The United Kingdom Of Song #45: Northumberland

Our family holiday this year took us to Northumberland, a place I haven't been since I was a teenager when my parents took me to Seahouses on what would be our last family holiday together. I wasn't all that impressed, and after that I chose to stay home with my sister when they went away. Suffice it to say that Seahouses holds more appeal to a fifty-something... though fortunately there was enough to keep Sam entertained to. How long before he no longer wants to go on holiday with his parents.

When I lyric-searched Seahouses, I kept getting these guys... but no relation. 

The Seahorses - Blinded By The Sun

Although the song title at least is appropriate, thanks to us (for once) choosing the best week of the summer to be away... a little too hot for me on a couple of the days.

Jon Langford & The Bright Shiners - Seahouses

We stayed in Beadnell, a lovely quiet village just down the coast from Seahouses, and one that clearly means a lot to Geordie prog-folk bloke Richard Dawson...

She asks why we spend precious time
Crafting our sheaves by hand
When we could acquire all we need
From the bastle at Beadnell
Or one of the abundant caskets of parting cloud
Which every sundown
Float to ground on their dark balloons

Richard Dawson - The Tip Of An Arrow

Slow is the black dog in the sky
Who pisses and slobbers all over the world
From Belford to Wooler, to Beadnell and Ford
He slowly devours the land

Richard Dawson - Black Dog In The Sky

A little further up the coast and you arrive at the awesome site of Bamburgh Castle. Here's Richard to tell us a little more about that.

Richard Dawson - The Bamburgh Beast

And now a history lesson from Jack The Lad...

There was a king in Bamburgh
And a better king you could not find
He had no wife but children two
Fair Margaret and bold Childe Wynd

Jack The Lad - The Wurm

Although Jon Pertwee would be my choice...

Jon Pertwee And Tom Matthews - Pride Of Bamburgh

Now if you're wondering if the house at the top of the page was our holiday accommodation... sadly not. That's actually the former home of William Armstrong, the Tony Stark of Victorian England, a "scientist, inventor and philanthropist" who I suspect made most of his fortune from arms dealing. That house, Cragside, was once described as "truly the palace of a modern magician". It was probably the most impressive place we visited, though the ostentatious display of wealth left a sour taste too.

 On then to Alnwick, home of a far more wholesome magician. In the grounds of Alnwick Castle, we fought dragons and learned how to fly a broomstick just like Harry Potter and his chums. 

Blyth Power - Alnwick & Tyne

Martin Simpson - Lads Of Alnwick

One final treat came with a boat trip around the Farne Islands to visit some grey seals (sadly, the puffins had all left for their winter holidays). The lighthouse on the photo is the one where local legend Grace Darling made her dramatic rescue back in 1838...

The Strawbs - Grace Darling

Talkshow Boy - Grace Darling

Sadly, we didn't get as far as Lindisfarne on that trip... we're saving the Holy Island till our next visit.

Anyone who's ever made it across those steps
At Lindisfarne, that Lindisfarne
Where the tide comes in early and leaves us stranded
Without our family until the morning

James Blake - Mulholland

Lindisfarne - Meet Me On The Corner

Northumberland - definitely a place I'd like to visit again. But it's bye for now...

Self Help For Cynics #18: Why Do You Come Here?

Why do you come here?
And why, why do you hang around?

Morrissey - Suedehead

Nothing too heavy or existential for our final Cynical Self-Help post of 2023, though it is about something our brain does, and I imagine it's something we all experience from time to time... probably with greater frequency as time goes by.

S.E. Webster - The Doorway

You go upstairs to get something from the bedroom. By the time you reach the bedroom, you can't recall for the life of you what it is you want or why you came upstairs in the first place.

William Bell - All The Things You Can't Remember

It doesn't have to be upstairs - it can be as simple as going from the lounge into the kitchen. Or even opening the fridge door. Why did I come here? What did I want?

