We travel 1st Class on East Coast Rail Edinburgh to Newcastle, which was cheaper than non-1st Class!!! Anyway, wasn’t too impressed. The staff were at best surly and, by the state of our seats, incapable of operating a vacuum cleaner.
We alight at Stockton, an unmanned affair and run, through the deluge, to the nearby Station Bar to use their toilets and call a taxi. It was one of those moments like in a western where the piano player stops and everyone in the bar swings round for a gander. There appears to some unspoken gender apartheid underway. The men mostly wearing short sleeved plaid shirts are all sat at one end of this cavernous room, the women at the other. Throughout our short stay we are serenaded by Dire Straits, Eurythmics and U2. The barmaid, an affable soul, explains that a double G&T costs less than a single. Well!
I indulge in a pint of Exhibition and am transported back to the Seventies as my taste buds get all nostalgic for more innocent times. Small problem. Although I am carrying a wallet that would trouble the throat of a horse, all my notes are of Scottish provenance. Seems the Station Bar’s owners have dictated that their staff should never accept these “ Which is of course highly illegal” advises the friendly barmaid as she calls us a taxi. Between us, we manage to scrabble enough ‘shrapnel’ from a variety of pockets to pay for our drink.
Should the Scottish people vote YES in September, I shall most likely saddle up a horse, lead an army of woad wearing brigands South and raze this place to the ground.
Our taxi driver, a pleasant young chap advises that he knows nothing about, and actually doesn’t like, any music at all. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anyone like that before and can’t think what that must be like. Fortunately, he doesn’t bat an eyelid when I give him a Tartan Twenty.
Quick ‘check in’ to The Premier Inn, with a wash and change of clothes. I call and reserve a table for two at an Italian, Carpaccio’s, located right across the street from tonight’s venue The Arc.
Another taxi takes us there and the driver gives us a potted history of the area en route.
He, and all the other drivers we used over the weekend, seemed genuinely surprised and delighted to receive a modest tip at the end of the journey. It seems as if that practice doesn’t happen at all here.
The restaurant is completely empty, I’m so glad we booked. A garlic, chilli prawn linguini (with hindsight, not the best choice for talking close-up with strangers) is washed down with what tastes like a slightly diluted Moretti. In the meantime, a good candidate for The World’s Most Boring Man has sat down at a table close by and proceeds to read aloud to his partner the content of the entire menu , a fairly lengthy tome by anyone’s standards and in what can only be described as a spectacularly dull monotone. He is only silenced by the sight of Drumbo entering the place and coming over to shake my hand and say hullo. I had already seen and acknowledged Eric. The band, delayed by van mechanical failure, file in and disappear to a table with awaiting meal upstairs.
We mosey over to The Arc which is an amazing facility adrift in an ocean of kebab shops, bookies, closed carpet warehouses and tyre fitters. To my delight they have Doombar on draught. It’s a seated theatre style venue with a few tables strewn around the place. The setlist has had a major makeover since 2013 with some ol’ favourites and crowd pleasers now being ‘rested’
I don’t recall which song triggered it but suddenly people got up, moved to the front of the stage and started to dance
At the bar for the interval I speak to an enthusiastic dancer who asks if I had I ever seen the band with Don. He’s amazed when I say yes, April ’72, and he correctly spits out the tour band of that time and has a fairly good stab/guess at what they would have been playing. I tell him this was very impressive and clearly long before he was born and he agrees, “I was born in ’96”. It was my turn to be amazed. I’m fairly certain I have some socks that are older than him!
After the show, we briefly chew the fat with Denny before he goes off looking for their performance fee. Another beer is called for, however the Doom Bar is long gone, so I settle for the barman’s selection Theakston’s OP.
Andy appears and we discuss the Australian tour and the current climate in his home town LA (one hundred degrees F)
We head off to the pub next door The Storytellers and remain there until chucking out time. We share a cab with new pal Rob who says he’s going to go to Newcastle the next night…..we never see him again
Lighthouse Beacon Straight Ahead 