Two days before the trip, I asked myself the question: ‘who might I know who might live close to Dornock?’ a small village, just over the border from England. To my surprise, I discovered that my friend Leys had moved to a house in a town that was around fifteen miles away. We arranged to meet in the Café Royale, in a small town called Annan, which was just down the road from our final destination.
After handshakes and hugs, we went inside. I was immediately hit by humidity and a very strong smell of chip fat. Not only did the café sell cakes and coffee, it also doubled up as a chippy. We found a seat towards the back and sat down. I was relieved we were nearly at Dornock; it had been a long trip.
I had met Leys by accident. Over a decade ago, I began reading a very niche blog about scientific research into a speech ‘disorder’ called stammering (or, stuttering, if you’re American). I put the words ‘disorder’ in quotes for the reason that it is a particularly negative word and I don’t like it; the reality is that people who have to deal with it have to just get on with life.
I left a comment on one of the blog posts and a few weeks later, I received an unexpected email. Someone had done a bit of Googling and figured out who I was. At the time I was unnerved and annoyed at being unmasked, but then I realised that I probably had gone public with my ‘speech’ identity for a simple reason: there was no reason not discuss it.
It turned out that Leys lived in the same part of London that I once knew. It also turned out that Leys was then the chairman of a national charity that supports people who stammer.
Fast forward a few years, after meeting Leys for a few pints in a pub, I decided to get actively engage with the charity. There was a simple thought at play: I had nothing to lose; plus, it might be fun. And it turned out it was. I remember that Leys gave some cracking speeches, and helped to set up an organisation within the charity to try to educate large employers about the condition.
“How was your journey?” asked Leys.
Our journey had been confused, fractious, and long. Rather than going direct to Carlisle from London, and then travelling to Carlisle to Annan, a bit of research had told me that it was cheaper to go up the East Coast to Newcastle and then travel the entire width of the country to Carlisle.
There was another complexity. After booking the ridiculously cheaper train ticket, Sarah discovered that there was only a single place to stay in Dornock, which was available on a Sunday, rather than a Saturday. This led to a decision: we could either book new non-refundable tickets, or we could spend a bit more money on an additional night in Newcastle or in Carlisle. I thought of a compromise: spend a bit of time wandering around Newcastle and then the night in Carlisle, before then catching a bus to Annan in the morning.
We arrived at Newcastle train station just after ten in the morning. Emma, the Newcastle University student that we met in Adlington had recommended that we visited the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which was just across the river in Gateshead. I had been there once before; I remembered an exhibit which featured a fan, a plastic bag, and a sign which said ‘do not pick up the bag; it is not rubbish; it is an exhibit’.
I have an ambivalent opinion about contemporary art. I like some of it. I especially like pieces which have a simplicity about them, or express an essence of some kind of principle, concept or idea. I think this perspective comes from once being a computer programmer. I used to create software that used to move numbers about and transformed them into different formats. Sometimes, you discovered and created program structures that had a weird kind of beauty.
We wandered across a bridge, and along the Tyne and into the gallery. It was almost empty. We started to explore.
“Do you like that?” Sarah gestured towards a giant tooth that was dangling close to the ceiling. The tooth had a couple of metal rods.
“No.” It reminded me that I needed to visit the dentist. I didn’t like the dentist. It made me think of a dental surgery in Catford, South East London. The last time I was there I started to worry about an elderly visitor who was talking to the receptionist about her lost teeth.
We wandered to another gallery. Four squares sat on the floor. One square was filled with pebbles; another square was strewn with life jackets. A weird looking contraption and a set of headphones dangled from the ceiling. A gallery attendant looked up at us.
“Would you like a go? Its virtual reality” The exhibit was about migration and refugees. “You put the headset and headphones on and you look at four exhibits”. I looked at Sarah and asked her whether she wanted a go. She did.
Sarah donned the virtual reality head set and I was sent to a viewing screen at the back of the gallery to see what she was seeing. She saw ethereal figures. She was at a refugee camp, perhaps a camp in northern France; a camp called the Jungle. She was then in an unknown space, filled with distant figures; the images creating a feeling of disconnectedness. The pebbles represented arriving on a new land, or over the sea, and an entirely new scene. The square with the life jackets was connected with another scene where there were piles and piles of life jackets, all stacked on top of each other. There were valleys of discarded jackets.
With Sarah safely returned to reality, we gathered our bags and made our way to an adjoining gallery that contained an array of video installations. I remember three of them: a digital screen showed a mysterious object, like a body, floating underwater. The second was a video representation of a flight across the sea, towards land. The third had the visual appearance of a catholic confessional. You sat down on a simple chair, opposite another screen, and saw a stranger’s hands and torso, moving and gesticulating. Subtitles told a story of a journey; a story that involved fear and dislocation. The adjoining gallery continued the theme of refugee by presenting a number of visual narratives, telling stories of travel from a place of terror, to a place of potential sanctuary.
