St Aidan of Lindisfarne

MONDAY 10 DECEMBER 2007

AWAY FROM IT ALL
The sculpture of St Aidan in the grounds of Lindisfarne Priory has haunted me for decades; whenever I'm on the island, I always make time to look at it or even spend a little time keeping it company. To sit on its plinth, drinking a coffee and otherwise doing absolutely nothing at all is bliss. It's possible to lose yourself completely in your surroundings; if the circumstances are right, the awesome sanctity of the place gets into your very bones. That's what visiting Holy Island is all about of course. You feel extraordinarily lucky while you're there and very different when you leave. There's always peace somewhere, isn't there?
OK I've told you about MY 'place'. Now tell me about yours.....

PICTURE IT
The 'specialness' of St Aidan's sculpture is why I chose the above picture as the first to 'top off' each day's blog-posting. Every day I'll head up each posting with a photograph of somewhere in the north-east. If you have a digital photo you'd like to be featured uptop, send it to the BBC email address below. But please make sure it's less than 1MB in size - preferably a LOT less. Less than 100k would do!

THE FIRST FATAL RAILWAY ACCIDENT
Every schoolchild knows that the first fatal railway accident occurred at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, when William Huskisson MP was knocked down and killed by George Stephenson's Rocket. Like everyone else (including me) The Guardian newspaper assumed that the story was true and mentioned it in an article about its archives, which covered the event. However, it's now been forced to print a correction. Readers in Egglescliffe, near Stockton, have claimed that the first known railway fatality anywhere in the world took place in their locality. The parish register records the death, in 1827, of a 'female, name unknown, killed by the steam machine on the railway'. She is thought to have been a 'blind beggar woman'. Another unusual, and perhaps mawkish, example of a record held by the north-east that isn't given the credit it deserves.
Do you have any other examples?

THE FIFTH WORD
I 'accidentally' forgot to tell listeners what the mysterious 'fifth word' is this morning. Maureen's list of unrhymable words - orange, silver, purple and month - should be accompanied by chimney, although quite a few of you have other ideas. Window had a lot of support and - for the life of me (as they used to say) - I can't think of a word that rhymes with it. Can you?

THIRTY-NINE
I also received an angry call after the programme ended this morning about the number 39. I had asked on-air how the number is represented in Roman numerals. However, as I told the irate listener (who was called Frank), I don't know the answer. That's why I didn't give it! If you know - PLEASE tell us!!

WHAT'S IN A NAME?
The 'odd one out' amongst the leggy place-names was Kneesworth; unbelievably, Hoppyland, Tiptoe and Legs Cross are all real locations....
And there's another made-up place-name amongst this list of North American names adopted at various locations in the north-east: Toronto, Quebec, California, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York. Which one is it?

GEMS
This morning's Truckshunter Gems were Windows of the World, a much-neglected Dionne Warwick track from 1967, and Vibrate, written and performed to perfection by Rufus Wainwright in 2003.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.