A Traffic Canute

The sole literary connection of my flat lies in Whiteknights, across the allotments, W. says, a former mental hospital. Boswell's brother was there, he told me. Once, as Boswell was taking his leave, his brother asked, with tears in his eyes, to be taken with him. Boswell was indescribably moved, he recalls, but he knew his brother was being well looked after.

I take W. to see where the famous T. Dan Smith lived, who wanted to turn Newcastle into a Brazilia of the north. An unlikely ambition! But he persisted, driving a motorway through the centre of town. He wasn't a traffic Canute, Smith said in his autobiography. Large swathes of the city – including the whole of Jesmond – are accessible to the pedestrian only through a number of underroad pathways, which W. particularly dislikes. My part of town, and this is why W. likes it, has no such restrictions. He would undoubtedly be a traffic Canute as a town planner, W. says, turning back the tide of cars.

Last night, in his taxi from the station, W.'s driver told him how T. Dan Smith used to pick him up as a paperboy, driving up Richardson Road. He pointed out the front windows of the towerblock flat that became Smith's when he came out of prison. He must have lost the three-storeyed house that looked out over the Moor.

We follow the course of the motorway, along the edge of Exhibition Park and through to the apartment blocks of Brandling Park. Wittgenstein lived around here, when he worked as a hospital orderly, I tell W. You can see the blue plaque that marked his house from the bowling green in Brandling Park. W. has never cared much for Wittgenstein, he tells me. Though perhaps it is the cult of Wittgenstein he dislikes, he's not sure, W. says.

We look in vain for a plaque commemorating Zamyatin's time in Sanderson Road, Jesmond. Have I read We?, W. asks. Oh yes, I tell him. It reflects Zamyatin's Newcastle experience, W. says. And his Jesmond experience. W.'s convinced that the Russian's accounts of the rationalisation of labour reflect what he saw of work in the foundries and shipyards. And his accounts of regimented obedience are the mirror of what he observed of the rich Jesmonders among whom he lived, with their top hats and canes, the parish newspaper under their arms.

Later, W. directs us to the blue plaque commemorating Sid Chaplin, the miner turned writer who lived on Kimberley Gardens for many years. His widow invites us in for tea. We leave towards dinner time, heading down through the Vale towards Heaton, following the course of the culveted Ouseburn.

Crossing Warwick Street, W. insists we stop at a plaque detailing the construction of the culvert. Heaton once meant 'high-town', we discover, being separated from town by a steep valley. The valley was filled in to ease passage from the city, and the unimpressive city stadium was built on top.

I show W. where I'd been knocked to the ground by local youths. They kicked me in the head, I tell him. And I show him the route to the pubs in the Ouseburn Valley that I had travelled so many times in my lost weekend, as W. calls it.

I was out every night, W. remembers. I lived in pubs. Of course, I'd missed out on that in my own youth, W. says, that's how he accounts for it. I was in my room writing, wasn't I? I went into my room, and didn't come out for several years, that's what I told him. What was I doing in there? Writing!, W. knows that. I was writing away. But what was I writing? What did I, a dweller in rooms, have to write about? 

Still, I made up for them latter, my reclusive years, W. says. I came out of my room, ready for the pubs! I went straight from my room to the pubs, ready for them! He's forgotten my monk years, I point out. Ah yes, my monk years, W. says. He had forgotten them.

We find the spot where the Ouseburn re-emerges from the wooded cliff of the filled-in valley. How could have the river, a trickle in its wide channel, have formed such a valley? The Ouseburn was, of course, fundamental to the Industrial Revolution. Factory buildings – many of which are still standing – line the river as it opens into the Tyne. They used to make glass here, W. says, as we pass gaily-coloured boats marooned on mud banks. The Toon-tanic, W. reads on the side of one of the boats.

We stop for a pint at the Tyne, and for another in the garden of The Free Trade, looking up the river. I come here every day for a sundowner, he knows that, W. says. He approves. Sometimes you have to drink, he says. It has to become a kind of discipline. You need order!, says W. You need discipline!

W. admires the view. You can see the whole city from here, pretty much, he says. We look upriver to the Baltic and the Millennium Bridge. You need to leave your city periodically, W. says, if only to understand how much you are part of it. How much it is part of you!

Moving to Newcastle was my great opportunity, W. says. I felt my room, which is to say, the series of rooms in which I have lived and, over the years, barely left. I left my room, and came out to the pubs. I began to get some idea of the expansiveness of life, W. says. Of its possibilities.

Prior to Newcastle, in my Manchester years – my monk years – I was full only of a sense of life's impossibilities. That's what had drove me into the arms of the monks, W. says. His monk years were entirely different, W. says. He wasn't fleeing from the world, he says. He was looking for it.