Work for Radio

A View from the Bridges

I'm standing in the middle of an enormous eye. I'm an eyelash on the lower lid of the newest bridge over the river Tyne, the Gateshead millennium bridge. I'm looking up river, Newcastle to my right, Gateshead to my left.

I watched the winter sun set, blazing Bacardi breezer orange and apricot, laying sheets of molten copper on the water, blackening the bridges, until the lights came on, the sky darkened, and the night wind broke free.

Now the once-coaly Tyne is in coal-black, ready to party. Swizzle sticks of coloured light stir the river's glossy cocktail, orange, blue, red and silver. Far downriver, the Tyne bridge is a slice of lime across the sky.

I'm looking at the new Sage Gateshead, dominating the south bank.

Like a huge billowing silver net, inflated with a great gale of music to bulge out above the river, a steel-silk tripartite cocoon, a vast corseted Rubens torso. Within, three halls can be seen through the skin, bound with hoops of light. If you look from the opposite bank, three tiered ziggurats of clear glass face the river, as if you're looking at massive Amsterdam mansions with high gables, or three stacks of amplifiers at some monster rock concert. As the sky darkens, the outer skin blends into the sky and the bands of light within glow, like a trio of gigantic juke boxes.

In there, concert-goers will be spilling out for an interval drink, their heads full of music, looking out at the river's stave, barred with bridges, notes of light playing on its surface. Looking at the Tyne, the riverbank boulevards fizzing with strollers, looking at the bridge I'm on now.

Seen from the side, this millennium bridge is more like an elegant, harmless mantrap, the canted-over slim silver-steel arch holding up the walkway on a fan of fine cables. It works; it swarms with people, not trapped, but freely crossing the wide river to grab a meal, a drink, an art exhibition, a live concert, a play.

The floor beneath my feet vibrates, bouncing with footfalls, like some great liner's gangplank. This bridge can wink, opening like an eye to let shipping through. But it's not just the mechanism that's revolutionary, it's the fact that our new bridge is only for walkers and cyclists, a stitch in time to close the wound between Newcastle and Gateshead, two cities until now divided by a common river.

Even the accent of the people changes when you venture over the Tyne, a mental barrier for so long. As a north bank native, I nonchalantly board a train for London or a plane for Amsterdam; an evening event in Gateshead feels more like an expedition. Always the poor relation, Gateshead has become desirable company for its more glamorous sister; its industrial riverscape, made uglier by decline, swept away like Cinderella's rags to reveal that most valuable of assets - space for development. Space Gateshead is putting to good use.

Newcastle's slopes bristle with history and revelry, but now there's reason to cross the water to the previously brownfield south bank; the Sage, and immediately on my left, Baltic.

A brick-built keep with chimney towers, Baltic flour mill, like London's Bankside, has become a modern art gallery. Here, Antony Gormley, who gave us the Angel of the North, created his Domain Field. 240 local volunteers were plaster cast naked, and their effigies made by tiny metal bolts which spanned the spaces defined by their skins, like myriad miniature bridges. Standing in the great exhibition hall, they shimmered with ghostly life, a new form of portraiture and a unique collaboration. People queued up to be part of it. Now, glass lifts rise and fall like speeded up clock pendulums from constantly changing exhibitions to the viewing box poised over the river.

This whole area has become an eye, every building seems to welcome you in, offer you a view, some new angle on the river. Everyone wants you to stay for a cappuchino, wake up and smell the coffee. It's as if caffeine flows in the water instead of coal dust, a shot in the artery of the once-sluggish river, the choking dross cleaned from its lungs.

Art, and music; people are literally beating a path to their doors past me standing here. Newcastle has grappled the new, art-friendly Gateshead to its side with bands of steel, and is carrying it, bemused by its extreme makeover, into a joint future.

The past is still very much with us though. I can see two thousand years back in time from here.

Straight ahead of me, the road and rail bridges stack up in layers against the sky. The Tyne bridge, our icon. Coming home as a child, from holiday in far-flung Scarborough, or now from a day's meeting in London, the leap of its arch brought and still brings a leap of the heart; "nearly home". Often the intercity trains, crossing the workmanlike railway bridge by its side, stop right there, suspended over the river far below, before heading into central station. Perhaps some unknown benefactor is giving us the chance to look at this view. From here, through the Tyne bridge's great green fan, you can see the fine, minimalist filament of the millennium bridge down river, the skeins of water weaving, the sun warming sandstone, or lights blooming on the slopes.

