Up North

[amberdreams]

Using my journal as a journal for a change!
Arrived in Durham – the great views from the railway station that had me smiling.

We walked down through the centre and found the hotel without any problems.  The Premier Inn is pretty new, and directly opposite the mound of rubble that was Riverside Stadium.  I was surprised by the sadness I felt seeing the debris of that battered old ice hockey rink – even though I knew that our team was long gone and it hadn’t actually been an ice rink for many, many years.  I did actually feel quite teary.  I think Paul did too.  It’s hard to believe its over 30 years since we sat inside that stadium cheering for Durham Wasps – Paul Smith and Peter Johnson, Ivor Bennett and Rolly Barrass.  Sniff.



So some things have changed but others are much as I remember – Maven Street is still there and still a dump (see above!), though I’d forgotten that it was offset from the main road so we missed the turning to it on the first pass.  The cathedral is as magnificent as it always was, the streets and houses ancient and picturesque and the river walk pretty though full of midges.  The students are – studenty -- and like the majority of our current Parliament, they are still largely over privileged, over confident and posh, walking around talking loudly about who is going to get a First this year, and there are far too many ruddy faced Prince Harry-a-likes wearing cargo shorts with dress shirts. Ick.  So no change there either.

I don’t know where the Archaeology Department is now if there is one, but it is no longer in Saddler Street, and I couldn’t quite recall which building in the street was the right one.  I think it is this building (see pic) now a Salvation Army HQ but I’m not sure.


We went to the indoor market and I spotted Jared cavorting on a mural in there. Pity he doesn't cavort like this more often, hey?

And Dean has left his mark - must have been when he and Sam were tracking down Crowley's bones in Scotland...


I found a nice motorbike outside a college house on South Bailey for tryfanstone

and today we were harangued in Market Square by a cowboy preacher with a strong Durham accent. Wonder where he left his horse?

Paul got maudlin because the Old fulling Mill museum (the small stone building across the weir) has recently closed due to fears about flooding and he feels that all the work he put in decorating the place back in 1981 has been wasted. The unicorn failed to express an opinion, while I just decided that crowns quite suit me.

Comments

[tifaching.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you're having a good time! LOL to Jared cavorting.

[tryfanstone.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow! How did I miss this? The photographs are absolutely lovely - obviously, for nostalgia as well as themselves, put together with your comments. The stadium - eh, that's just a mess, but I do love the new (new? It must be fifteen years old!) centre built down by the river, past Market Square, so maybe something good is planned for that space?

- the archaeology department's moved up to the science site on the hill, where the labs used to be? But I do miss Saddler Street - that long staircase down the centre of the building was so unusual. I loved it. (About the only thing I did love about a department entirely directed at academic rather than practical archaeology, but hey.)

And the bike! I am racking my brains, but I don't know whose bike that is. I could find out, but that's just a little bit stalkerish. It's a lovely thing, though, and loved as well - really good condition. Thank you!

- glad you had a good time, and sorry about the stadium. But also, thank you very much for the link!

[amber1960.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you've already told me - what was your degree? Did you know Rosie Cramp? Scary woman...

[tryfanstone.livejournal.com]

Straight archaeology. Specialising in the theoretical side (ironic, gievn I went into contract archaeology) with Matt Johnson and Anglo-Saxon with Helena Hamerow (now at Cambridge, a friend of a friend.) I did know Rosemary Cramp: it was actually down to her I went to Durham, because she did my interview and I thought then, I can work with this woman. Sadly, i deferred for a year and by the time I got to uni she'd retired, so my department head was Anthony Harding, whom I still know, reasonably well. (Smiling - that does date me pretty accurately.)

- of my year of 98 students, to my knowledge, three of us went into field archaeology. Only a few of us had already spent time on site. It wasn't a practical course - Sheffield did much better by their undergrads. But it did have a good academic reputation, and that mattered at the time.

- was your masters straight or joint? There was a great deal of crossover with Geography?

[amber1960.livejournal.com]

I just did Anglo Saxon and Viking Studies for the one year with Rosie and Chris Morris so didn't really get a view of what the BA was like though it seemed to be fairly practical from where I was situated. My course started with a dig in Caithness - Freswick, which was a pretty cool Viking site. I got the impression that the BA course was probably more practical than the one I'd done at Lancaster - that was a unit based degree and only one unit was called Practical Archaeology, and you didn't even have to do that unit to get your archaeology degree.
Rosie was funny, she had no idea of life outside of the University. When I was there, she was getting a dowser to map out Jarrow...