentist this morning. The same building wherein some of my baby teeth were extracted when they wouldn't go of their own accord. Lots of the building's original features have been retained, like this door.

...are besieging the 5 gallons of wine I made a few weeks ago. They shall not pass. Thwarted by my improvised air-locks (cut-up carrier bags held over the demi-johns' necks with lacky bands), they're pissing us off generally. In particular, they hang out around the wee box we put scraps in en route to the compost bin. And as for the compost bin itself, oh my God! I've had to move it to a remote corner of the garden. The funniest bit, which is simultaneously most annoying, is that they do a kamikaze thing with wine, buzz around the glass for a bit, and then dive recklessly in. Herself's horrified by this, but she hardly drinks wine now. I'm less fussy, and barely notice when I swallow one of the blighters. Not much meat on them.

A lot of the morning was given up to reading through the DFES ESOL core curriculum . This should come in handy at job interviews: see, I'm a TEFL teacher, (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), which has come to refer to teaching English abroad. Whereas now I want to work at home, teaching those who want to live in Britain, and that's become known as ESL (English as a Second language) or ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). The skills are essentially the same, with a slightly different terminology and emphasis, and now I'm learning the wee differences. Then I made some blackberry jam. The allotment next to mine has blackberry brambles along our boundary, which cause me all manner of grief, but payback comes at this time of year when I can harvest all the fruit on my side. The first crop's yielded a pound of berries. Never made jam before but decided to give it a go this morning. All the info on the internet and in the cookbooks was bewildering. I co...

Here's an idea: get a parsnip or two, scrub them up, slice them into chips (2-3" long, a wee bit less than 1/2" thick). Sprinkle them with some dried thyme (or oregano, or mixed herbs, as you like), a little salt and olive oil, mix them all around so they've a light coating of the oil, put them on a baking tray and roast them on gas mark 2 for an hour. Let them cool, put your feet up and have them with any kind of dip or condiment you like whilst watching telly, reading, blethering with a loved one, whatever. Goes well with Chardonnay. Much better than nibbles from bastard Asda.

Smoking a "Cocktail" in Imsallata , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . If I could live my life all over again... ...I would never have grown that moustache. (Imsallata, 2004)

It's a hazmat logo, apparently, and this is a rather striking adaption of the general idea. Interesting that it should own such a striking, redolent quality: it's meant to be noticeable. I didn't see any obviously UK references on Google Images, so maybe it's only American. In that case, it was probably in my subconscious from that time I worked at Holy Loch; (and thereby hangs a tale). Or I saw it in a movie :-/

082005 symbol , originally uploaded by artcodes . Does anyone know what this symbol stands for? I stumbled onto this question in the flickr s!gns group . The full story is at artcodes.com . This symbol is familiar... Somehow. It has all the vague power of a submerged childhood memory.

central arcade low down , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue .

I'd forgotten all about this pub, underground by Prudhoe Chare off Northumberland Street (that's in the Town, [Newcastle], for non-Geordies) and haven't been in it for years, not since I was a student in the early 80s. I spotted it out of the corner of my eye today and we went down the stairs. Just had a half, and Herself a bowl of soup. The main meals looked good, and you can tell that it's good value for money because most of the patrons were pensioners who'd braved the stairs. Coffin-dodgers always have excellent noses for finding good quality cheap grub.

...to factobrunt for excellent html advice which has enabled me to tweak this blog and allow pics from flickr to be postd here at their original size. Apart from his personal blog , he has a professional one called, appropriately enough, Helpful Design . Facto, you're a diamond.

Too sunny to stay indoors. And it's that stage of summer when every sunny day is precious. So we got the Metro to Seaburn. We had lunch at the La Fontaine pub. Excellent, it was: a proper Sunday's dinner with proper vegetables, you could tell that none of it had been either frozen or microwaved. Then we had a long walk along the beach, north towards Shields, and then back again along the promenade. I got a few photos. The Minchella photo I converted to B&W as a tribute to Tony Ray-Jones, , whose photos I love. "Tribute"? Sounds a bit poncey, doesn't it? The subject of photography occupies my mind somewhat. Affordable digital cameras and the internet have led to phenomena such as flickr and photoblogging. And that in turn has meant that everyone is learning from everyone else: you see an arresting image and think, "wow", and then, "why 'wow'?". That way, informally, hundreds of thousands of people are learning about form,...

minchella b&w , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue .

Hope , originally uploaded by brendadada . A refreshing photo on a sunday morning. Yes, I know it's too big for the space again, but for a seascape that's appropriate.

£16.99 in HMV, but £7.99 at Amazon, (though with £1.45 p&p). The heading above links to Amazon, which has samples for the curious. This is one of those pieces of music that has been running around in my head for a decade or more. At last, I've got around to buying the CD. The need to listen to it has become urgent. Herself and I were talking about it the other day, and as I said the words "Jesus' Blood..." the baby gave a huge start. It reminded me of that story in the Bible about Mary and Elizabeth .

the ghost of his father Originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Alexander and I were in the Town yesterday. He wanted to try out a synth, and cross examine the man in the shop about it. Then we went in search of a CD of Gavin Bryars' "Jesus'Blood".

