Saying it all. London's World Naked Bike Ride back in 2007. The event is spreading. Photograph: Rod Currie /WNBR York's annual naked bike ride will add its particular touch to the season on Saturday week. Would you believe that it is the seventh?Famously flat and therefore cycle-friendly, the city is one of 60 worldwide which stage the event to celebrate sustainable transport and highlight the vulnerability of bike riders on today's 'car-infested roads.' In the UK, Manchester's goes first, on 1 June, and there are eight others in June and July. Details here.York's participants pedal off at 4pm on Saturday 2 June from near the Millennium Bridge over the river Ouse and spin along a circular 6.5 mile route for a little under two hours, ... Continue reading →
Who doesn't like a good parade? The history behind the pageantry adds to the sense of stability invoked by a monarch. Especially one ho has done the job for 60 years. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA This time next week up and down the country families will be looking forward to a four day weekend in honour of the Queen's 60 years on the throne. Some will spend it at street parties; others will look at it as an opportunity for a long weekend away either in the UK or abroad; some will simply stay at home in front of the TV. But whatever people may be doing, the Diamond Jubilee provides an opportunity for those us in northern England to reflect on a basic question – ... Continue reading →
China and table tennis at the Beijing Olympics: a famous combination Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP We have the full range of martial arts belts from white 10th Kyu toblack 1st Dan in our Strange and Wonderful Cupboard here in Leeds. Their owner – a son fledged and departed for some time now – would be pleased to be back here in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games.The city council has just signed and sealed the deal reached last August for Chinese sportsmen and women to train here in July, including the Taekwondo team which will set up a base at Leeds university. We're also getting China's swimmers, track and field athletics and fencing contestants. Hockey, boxing and canoe teams will also be based in ... Continue reading →
Lights, camera, action... It can all come flooding back Photograph: Diego Uchitel/Getty Images Yorkshire's exceptional collection of home movies has found a new use, in the treatment of elderly people whose minds are not what they were.Working with the Alzheimer's Society, Methodist Homes for the Aged and Age UK, the Yorkshire Film Archive has created a 'memory bank' of clips collated according to subjects which stimulated most enthusiasm in trials.At 62, you begin to take an increasing interest in such bright ideas, and there is much fun to be had in speculating about my generation's likely choice of films to stave off the worst effects of dementia. The current ones, which feature in the first package from the bank, include knitted bathing costumes, free school ... Continue reading →
The Bauhaus in Dessau. Part of the inspiration for Sheffield University's 1950s master plan.Photograph: Christin Irrgang Here's another reproof to those who persist in regarding the north of England as dour and grim. We are are about to restore and revive one of the best glass curtain walled buildings in the world.It is right in the middle of Sheffield, that airy metropolis of fine hills and wide views, at University House, which hundreds of thousands of past students from elsewhere, as well as locals, will know well.It doesn't quite match the glorious Bauhaus at Dessau in Germany but its construction methods were very advanced for 1963 when it was unveiled as a centrepiece of 11 Sheffield university buildings designed by the same practice. A master ... Continue reading →
Back home at last! Sorry for the delay in reporting on my exciting foray on the roof of Guardian HQ. It was definitely exciting in terms of topography and views. Less so in terms of moths. My doubts about the sheer amount of light, height, wind and chill were borne out. I trapped a spider and a fly - see below - but nothing else. That didn't render the whole project pointless. Far from it. Apart from the fun of the escapade, it is always useful to prove a negative. I had to get the PAT-testing done, drive down to London in a car packed with bubblewrap to preserve the lightbulb, and put my excellent colleagues at Guardian HQ to some trouble to organise roof ... Continue reading →
Rare and lovely: Lady's Slipper orchids growing near Kilnsey in Wharfedale Photograph: Stephen Morley Orchids are notoriously the cause of passion and crime and their protection is among the closest in the plant world.That hasn't always been successful, but it has worked with the wild Lady's Slipper orchid which was thought to have become extinct towards the end of the First World War.As so often happens, given the relatively small number of people who knowledgeably look out for such things, it was then rediscovered - in 1930 at a site in the Dales which remains secret. Since then, careful propagation from this solitary parent has gradually increased the plant's UK population, with sites for new stock regularly and carefully chosen in the north of England.One ... Continue reading →
Still building big. Today's news suggests that other giant subs will follow HMS Astute, seen launching at Barrow in 2008. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod The arms industry has brought two major manufacturing contracts to opposite ends of the north, at Brough near Hull and Barrow-in-Furness.Both have been awarded to BAE Systems which has suffered the opposite side of private enterprise in the last year with cutbacks and threats to jobs at some of its plants in the region.Brough was prominent among these, as the Guardian Northerner has reported regularly, and today's news, although expected, brings some relief. BAE Systems has secured a £1.6 billion contract to supply 55 Pilatus PC-21 aircraft and 22 Hawk jets with spares and technical support to the Royal Saudi Air Force ... Continue reading →
Who couldn't love them? These are real ones; models for North Tyneside's concrete. Photograph: Michael Kappeler/AFP/Getty Images After 40 years of genuine but modestly local affection, the concrete hippopotami of Tyneside have finally received a national accolade.Denied the applause – and abuse – often given to the concrete cows of Milton Keynes in the media, the sculptures have silently entertained local children, of all ages, since the Scottish artist Stan Bonnar created them in the early 1970s.They were installed on the Garth housing estate at Killingworth to add a little fun to surroundings which were at risk of seeming uniform and overwhelming, because of the sheer quantity of similar housing. Similar initiatives have followed, almost always with success, such as the penguin bollards on the ... Continue reading →
