Hit the North: Eggs, Chips, and Complimentary Yorkshire Puddings

Easter Saturday, and me and Frankie head North on the early morning train.  We are off to visit the Geordie side of his family tree.  Here are the edited highlights.

1.  The Easter Egg decorating competition

As readers of long-standing will recall, this annual event was initially planned as a one off to entertain tiny cousins, but has grown into an institution comparable in size, scope, and potential to cause bitter internecine resentment only to the Eurovision Song Contest itself.  As well as entering an egg (usually very badly and hastily decorated) I play the part of Terry Wogan (or, as older readers may prefer, Katie Boyle).  I also add the scores up of the various juries (well OK, of the various cousins, sisters, brother-in-laws and aunties), which is the most complicated job of all as it involves (don't ask why) the application of a weighting system meaning the scores of certain contestants need to be divided by six, then multiplied by five, in order to arrive at the final figure.  Usually I am in need of a stiff drink by the close of proceedings.

This year I had high hopes for my entry 'Scoot to Commute', which was an egg wearing a crash helmet and riding a 50cc Vespa fashioned from a desk sellotape dispenser.  I thought the last-minute touch of adding a tiny 'L' plate to the back would be the kind of thing that would catch the judges' eyes and garner me an all-important extra half-dozen points or so.  No such luck- I trailed in in second-to-last place, just ahead of one of Frankie's several entries, which as far as I could see amounted to an egg scribbled upon, in what I can only describe as a juvenile manner, with several colours of felt-tip pen.  The boy will have to do better if he is to compete with the elite entrants, which this year included (courtesy of one Gosforth household) the entire cast of the Wizard of Ozz.  My Auntie Viv's reproduction of Dorothy walked away with the top prize of a giant Cadbury's chocolate egg filled with Smarties. The defeated contestants had to console themselves with medium sized confectionary, and thinly veiled accusations of Balkanesque collusion between voting allies.  We'll all be back next year.

2 Cullercoats

Cullercoats is the poor relation of Newcastle's three main coastal resorts.  It doesn't have cute antiques markets and upmarket tearooms like Tynemouth, or stips of amusement arcades and crazy golf like Whitley Bay.  In fact it doesn't have very much at all, just a chip shop, which on Bank Holiday Monday had a queue of Geordie scallies, most of them clutching packets of Regal Kingsize and six-packs of Fosters, stretching almost back to the Metro station.  Once we'd finished queuing there was just time for me and Frankie to bury two of his large cousins (the ones who used to be tiny when the Easter egg thing started) up to their heads in sand before we all had to run back to the station because me and Frankie had to get back to Manchester. 

3 Stoke City away

As an exile I've grown used to watching Newcastle games in the company of fans of the other team.  Usually this passes off without incident, although there was the time when a giant Levenshulme skinhead took exception to some innocuous comment I may have made about Roy Keane being a 'dirty cheating bastard' and threatened to 'batter' me (and I don't think he was proposing a trip to Cullercoats for fish and chips).  There was also the time, just the other week, when I risked the wrath of a bar full of dandily-dressed Zimbabwean Arsenal fans by some over-exuberant celebration of an equaliser.  So it was a rare treat to take in the Saturday teatime fixture at Stoke in a bar full of black-and-whites.  It was a cricket club bar, though, and a very slight bit on the posh side, so I did receive a couple of askance glances when after twenty-five seconds I yelled something like 'Haway Ameobi man where's your fucking first touch' at the top of my voice.  After that I concentrated on becoming a picture of restraint, and by half-time the barman had clearly concluded I presented no immediate danger to the social fabric of the borough of Gateshead because he offered me one of his tray full of complimentary Yorkshire puddings.  This gesture seemed to signal the succesful passing of some kind of test, and by the end I had been accepted into polite cricket club society to the extent that my views on the unsuitability of Damien Duff as an emergency left-back were given a respectful hearing.  I'll be back, and not just for the Yorkshire puddings.

There were other highlights too such as a visit to an allotment site in Jesmond that is slowly being colonised by my entire extended family and a sighting of one of the blokes who write the Viz comic running for a Metro train.  But I haven't got time to tell you about those as I am writing this in Chorlton library and the time-clicker at the bottom of the screen says I've only got 10 minutes left.  Next time out, something slightly less hurried, maybe...

Comments

[blueskies2day]

Why the weighting system? Hehe...

As if your Egg didn't win!? A sellotape dispenser as a scooter is actually the best idea ever!

[jonathan]

It's like this. Just like in the Eurovision Song Contest the contestants vote by giving a score to everyone except themselves. However not all contestants vote. My dad doesn't, as he is the head judge whose vote will only come into play in the event of a dead heat (as was famously the case in 2007). And our Transatlantic connections (namely Abby and John of comment box fame) don't vote as, while their entries are in the room in the form of emailed photos, they are not.

Now, as I am sure you have worked out, if you don't bring into play a weighting system of sorts, then these non-voting contestants are at an advantage as they receive a score from all the voting contestants, while the voting contestants themselves get one score less, as they (as I think I said up at the top there) do not give a score to themselves.

Well you did ask. (and I think we can expect Abby in the comment box any second now with an argument as to how the weighting system is grossly flawed and has robbed several artistically brilliant overseas entries of certain honours...)

[looby]

Just in a purely technical way, I had to laugh at "I risked the wrath of a bar full of dandily-dressed Zimbabwean Arsenal fans by some over-exuberant celebration of an equaliser. So it was a rare treat to take in the Saturday teatime fixture at Stoke in a bar full of black-and-whites."

Eurovision's going 50/50 juries/televote this year, because the West is pissed off that the East is winning it all the time due to flimsy reasons like they take it more seriously and send their best artists to it rather than a couple of nobodies whose main gig hitherto has been Wolverhamption Labour Club.