We eventually found ourselves in the gallery café. One woman who was wearing an inappropriate hat was accompanied by a man who was wearing an incongruous suit. Within a period of fifteen minutes, the café was full with people who were clearly going to a wedding. We later realised that the wedding was to take place in the Baltic Centre. We watched as people went to the counter, and then were told to find a seat, and then find some fellow friends.
It was soon time for us to go; we had another train to catch. We hauled our bags onto our shoulders, walked out of the gallery, and across the Millennium Bridge and back to Newcastle. We navigated our way up the banks of the Tyne and towards the train station.
I never thought that I would ever cross England in an hour, but that was exactly what we did. Our journey along the Tyne Valley Line was busy; we shared a carriage with a group of jolly drinkers. At Hexham, we were joined by a group of women who were on a hen do. I looked out of the window saw pleasant northern countryside; the only thing that detracted from the ride was the bumpiness of the train and high pitched grumbling sound emanating from an aging diesel engine.
Didn’t take us long to find our B&B in Carlisle. We were met by a very jolly man who took us to a room that was extravagantly luxurious: it had rich deep carpet, thick floral curtains and expensive looking furniture that had a glossy dark wooden sheen. Our room was, in every way, different to the room that we had inhabited during our stay in Adlington.
With our bags safely deposited, we explored the town. It felt quiet until we found the centre of the town; people were finishing their weekend shopping. After a brief stop in a local pub, we found the town’s main attraction: Carlisle castle. We crossed a road, paid and entrance fee and started to find our way through its spiral staircases, corridors and rooms. Exhibits told us how its different rooms were used and told us about the Jacobites; an aspect of history that I have always found too distant to be accessible.
On our way back to the B&B, we stopped off at another pub. I saw an opportunity to recover memories from my past and ordered a pint of bitter, and instantly regretted it; my southern palate was too used to continental lagers and fancy porters made by bearded hipsters. Our night out in Carlisle concluded with a visit to a local Greek restaurant that was known to have a very good reputation. Sarah didn’t disagree, saying it was one of the best meals she had ever had.
“He’s very jovial, isn’t he?” said Sarah.
We had just finished breakfast; we were only a few hours away from arriving in Dornock. Andrew was the most jovial B&B owner I had ever met. It was unnerving.
“He’s so jovial, I think he might have murdered his wife.”
I stopped packing for a moment. I knew what she meant. It was his laugh.
“It’s almost as if he’s very cheerful after having buried her in the garden in revenge for all her nagging”.
She did have a point. The proprietor of the B&B was called Helen, and Helen wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
Our penultimate journey was by bus. With our backpacks donned, we found our way to the bus station to wait for the number 79 that was going toward Annan and Gretna Green. We travelled with a young chap who appeared to be visibly stressed, a nun, and two women who were on their way to an out of town shopping centre to begin their shift at Argos.
Leys returned to our table with a round of coffees and a selection of cakes. I asked him about his new life in Scotland. It turned out he had only been living in the area for six months but his connections to Scotland ran deep; he was born in Edinburgh but had spent all of his life in England. His new house was just down the road from where his father used to live. Although he had retired some time ago, this recent move seemed to represent a new chapter in his life, and one that I had been watching unfold over recent months over Facebook. One a few days earlier he had posted about garden renovations, and I remember feeling a twinge of jealousy. He said that it wasn’t a problem that he sounded like an upper class Englishman, and explained that the society was ‘pretty flat’ in terms of not having too much of a class structure.
“People around here are really resourceful; they’ve got to be, and many people have several jobs” he explained. He was becoming established in his local community and having been involved in marketing all his professional life, he now wanted to place his new home town of Moffat on the map.
We chatted about dogs, Scotland, double glazing and planning permission, travel and how his two children were getting along. One thing was clear: he loved where he lived, and he was happy. With our cakes eaten and coffee drunk, I vowed I would make a trip to Moffat to see him; a side effect of this randomness was to discover what trips I really do want to make.
After Leys left us, we had an hour and a half to kill. We wandered around Annan. We found signs to a distillery and discovered a closed museum. We walked past the derelict ‘Central Hotel’; it was a beautiful stone building that was rapidly falling into a state of disrepair. Windows had been smashed and boarded up, letters from its entrance sign had fallen away. It was almost as if the building was trying to tell me something about the area, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Except from a shell of a nearby warehouse, everything appeared to be presentable and well kept; the hotel was an anomaly.
It was five minutes to three. We stood outside Annan railway station. In the distance we could see a chocolate coloured car; our lift to Dornock; the final stage of our journey. It was a journey that I was looking forward to; Sarah had been chatting to the owner and had asked what there was to do ‘in the area’: an outing was planned.