Bridges are the cathedrals of the industrial age, massive but seeming to float and soar, like Durham cathedral down the road. Heavy metals become lacework, their arcs and curves like rainbows, a promise of flight. As simple and beautiful as a mathematical equation, the Tyne suspension bridge spans the river, a foot on each bank. Perfect balance and symmetry. In 1928, it was the largest span in the world. Photographs of its building show a meccano Michaelangelo, the two sides reaching out from the banks to touch fingers triumphantly in the middle. Locals wondered how the poor horses would manage to climb over the arch without falling off? Relief, and perhaps a trace of disappointment, saw the royal visitors on opening day drive safely across the horizontal platform.

Behind the Tyne bridge and appearing to lie below it, High Level bridge, built by Robert Stephenson to carry the first trains from London to Newcastle, and beyond to Scotland. Its massive pillars hold aloft a metal tube, forming five small arches ranged below the Tyne bridge like piglets under their mother. Behind, just visible, the pale girders of the Eighties' metro bridge, carrying the metro trams as they loop round between coast, shops, and football ground.

Beneath, the swing bridge, which swivels to let boats pass. It's lying low, leading to the Tudor end of the quayside, where you can drink in thick-walled, wonky pubs like the Cooperage, half a millennium old. Right here was the original Roman bridge, pons aelius, family name of Hadrian, builder of the Roman Wall.

The north is a place of borders, bridges, and walls. To keep people out, or to hold them in? For centuries, the former, as when Vikings harried the Tyne. King Alfred, when his career as celebrity chef didn't pan out, founded a navy to give the Norsemen a kicking - Ethelred paid them to go away. They should have built shopping malls instead. Truly, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. Now, Scandinavians flock to give us danegeld, escaping the prices at home, more epic than Njal's saga.

But we never needed Vikings. We had all the violence we needed right here, home grown. Down on the old quayside, where for centuries women sold their honour cheap and men their lives dear, rackety taverns jostled with the mission to seamen, fighting for the sailors' attention as they reeled from their ships, staggered by dry land and then by drink.

In Napoleonic times, the pressgang prowled for Tyne sailors, highly prized for their skill. There were riots when the women fought the press gang, King's men or not. Northerners have always rebelled, whatever the consequences. William the Conqueror laid waste the north, in revenge for the killing of his henchmen, to the point where we don't get a mention in the Domesday Book. "A terrible desert, smoking with blood and in ashes." Just like Friday night down the Bigg Market at chucking out time then.

North easterners may rebel, but they also rebuild.

At the north end of the High Level bridge, the eponymous castle keep stands guard. Square, solid, with four battlemented towers at the corners, built to keep the enemy out, later a prison where you could pay 6d to look at the chained felons. Now a heritage building, it welcomes visitors and even lets them out alive. Theatre companies give performances there, and the website offers a safety statement to anyone interested. A bit late for William Wallace, unspecified parts of whose hung, drawn and quartered anatomy were displayed to the populace in 1308, followed by similar medieval art installations from the innards of Harry Hotspur, and many other 'workie-tickets'. But why Newcastle, after a building dated 1168? In fact "new" refers to the castle before, built by William's son, Robert Curthose in 1080. We've a proud history of 'new's and 'first's.

One first we didn't manage was man-powered flight. An attempt was advertised in 1733, and crowds gathered to see a man with home-made wings leap from the castle keep. He chickened out however, strapped the wings to his donkey and pushed the bewildered animal over the battlements. It dropped like a sack of coal. You'll be pleased to hear the donkey survived; not so, the spectator it landed on.

Battlements imply battles, and there were plenty of those.

Follow the Tyne north to border country, where for centuries the reivers carried away sheep and cows from the houses they'd burnt. I have reiver blood on both sides; perhaps my Quantum Sheep project, when I spraypainted poetry onto live sheep, was really an inborn need to feel a sheep struggle under my arm again. On my mother's side, the Carrs, who changed sides of the England/Scotland border more often than they changed horses. On my father's, the Lindsays, mentioned in the ballad of Chevy Chase, always up for a ruck. Newcastle was a plum fought over by England and Scotland for generations. Above me, St Nicholas cathedral's famous fifteenth century lantern spire reaches for the sky. Scots prisoners of war were lodged up there to protect it from bombardment, an early human shield deployment. But like me, most native Northumbrians and Geordies have Scots blood in their veins. We were really at war with ourselves all along.

Now it's all about connecting, access, inclusiveness, building bridges. Co-operating. At the north end of this bridge, I can see "Co-operative Society" carved into the top of a fine sandstone façade. Once the co-op, now inside you won't find Robin starch or Bovril. Let your eye move down and suddenly a glass canopy like a frilled lizard's collar fans out above the door, flanked by scribbled wrought iron lamps. It's like a Paris metro entrance. The Malmaison, a posh hotel, one of many springing up in the area, like the Gateshead Hilton catty corners opposite.