And I thought we had a chance for love

A rare and special kind of love

Well you opened a door then shut it again

I lost your love and I lost a friend

BMX Bandits - Doorways

For a long time, I believed this frustrating phenomenon was the result of advancing years. Then again, considering that it's been happening for as long as I can remember (although, as we've just discussed, "as long as I can remember" is a relative term), I've long worried my years actually started advancing at a very early age. 

Elvis Presley - I Forgot To Remember To Forget

Turns out it's nothing to do with old age at all though... it's what scientists call The Doorway Effect. A series of experiments by Gabriel A. Radvansky and David E. Copeland which commenced in 2006 concluded that... 

Memory was worse after passing through a doorway than after walking the same distance within a single room.

Jackie DeShannon - When You Walk In The Room

One explanation for this effect is down to what neuroscientists call episodic memory...

Episodic memory involves the ability to learn, store, and retrieve information about unique personal experiences that occur in daily life. These memories typically include information about the time and place of an event, as well as detailed information about the event itself.

Drugdealer (feat. Ariel Pink) - Easy to Forget 

Simply put: if you have a thought in one room, then try to carry that thought to another room, it becomes harder to remember. You wouldn't have forgotten what it was you were looking for if you'd stayed in the room where you first realised you'd lost it. Of course, that causes something of an issue when it comes to looking for them...

Bobbie Gentry - Find 'Em, Fool 'Em And Forget 'Em

Louise gets very frustrated when she asks me to do a job, or add an item to the shopping list, and the first thing I do is run for a notepad to write it down.

"Why can't you remember?"

At last - I have an answer to that question! But will I be able to remember it when I go downstairs to tell her?

Eggs Over Easy - Forget About It

Another potential explanation for the doorway effect involves a slightly more complex understanding of how our brains are organised. BBC Science expounds...

As we move through our days, our attention shifts between [different levels of thinking] – from our goals and ambitions, to plans and strategies, and to the lowest levels, our concrete actions.

Bob Luman - Let's Think About Living

At concrete action level, I am hammering on a keyboard right now.

The strategy involves transfering the ideas in my head onto a computer screen.

My plan is to explain complex mental health issues to myself (and anyone else who might be interested).

My goal is to help me understand my own mental health.

My ambition is to feel better.

Kurt Wagner & Cortney Tidwell - Let's Think About Where We're Going

That's a clumsy generalisation of the different levels of thinking, but the fact is that our brain switches effortlessly between these different levels throughout the day. That's why we can drive home some days without thinking about the journey (or the mechanical process of changing gear or swapping pedals) at all. Other days though, our thoughts might be dominated by those things - if traffic is bad or our car is making a strange noise. 

Charles Drain - Stop And Think About It Baby

The Beeb continues...

The way our attention moves up and down the hierarchy of action is what allows us to carry out complex behaviours, stitching together a coherent plan over multiple moments, in multiple places or requiring multiple actions.

They liken this to the old metaphor of spinning plates... but every so often, a plate falls and we can't remember what we're doing or why we're doing it.  

Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates

Our memories, even for our goals, are embedded in webs of associations. That can be the physical environment in which we form them, which is why revisiting our childhood home can bring back a flood of previously forgotten memories, or it can be the mental environment – the set of things we were just thinking about when that thing popped into mind.

The Doorway Effect occurs because we change both the physical and mental environments, moving to a different room and thinking about different things. That hastily thought up goal, which was probably only one plate among the many we’re trying to spin, gets forgotten when the context changes.

If you want to remember more - stay exactly where you are! (Sidebar: would I have done better in my GCSEs if I'd done all my revision in the hall where I eventually sat the exam?)

Deee-Lite - Stay in Bed, Forget the Rest

Sorry, I just popped downstairs to make a cup of herbal tea. What was I writing about? The Doorway Effect? What was that again...?

Soul Asylum - Standing In The Doorway

Does it, I wonder, have anything to do with The Staircase Effect... or what the French call "l'esprit d'escalier"? 

Jet - L'esprit D'escalier

No. This is the frustration we feel when we leave a room after an argument or contentious conversation and - too late! - come up with the pithy reply or put-down we should have used at the time. I'm kicking myself I didn't say...

