St Nicholas' Cathedral, Newcastle

FRIDAY 11 JANUARY 2008

Even at this distance, I’ll never forget how much fun it was to be the Traffic and Travel presenter on BBC Radio Newcastle. Easy for me to say, I know - I wasn’t the one stuck in traffic snarl-ups listening to Ian Robinson making inane and distracting references during traffic bulletins, after all. But it wasn’t just these that I enjoyed. The job also gave me the opportunity I needed to familiarise myself with local geography. At the time - and indeed, even now - there is much of the north-east I have never visited. Even despite the 4 years I spent on the Big Blue Bus, there are still many villages which await the nightmare of a visit from me.

And a third aspect of the work - linked closely to the second - was the indignation from listeners when I got a location wrong in one way or another. All presenters have to undergo the indignity of admitting, once in a while, that they are not all-knowing when it comes to the nooks and corners of the north-east. When the Gateshead Millennium Bridge first opened, a flood of calls followed when one of our presenters called it the ‘Tyne Millennium Bridge’ (on the very sound basis that it linked Gateshead and Newcastle, and so didn’t really belong solely to either of them).

My knuckles were rapped painfully and unforgettably when I persisted in referring to roadworks as being near ‘Newcastle Cathedral’. Newcastle, listeners delighted in pointing out, has two cathedrals - Anglican and Roman Catholic - and I had to apologise fulsomely to local Catholics for not making it absolutely clear which one I was referring to.

I mention all this because I had cause to visit St Nicholas’ Cathedral yesterday afternoon. I met my brother there for a coffee and ‘a wander’. I’m ashamed to say that I had not visited it for some time so it was a kind of journey of re-discovery. What a splendid building it is! Unusually wide for its length, it’s extremely airy and light for such an ancient structure, probably because the rare styling of the nave arcades deceives the eye into looking upwards rather than outwards. The hidden secrets of the old charnel house - and the pure Elizabethan flamboyance of the Maddison Memorial (it’s on the west wall of the south transept) - focus the mind very effectively on thoughts of the afterlife.

The Cathedral’s crowning glory, however, is exactly that. The lantern tower which rises so majestically at the west end. Close-up or from any distance, it’s a truly sumptuous design and, although lanterns like this are generally regarded as of Scottish tradition, we have one in Newcastle which can match any north of the border. It’s an awesome structure and I think perhaps that we should celebrate it a great deal more than we do.

'BOB’S YER UNCLE, FANNY’S YER AUNT'
Towards the end of each Nightshift, Monday to Friday, we play our new quiz which, for indeterminate reasons I am not prepared to go into here, has the above name. You’re meant to preserve the first letter of the answer to each day’s question so that, by Friday, you’ll have five letters which you can then anagrammatise. Kids’ stuff. The five questions this week (which I re-ran on today’s Nightshift) were.....What’s the capital of Spain? Which East Anglian city used to be the centre of a ‘Soke’? Which is the 7th planet from the Sun? What’s the common name for NaCl? What’s the ‘medical’ term for werewolfism? All will be revealed on Monday morning.

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.