Retired Rambler dropped by Pigsty's Flickr and commented 'Imsallata?' I googled it and found only my own references to it, plus a mention my fellow banishee, Rogan Deep, gave it on Virtual Tourist . It deserves to be better known. I spent ten weeks there last year. Imsallata's a Libyan rural market town, about ten miles south of Al Khoms. I've also seen the name spelt 'mesallata' and 'msallata'. Few of the streets are metalled. On market days, you would actually see people coming to town on donkeys, though most of the farmers drove ancient, battleship-grey Peugeots . The street corners were occupied by men idling at all hours: they weren't used to outsiders, and stared, and stared. There was one cafe, where we'd eat sometimes; and a couple of nights a week we'd go there for a shisha pipe ; (that picture in the top right hand corner was taken there, as was this one of Peter and Padraig ). After my ten weeks in Imsallata I was ...

early morning imsallata Originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Biscuit tin Libya

In my gmail inbox tonight there was this: From: FlickrHQ Subject: You have been banned from Libya You are not allowed to join this group again unless a group administrator removes the ban. "Hello..." I thought, and went to have a shufty at the group to see why, feverishly searching my memory to see if I'd been doing any drunk-blogging lately, and inadvertently said or done something reprehensible, but no, (I haven't done that since that time I bought those peyote seeds); I found this discussion. Rogan Deep has rubbed them up the wrong way, and he's a pal of mine, so does that explain it? Guilt by association? I mailed this moody75 guy , and asked if he knew why I was banned, and he says: "Nope, I am not the administrator." I don't think I can ascertain who is the administrator, 'cos I can't get back in there... Well, as Thomas Pynchon once had it : "Fuck you." I've set up a Libya.alt group. Anybody out there with...

Herbs seem to be regarded with suspicion outweighing curiosity round our way; it seems that everyone's simply focussed on leeks and tomatoes. But someone's obviously decided to have a go at parsley. The thing is with seeds: often, you get 500 or more to a packet, and you only want a few plants... So what happens is, there's always someone wanting to give plants away, (apart from show winning toamatoes and leeks, of course), and no-one likes to say 'no', so they pass the plants on. And then they get passed on again. And again, nobody wants to say 'no thanks', or to compost a healthy plant, but once we're into summer, no-one's got much room left, so even new gardeners like me get offered all kinds. That's how I ended up planting two dozen parsley plants this morning, poor pot-bound wee things they were. God knows how many hands they've been through before they got to me. I could hear them stretching once they were in the ground, and mutt...

gnome at bus stop Originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . We were on our way to The Lakeside pub, and encountered this wee lad, "When's the Newcastle bus?" he asked us, anxiously. I didn't want to be nosey, but I wondered, how did he get there? Whose garden did he come from? Why was he off to Newcastle?

december 1969 hawaiian yard at sunset Originally uploaded by aroid .

There's another day with the books and the notes, trying to shotblast the sludge off the grey matter, which sounds revolting, and isn't easy. The only tangible result of the day is this spidergram , and even that's crap, now I look at it again. Hmm. Then I did a tot-up of the written work I've to do over the next few months and it's 10,000 words and, to summarise my course notes, 'any shite work will be rejected...' or words to that effect anyhow. So I'll need to pull my socks up because it's so long since I've done any rigorous thinking that I'd beat Bush in a slow-on-the-uptake contest. Speaking of which, more politics, too, takebackthemedia is really worth watching. Don't click on it if you're in a hurry because it lasts about 15 mins. The Wee Monkey's behaviour during the time September 11th was actually happening. It's much more thoroughly done than in Fahrenheit 911 .

It's good to see my old mate Peter's joined flickr . Careful, lad, it's addictive as tabs. All my flickr tags are open now - thanks to Apprentice for pointing out that one. Blew the dust off my MA notes this morning and got on down. After a few hours reading, naturally, a hopelessly addicted blogger, I set up a blog to coordinate links , or as herself would have it, to do almost anything connected with study, without actually studying. Hmm. Within a few minutes of setting it up, the new blog got a hit by spam posing as comment. I've seen this on other blogs; it's so random, surely it can't hit the target too often? No seriously, castor-oil plant seeds are deadly: according to Plants for a Future , even one seed has been known to be lethal to children... The seedcoat contains an extremely lethal poison that was once used by the KGB to dispose of their enemies... Indeed. I like that bit about the KGB, because the plant's latin name is ricinus communis ...

This digg.com is worth checking out. Links are submitted, and, effectively, rated by users who 'digg it'. Democratic, anyhow, though a wee bit geeky.

Peter's foal. Posted to encourage him to get a blog and/or a flickr account. The fuckr.