Climbing the banks behind me, are the old warehouses tarted up and turned into loft apartments for millionaires, the new and cheaper townhouses, lining the river away round the bend, snapped up by those who want their own river view. From down there, they can see all the bridges, framed in the arched eyebrow of this one.

Sometimes new for old is a bad bargain. Like, plastic golden syrup containers instead of the lovely old Tate and Lyle tins, with their lion and legend, "out of the strong came forth sweetness." But here, that's exactly what has happened. Out of a strong people, forged by a violent history, has come a new sense of creative partnership, a widening of outlook, as the river has shaken loose from its industrial sludge and quickened in its bed.

Not so long ago, this river was more wood than water, solid with shipping. Fishing cobles bucking upriver, holds heavy with cod, won from the wind and waves of the cold, indifferent sea: collier vessels trudging down, carrying the coal won from earth and fire: the silver and the black, brought to light by men and women who worked hard, lived hard and died for our food and fuel.

Later great ships were built here, dwarfing the streets the workers lived in. My great grand-father worked in the shipyards and drank thirstily in the corner pubs of Byker. Gone now, the heroism, the old communities, gone also the dirt, the danger, the poverty. At times my grandmother went hungry. I hope she'll be the last generation here to know how that feels.

Now, the only ship in sight is the Tuxedo Princess, a floating nightclub sparkling beneath the Tyne bridge like some camp troll. Newcastle has become world famous as a party city, famous too for the scantily clad revellers seemingly impervious to the weather. The colder the wind, the wetter, the snowier, the less they wear. Girls we've always called charvas, in tiny dresses, spilling out of low-cut tops and flashing thongs beneath almost-skirts, even scorning tights, nothing but sun-bed tan between them and icy sleet, hunt in packs, descendants of woad-clad brigands, out for a good time. Lads in Newcastle United shirts shoulder their way along, like mint humbugs stuck together. The only men macho enough to get away with wearing jackets are the bouncers, in the same way eminent consultants shed the title 'Dr'. To the Pitcher and Piano, Baja Beach Bar, Buffalo Joe's, these new reivers seize their pleasures, clamouring for cocktails like "sex on the beach", to bring back summer holiday memories of Ibiza.

But the serious clubbing goes on later, and mostly further over, in Newcastle city centre, down the Bigg market and at the coast. Here over the bridges and along the riverside walks, stroll families and world-wide visitors, colourful and warm in winter wear, queueing to skate on the outdoor rink between Baltic and Sage, buying concert tickets, or filling the restaurants whose aromas warm the boulevards. Saris froth under coats like the bow wave under a boat, American voices salt the air.

Behind me on the right bank, I can see one of the sculptures along the walkways, the swirle pavilion, with its golden globe, engraved with exotic destinations once visited by our ships. This part of the river has become a port of call for new arts in old places, new buildings behind ancient façades, café society in wharf-side taverns. People are drawn here, water still calls us as it always has.

Streets, like water, flow downhill. In Newcastle, Grey Street's calm neoclassical facades, as if carved from pale butterscotch ice cream, can't resist the river's pull, rushing headlong to the quayside. And I can see myself, waist length hair, full length hippy skirt, a student in the seventies, tripping down on a sunny Sunday to the quayside markets, a cheerful scarf of tat along the river's rowdy banks, in a time between the grim past and the smart future, when the water was polluted and soupy, deterring all but the most determined suicides from the Tyne bridge's final solution.

In the seventies, Amber Films and Live Theatre were founded to celebrate old ways and new writing, and still flourish down here. Revered playwright Tom Hadaway has written many fine plays for both, giving a flying start to a lad called Robson Green in the process. My recent play about Tom, Hadaway, follows his life from fish quay to theatre, deprivation to the arts. It's the story of a community: it could be the story of the Tyne itself. Cloud Nine theatre company performed it to packed houses last year. Next year they plan a play about Antony Gormley's Domain Field. So art gives rise to art, and it works, if it's rooted in the life of the people and the place.

Gateshead still has some catching up to do. The transformed riverside, the new initiatives leading to Sage and the Angel of the North, need time to transform the centre of Gateshead, and the lives of all its people. But they're working on it. 'The arts' is the new industry. The arts don't run out like fish or coal, they are a sustainable future. And the Geordies are putting their backs into it.

And when good things are swept away by changes, they often return. Up river, in the wilds of Northumbria, the otters are back. I saw one, as mythical as a unicorn, drinking from the river. Down river, the Tall Ships race will finish here again this summer. The Tyne will once more bristle with masts and flap with sails, while a river festival celebrates the Tyne and those who live by it.

If there's a whimsy about some of the new buildings, with their belvederes, breaking wave roofs, pavilions, faux-Egyptian columns, if purists can cavil, the people are voting with their feet. I can feel the vibrations.