Lindisfarne - The Things I Should Have Said

A fire officer came to visit our workplace last week. When he looked at our fire plan, he complained that it wasn't a procedure, it was just a series of actions. I wish I'd thought to hand him a dictionary and ask him to look up the actual definition of "procedure". Too late now...

Saturday Snapshots #42 - The Answers

Let Me Entertain You with the answers to this week's Saturday Snapshots. No Regrets if you got any wrong. You're all Angels for taking part...

Charity Chic was this week's winner with a last minute goal (lots of football references this week - perhaps The World Cup had more effect on me than I realised).


10. Aussie lady is loyal to honey in orbit with Roger, initially.

Australian ladies are known as Sheilas.

If you're loyal to honey, you might have bee-devotion.

If you're in orbit, you could be in Space, with the initial letter of Roger...

Sheila & B. Devotion - Spacer

9. Does Morse's sidekick have enough to buy dinner for Hicks, Murray and Clinton?

Well done to Chris for piecing these clues together - Morse would be proud.

Inspector Morse's sidekick was Lewis.

Hicks, Murray and Clinton are all BIlls.

We buy dinner with lunch money... don't get me started on that dinner at tea time nonsense!

LunchMoney Lewis - Bills

8. An old Stone has wood for Morrissey - making it as good as it was in the beginning.

An old Stone related to Wood would be Ron.

Having wood is a euphemism for sexual attraction. Morrissey was in The Smiths (no, really, he was).

Making something as good as it was in the beginning would be to return it to its former flory.

Ron Sexsmith - Former Glory

7. Atkinson gets up early to win the Cup.

Ron Atkinson was a football-type, meaning he was part of the Football Association and would be interested in winning the F.A. Cup. FA + Ron = blimey.

Early would be 4 in the morning.

Some debate over whether this was actually a photo of the singer in question - Martin committed the heinous crime of google image searching and google mistakenly informed him that the above photo was of "of long-dead minor character actor Louis Jean Heydt". Which just goes to show that you can't trust google image search to help you with this quiz because THIS is "long-dead minor character actor Louis Jean Heydt"...

However, if Martin's image search had revealed the answer to be Don Draper, I might have been hard-pressed to dispute that suggestion...

Perhaps this would have been easier if I'd used the photo I originally selected for this week's competition...

...but luckily I spotted the rather large clue in that image before I clicked 'post'.

In the end, I had to offer an extra clue to help you solve this one... Prefab Sprout! Every little sentiment's an antique. Charity Chic finally worked it all out, helping him clinch this week's title.

Saturday Snapshots: I don't just throw it together, you know!

Faron Young - Four In The Morning

6. And call the location of a small stream.

A small stream is a beck.

Beck and call.

Location = where it's at.

Beck - Where It's At

Still my favourite Beck song.

5. Scott's bride fails to find herself.

Scott (Jason Donovan) married Charlene (Kyle Minogue).

Charlene - I've Never Been To Me

I'm not sure if this will make you feel any better, Alyson, but I knew you'd be the one to get that.

4. Sprint back to the Holy Island.

The Holy Island is Lindisfarne.

Lindisfarne - Run For Home

3. Young Beckham crosses the East River - that's as bad as it gets!

Beckham's son is called Brooklyn. (To be fair, until I researched this clue, I thought Brooklyn Beckham was a girl. Shows what I know.) The Brooklyn Bridge crosses the East River. C claims this quiz gets harder every week, but she still solved this week's hardest clue.

Brooklyn Bridge - The Worst That Could Happen

2. Tell Gabriel to take a seat in Italian and celebrate the splendour of amore.

Oy! Peter (Gabriel). Sit-era!

Who says puns are dead?

The photo is of Peter Cetera today. If you want to see what he looked like at the time of Karate Kid II...

Peter Cetera - The Glory of Love

Rigid Digit turned up relatively late this week, and this is all I had for him!

1. Hen sees VD and Lucifer in my loafers.

Anagram of the week. Hen sees VD unscrambles as... The band Oasis always dreamed of being.




Phew. Need to go lie down in a dark room after that. Saturday Snapshots will return next Millennium... or next week, if I'm recovered.