Baltic

On Saturday afternoon a half-dozen of us (me, Charlotte, Frankie, my sister Abby, her husband John, and their five-year old Oscar) spent an intriguing hour and a quarter stuck in a glass lift at a disused flourmill. The flourmill in question was the Baltic, which for those of you not up-to-date with the transformation of Newcastle (or as it says on the brochures, NewcastleGateshead) into a Provincial Beacon Of Culture, is a handsome former industrial structure on the south bank of the Tyne which has been converted with great expense and fanfare into a seven-storey modern art gallery.

It all happened rather suddenly. We were attempting to descend from the top floor restaurant viewing gallery when we realised that not only would the lift not move but the sliding door separating us from the outside was jammed shut, leaving ten of us (our lot, plus a family from Yorkshire with two teenage children) imprisoned in a four-foot square glass cage, in full view of approximately thirty well-heeled Tyneside gourmants, who were evidently under the impression that their lunchtime canapes came not only with unparalleled views of the iconic city waterfront, but also with a complementary viewing of the groundbreaking installation tableau 'Working Class People Stuck In Lift With Small Hysterical Child'.

Presently, the Duty Manager- an effete twenty-something Geordie, sporting a violently checked shirt and a pointed beard- arrived on the scene, and began to speak to us in soothing tones. A man was due with tools, at which point a 'straightforward mechanical operation' would be attempted, which would see us lowered to the floor below. This short ride, we were cautioned, might be 'slightly jerkier than we were accustomed to' but we were to be assured that 'all was completely in hand'.

Sure enough, moments later, we were on the move- but upwards, and at sixty miles per hour. We shuddered to a halt at a position five yards above the restaurant, our new vantage point offering elevated views of the well-heeled Tynesiders, who had by now abandoned any pretence of admiring the waterfront and had settled back in their seats to take in the far more entertaining spectacle of the Duty Manager attempting to pass off our unscheduled skyward launch as being due to a 'temporary imbalance in the mechanism', which had caused the elevator to operate 'not quite in the way we had hoped'.

These words were met with some scepticism, not least from Frankie who judged that now was the point at which to turn up the dial from Intermittent Subdued Sobbing to Inconsolable Panic. As I tried to assure him that we were not really going to run out of air and die (assisted by the family from Yorkshire, who, true to their regionfolk's reputation for stoicism, had remained calmness personified throughout our ordeal and now proffered, as sources of diversion and succour for our children, internet-enabled tablet phones and polo mints ) I began to get a little hot under the collar myself, as I remembered the small matter of the ticket in my back pocket, and the three oclock engagement with 52000 other people to take in Newcastle United versus Bolton Wanderers at nearby St James Park.

Twenty minutes later, and with the promised emergency maintenance team still not on site, the mood in the glass lift was tipping over into ugly rebellion. Thankfully, just as a plan was being hatched for us to use our mobile phones to call the fire brigade ourselves and have them come and smash us out with picks (a denouement that our friend the checky-shirted functionary was at pains to avoid, perhaps due to the possible presence of members of the North Eastern media among our audience of well-heeled diners), a burly Geordie arrived with a spanner.

Safely out on the concourse, and with Frankie dispatched skipping along the quayside (the trauma had quicky worn off in the face of promises of Rewards for Bravery, and he was happily telling his grandma what a fantastic story he had to tell at school come Monday), I looked at my watch. Ten to three. By one minute to, I was taking my seat at Level Seven in the Leazes, and a good job too, as at approximately twenty-five past four a young French Algerian number 10 named Hatem Ben Arfa turned on the edge of the centre circle and set off on a mazy run past five Bolton defenders before slotting the ball coolly past the Bolton Wanderers goalkeeper to score the finest goal seen at St James Park in living memory. Which I suppose was my reward for bravery, and well deserved too, even if I say so myself.

And now... now we are all back at home, and Frankie is off to see his other grandma on the Merseyside coast, which he has been assured is a very flat part of the country, with no lifts in whatsoever (he tells me he is using the escalators everywhere from now on, and I can't say I blame him). And today, the very last precious workday off of my Easter holiday, I am off to B and Q to pick up seeds and compost to aid the realisation of the colour-coded Allotment Year Plan (it is a thing of beauty, the sort of thing Stalin might have come up with, had he had accesss to marker pens and the works of Alan Titchmarsh) that I spent last night finalising by the kitchen table. So- no time to lose- these moments of freedom, as I learnt during my recent incarceration, are not to be taken for granted. Enjoy your weekends everyone- and stay, if you can, on the outside looking in.

Comments

[looby]

Wow! How exciting! I also imagine I'd be OK in a stuck lift but I think that 45 minutes plus nine other people would eventually cause me to panic a bit. Glad you got down ok.

J - your crinklybee address seems to have been hacked. You keep sending me opportunities to make easy money on the internet. I somehow don't think that's you.

[Jonathan]

Looby-yes there does seem to be something up with my hotmail address! Thanks for alerting me, I'll get onto it...

[Mr C Sandwich]

We all suffer a 'temporary imbalance in the mechanism' from time time do we not...I often take my two up in that lift. We bother not with the art - just the lift and the giftshop. Glad you got to the game.

[Jonathan]

You will be on your way to the childrens area no doubt Mr Sandwich, with its rowing boat and hardbacked picture books. Ive spent many a happy afternoon in there, on days when I haven't been forcibly imprisoned within the building's infrastructure. Also in the Giftshop, home of artful Angel of the North T shirts at £25 a go, and (I actually bought one of these) 'designer' plastic colanders at £15 each. As a gift, if that makes it any less embarrassing at all (not sure it does...)