Schadenfreude...

A traffic warden giving a parking ticket to a Porshe Carerra; it's not often I can use 'schadenfreude' as a keyword in my online portfolio...

Fish & chips...

Whitby ‘does’ tourism so relentlessly and wholeheartedly that it seems churlish to complain. The town is dedicated to relieving visitors of their spending cash as quickly as possible. - along the sea-front to the north of the River Esk, and the warren of back-streets to the south, where tiny shops sell tourist tat. I’ve never seen so many pubs and chip shops in so small an area (OK, maybe Otley in the ‘good old days’), yet everyone seems to be spinning a profit. Despite being able to buy their fish and chips from dozens of places in town, people were patiently queueing to enjoy a proper sit-down meal at the Magpie Café. It has the reputation of being the best fish & chip shop in Whitby - and therefore the best fish & chip shop in the country - but I had a take-away the last time I was in Whitby and it was OK at best…

Paranoia...

After Darlington, I took some pix in Middlesborough. I remember doing a photographic job, years ago, for the Middlesbrough Tourism Unit. The tourism officer had the unenviable task of attracting holidaymakers to a town whose biggest attraction was the Transporter Bridge, and my job was to take photographs for their brochures. All things considered, I thought I’d done a good job. But when the tourism officer reviewed the pix, her brow furrowed. The people looked a bit ugly, she said “They’re Middlesborough people”, I explained. The budget hadn't stretched to bussing in more photogenic people from, say, Harrogate or Ilkley.

Local people had seemed very suspicious of a man with a camera. Today the main concern is whether I’m photographing children (to the point where, if children are about, the lens cap goes on and the camera is slung over my shoulder). But when I photographed Middlesborough market, many moons ago, one guy wanted to know if I’d been hired by his wife to take photographs of him (there was a story there, but I didn’t get to hear it). Other stallholders, equally paranoid, wanted to know if I was working for the social security department, on the lookout for people who were working and claiming benefits (if I was, it looked like I’d found some)…

The sea view from Saltburn...

13 item breakfast...

Darlington: a man engrossed in his work (knowing he could be replaced, at a moment's notice, by a hatstand)...

Darlo...

It’s a long time since I spent a day in Darlington (town motto: ‘You’re never too far from a Greggs’). I lived here - for six months, many years ago - on Greenbank Road, and discovered that my grandfather, also John Morrison, was the minister at the Methodist Greenbank Chapel, at the end of Greenbank road (the chapel has since been demolished to make way for a car park). I never knew him; he’d died before I was born.

The centre of town is much changed. The name of the big shopping centre - the Cornmill - has the requisitive semi-rural associations, while being as charmless as any other shopping mall. I remember when every pub was called ‘The Railway’, filled with old guys staring at the point where the wall met the ceiling. But even Darlington now has posh places to eat and drink.

Escape reality? In Darlo that’s more likely to be something grown under strong lights in the attic…

The Games...

The Olympic Games in Rio have been in the news for the last couple of years, mostly for the wrong reasons, and now the games themselves finally begin. Radio 5 - my radio station of choice - will be the ‘Olympic station’ for the next three weeks, and talk will be of “medalling”, “world records” and “personal bests”. The event has grown way too big; in 2016 it seems like a celebration of global capitalism. Somebody will run faster than everybody else. Somebody will win a medal and then fail a routine test for performance enhancing drugs. Someone will emerge from the sporting shadows to become a household name, “winning the hearts and minds of the nation”. Someone will wrap themselves - literally - in the union jack…

York...

I spent yesterday in York, taking pix and looking up an old friend who I’d lost touch with. I didn’t fancy driving around the city, at the busiest time of the year, looking for a (very expensive) parking space. So I did something I’ve never done before: I used one of the half-dozen ‘park & ride’ schemes, which operate from various places on the ring road. It was hassle-free: easy to park, five minutes waiting for a bus, and another five minutes travelling into York.

York itself was anything but hassle-free. The area inside the city walls felt very small, and the number of tourists, mooching about with their cameras and selfie sticks, seemed inappropriately huge. Whatever it is they come to see, what they must see most of is each other. A lot of locals rely on the tourists for their income, but this dependence makes them surly and grumpy. Maybe they should consider a course of Bile Beans...