Grows everywhere in Libya. Its seeds are bean sized, hard, multi-coloured and grow in spikey husks, like wee conkers. One process makes them into castor oil, another ricin. One seed if eaten can kill you, just a leaf will make you very poorly. So if you brought this bugger back from Libya, f*uk's sake gan easy. Click on the heading above for more information.

We went to an antenatal class last night. I was most reluctant, recalling 1970s sitcoms where they all, fathers included, had to lie on mats and do breathing exercises. It wasn’t like that, though: more like an EFL classroom, sitting in a shallow horseshoe, and occasionally being put into small groups, for which I had all the enthusiasm scientists would feel if obliged to swap places with their laboratory rats. But it got better. We learned all the about the stages of labour, and the bit before it which is called effacement. And then we went to see the birthing pool, and one of the ordinary delivery suites. You can listen to CDs. We had to wait half an hour for the bus home, and got drownded in the rain, which led to a questioning of our counter-culture public transport = good, cars = bad philosophy.

I've a plan to collect a lot of tree and shrub seeds this coming autumn. Gorse seed pods are ripening now, however. I got a lot of seeds from the plants down by the Don last week. I'll need to stratify them over the winter (keep them in a margarine tub of damp compost in the fridge). It's a brilliant hedging plant - there's no way man-nor-beast can get near it. For this reason, it's excellent for bird nesting , especially relatively uncommon species like long tailed tits. Gorse has been in the news over the last few days, because a Yorkshireman was trapped in a thicket for an uncertain period of time, not knowing how he'd got there, after 'consuming various substances.' Here's a local newspaper account . I notice he attracted attention with his cigarette lighter, which means he's lucky to be alive because gorse can be very inflammable.

Suddenly, it's down to weeks: end of September once had seemed so far away; and now, it doesn't. Herself is big, but not massive. Being kicked a lot: whenever I put my hand on her, it all goes quiet. Trying not to think of all the drama approaching. We noticed that South Tyneside Hospital scored well in a Government League table lately, but I'm sceptical about those. And it's one of the hospitals where MRSA's been reported , too. It's not down as one of UNICEF's 'baby-friendly' hospitals, however, though I'm flummoxed as to what exactly that means.

Re our flickr dialogue .

Babel Library #5 Originally uploaded by Chiarina . It's not exciting, but it's good when everything's back in its place: all programs are back on the laptop; my flickr's up to date and the sets are sorted; all of my MA documents have been rescued and are back on the hard drive. That's me, I'm sorted. Even worked out - I think - how to stop these pics blogged from Flickr running over into the side bar...

This article about the demise of 35mm photography caught my eye, then got on my nerves. The newspaper darkroom technicians who must have lost their jobs are shrugged off without a care. And Flickr doesn't get a mention. Technology's changing our lives, on the surface at least, so quickly. Thank God, for example, that it will soon be, if it isn't now, a thing of the past to have to patiently look through your friends' holiday photos at dinner parties or in the pub: remember the horror of it? They'd produce a fat envelope of crap photos of Crete, and you'd look through dozens them at 'this really canny bloke called George from Manchester' or some other pot-bellied stranger grinning his false teeth at you over a glass of lager, and his bloody wife... And then you'd have to keep your face straight when they produced several more fat envelopes and you realised you were in for a night of it. Now, or at any rate soon, almost everybody can suggest y...

1966 car stickers Originally uploaded by Trevira .

set menu , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Hurrah for CDs! I've found a load of backed up pics from last year. This one's from Malta. TW3.

A grumpy kind of morning, dealing with bureaucracy. The afternoon was much better, mainly due to the weather, the essence of a Tyneside August: a warm sun and a cold North Sea scented wind. The picture's from a garden I passed by the Prince of Wales' roundabout.

marihuana , originally uploaded by elencita . That's more like it!

fuente , originally uploaded by elencita . Miserable bastards

Spent most of the day nursing my laptop, which is still not right. I can launch firefox and surf no trouble, but launching other programs is very difficult and slow. I'm downloading updates and plodding away at it... Took time out to put the wine into demi-johns; (Herself always sniggers at that phrase, saying it sounds vaguely, inexplicably, rude: 'demi-john'? Hmm). Three grape and two strawberry.

Apprentice suggested looking at the blogs of people whose photos I like on flickr, and I've been doing that this morning. I found out that a lot of flickr users don't have blogs; many are professional or student artists with la di da websites. I didn't find anything this morning which merits blogrolling, but it's a canny idea. Spencer Watson at Anything Goes made me laugh today. Padraig set off back to Ireland this morning; he's stopping over in Liverpool tonight. It was good to see him. And Paul. It's important to stay in touch with people, but that's easier said than done for we TEFL teachers, who tend to have pals scattered all over the globe. I've lost touch with masses of folk. There was a calamity a few years ago when I was teaching in Istanbul. I was temporarily sharing with another teacher, who was a devotee of raki and beetroot juice. We had several one night and he staggered off to bed, and I decided to have a wee surf from his PC...

Shark , originally uploaded by Ranger Bob . Browsing flickr, found this. Scary, eh?