The car was occupied by Julie and Nick, owners of The Waterside Rooms. We stuffed our bags into the boot, and jumped in the back. The journey between Annan and Dornock only took around five minutes. Our destination was a house that was situated at the end of a long single track road, overlooking the Solway Firth.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” asked Nick, after we had been escorted to their living room. I thought for a moment, and then relented, reminding myself that I was on holiday, albeit a very long and a very weird one.
Julie was English; she had once lived in London, working in a well-known news agency. Nick had a hint of a Scottish accent. He was originally from Edinburgh but had ended up working in Newcastle. They had been running their B&B for over ten years. They took to it after having been made redundant from their respective jobs; circumstance had guided to the shores of the Solway, which led to time and money being spent to convert an exposed house into what was now a lovely home. ‘Half an hour’ of wine led us directly to the inevitable subject of politics: the local MP was a Conservative, the only one in Scotland, but the area, Dumfries and Galloway, had voted to remain in the European Union; it was a contested mix of opinion and allegiances.
With some of our political views explored and exposed, Julie showed us to our room. It had a window with a clear view of the Solway. We could see England, which appeared to be distant and mysterious. The tide was visibly rushing out. I liked it. Julie and Nick’s world in Dornock seemed to be a nice place to live.
A night out in Dornock turned out to be a night in Powfoot; a short drive past Annan. Like Dornock, Powfoot was also a small village but it was one that had a series of caravan parks; its focus was less about agriculture and more to do with tourism. At its heart was a small pleasant hotel, which featured a fancy restaurant that had been recommended to Sarah by our hosts. We were taken to a table that overlooked the Solway. It had a very grown up feel to it: there were no children running about, and everyone looked smart. The only mildly baffling aspect of the meal was the menu. I had no idea what a ‘cushion of cod’ was, but I ordered it anyway.
It wasn’t difficult getting back. Mike, a local taxi driver, knew the way to the Waterside Rooms. Mike asked us where we were from.
“I couldn’t be living in London; it’s just too busy. Whenever I go there, I want to get out”. Mike was a local. He spoke with an accent that I had never heard before: Scottish vowels mixed with Cumbrian.
“I wouldn’t be able to look after my horses if I lived in London!”
As well as being a taxi driver, he had a job at a local stables: he was a horse trader. He bought young horses, broke them in, rode them, and sold them on. Even though he was in his mid-forties, he looked like a man who was in his thirties. I had never met a horse trader before. Sarah asked him whether he liked living in the area.
“I guess so. I’ve lived here all my life. I mean, from the stables you can get out and go riding, you know?”
Mike drove us through Annan.
“This is where people go for a night out. You’ll see people on some of the doors, for security, like? I used to do that for a bit, you know. People have too much to drink, and you keep a lid on things, just to make sure everything is okay.”
“How long have you been a taxi driver for?”
“Ah, just a week. I don’t like sitting at home looking at the same four walls, you know? I like to get out”. Mike was one of those locals that Leys had told us about: resourceful, with many jobs; someone who isn’t afraid of getting their hands dirty.
The following morning Julie and Nick had prepared us for an extravagant multi-course breakfast. We again sat at table that had a view across the Solway, eyeballing the English.
We had an hour to kill before we left, so we went walking. We left the tranquility of the Waterside Rooms and found our way to the shore. The tide was still out, exposing huge expanses of sandy banks. We found a path amongst a scene of sea sculpted rock pools that sat in a space between fertile soil and ever changing salty water. We had to watch our step; our shoes were designed for fancy hotels and friendly urban environments, not muddy inclines that could easily become hiker traps.
Wherever possible, we stuck to a route that was resembling a path. In the distance, we saw a bank that appeared to be covered in a light coloured sand. With the sun shining, we carefully stepped our way through passages between the pools, until we started to approach the bank. It was an illusion. It wasn’t sand, but a bank that was filled high sand coloured reeds, which were hissing collectively in the persistent wind; it was a wind that never seemed to go away.
It was time to turn back. We turned around and retraced our steps to the Waterside Rooms. Just before we started to climb a slight incline to the front of Julie and Nick’s house, I saw something in a rock pool. Tiny fish darted in and out of the shadows that I made when I peered inside. Hours later they would be gone, lifted by currents, and taken away across the great expanse of the Solway.
It was Nick that gave us a lift back to Annan station. During our drive back, I learnt something else about Annan and our night out at the restaurant. The restaurant had only been going in that venue for a couple of months. Before then, they occupied the space above The Café Royale.
“That’s a really striking building” I said to Nick, referring to the derelict hotel that we could see from the train station car park. Nick chuckled. He said it used to be owned by a chap who owned lots of buildings in Annan, and he had recently sold it to a development group for thirty grand. He said that the hotel used to cater for ‘the bottom’ end of the market.
My thoughts returned to my earlier question of what this building was trying to tell me. In fact, the building was more of a symbol, a marker in time; it was more important to think about everyone we had met. I didn’t have a conclusion but I did have a feeling, and that feeling was positive.
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