Sunderland

November 2008

In Sunderland I first needed to make a mobile phone call – a business call – and I sat on a street bench to do that. Sunderland is a very poor town, and people who sat nearby me looked curiously at me, as if they’d never heard someone say things like, ‘I’ll be back in the office tomorrow morning and will email you from there’.

I went into the Winter Garden, which is a kind of circular glass building containing tropical plants – not very large; and a party of primary-age schoolchildren in blue blazers had just completed their visit and were being ushered in and out of the toilets in small groups. I had a look in the adjoining museum and art gallery but was not greatly gripped by anything (I much prefer the museum and art gallery in Kirkcaldy). I then thought I’d try their café and bistro, as they called it, for lunch, but on looking at the menu of meat stew and mashed potatoes and the display of rather tired-looking cakes decided against it. Usually museum cafes are quite good, but the Sunderland one certainly didn't appeal, or not to my urbane middle-class tastes at any rate.

I also thought I’d take a look inside the public library, partly because it was there signposted on the ornamental street signs, and partly because it was nearby. I wondered who would be in there browsing the books, for Sunderland has a poor look about it. The answer turned out to be hardly anyone. The ‘Study Area’ had a few old blokes looking at a newspaper, I could have stayed and studied something, had there been enough time, for there were plenty of free tables. But what was busy, with a queue of people waiting, were the computer terminals, of which there must have been 20-30. I don’t know whether you have to pay anything to use them, I omitted to ask. The people using the terminals and waiting for a vacant one were mostly young – in the 20s and 30s or maybe late teens – and with a large proportion of ethnic faces, that is to say, of an ethnology not generally thought traditional to Sunderland. And that was slightly surprising, as in the streets the population are almost all white. The foreign-looking people are studying, while the indigenous population shuffle the streets (as I have to confess, I was that day).

I had been wondering, strolling the streets of Sunderland, what is it that makes someone look poor? I think it must be a mixture of clothes, complexion and countenance that does it, but I couldn’t precisely pinpoint it. Also if you try looking this up on Google, it is one of those topics of information, that among all the mass of available information, is not there. I have resolved to study this some more, since no one else appears to be doing so.

I think that better-off people tend generally to hold themselves more erect, and I think they wear more-revealing clothes. I was watching the students of Durham University and many of the girls were wearing little pumps on their feet, that are like small boats that cover their toes and heels, but sweep down at the gunwales to reveal an amount of veiny foot. The financially-struggling women of Sunderland, in contrast, wear trainers or clompy male-like shoes. Also the privileged students of Durham University tend to body-hugging jeans, while the downtrodden women of Sunderland have loose-fitting jeans that sag about the bum. But that’s just the shoes and the jeans, there must be a lot more to it than that and I have put it on my list of Very Important Things to Research.

Hartlepool to Durham

November 2008

I waited for the bus to Durham, at the bus stop that was outside the Hartlepool Arriva Travel Centre. This meant that I could spend the time waiting for the bus, profitably reading the adverts for holidays that were stuck to the inside of the travel centre windows in great abundance. I learned that I could go on a five-day trip to the German Christmas markets, with afternoons to myself in Freiburg and Strasbourg, and a berth in a cabin on the overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, for £259. That seemed extraordinarily good value. Or if I preferred, Skegness for £129 or Morecambe for a bargain £99. What value! Pregnant with possibilities!

Then it was time for my bus and I saw with some surprise and delight as it arrived that it was a double-decker. It was a rather ancient double-decker that rattled a lot. I rushed upstairs to the front seat, but needn’t have hurried, for of course all the old folks (ie all the other old folks) fill the seats nearest the door, so they have as short a distance as possible to walk. The only other person to come upstairs was a young man who looked like he probably had a mild learning disability, and he sat near the back. The bus was rather decrepit, and the backrest of the seat opposite where I was sitting came away from its housing when the driver braked, and slapped back with a resounding clonk as he accelerated.

The driver batted the bus along at quite a lick. Or maybe he didn’t especially, maybe it just seemed like it because it was an old rattly bus. Winding through depressed-looking towns, though this bus also negotiated some country lanes, past pheasants strutting in the ploughed-up fields. These buses do a number of detours around housing estates and it’s not always clear to a newcomer like me whether you’ve been down a road before, whether the bus is in fact just doing a loop. So I was not quite sure how many direction signs I saw to a SureStart centre, for it’s possible that some of them were seen more than once, but it did appear to me that every small town had at least one. SureStart is the government programme that helps parents with parenting skills, among other things to try and help make the poor less poor.

The other pleasing thing about this double-decker bus was that one of the unappealing towns it went through was Hutton Henry. When you drive north along the dual-carriageway A19 through County Durham, you see the signs to Hutton Henry, but of course never go there. To my delight, the bus did, not that there was much there when it came to it, but no longer will I have to wonder.

As the bus gets within sight of the cathedral at Durham it goes down a steep straight hill, quite fast, which in the front seat upstairs makes you feel like saying, wheee! (to yourself of course, even though there was no one else on board). A windy day too.

Sunderland to Hartlepool

November 2008

The bus from Sunderland to Hartlepool was a smaller one than I travelled on from Durham to Sunderland, and was cream and blue instead of bright purple. The passengers, as with the Durham to Sunderland bus , were almost entirely old folks travelling on their free passes (well, why not? that’s what I was doing). And they looked rather poor.

The bus goes through a string of poor-looking towns: Ryhope, the outskirts of Seaham, Easington, Horden, Peterlee. I have been through most of these places before, and they do look rather depressed. The people look poor, whatever that means (some comments on this on my page about Sunderland). And so do the buildings. Among the old folks joining and leaving the bus was a woman reading a book called Contract Law. Why would someone travel on a bus from Sunderland to Peterlee, reading a book about contract law? She may have been studying law – as a (very) mature student – or maybe she was in dispute over a loan or something. So much that one doesn’t know and is far too shy to ask. There was a story to be told there, there must have been.

The woman with her book was unusual. No one else I saw that day on the buses was reading a book.