⭐ Five Things I Love About…Newcastle ⭐
I lived in Newcastle for a number of years in my late teens and early 20s, and have loved the city ever since. I always wanted to set a book there, and finally, I have. Five Things I Love About You features Newcastle City Centre as well as Jesmond and Jesmond Dene, Gosforth, the Quayside, Exhibition Park, and Whitley Bay. There’s so much to love about the brilliant, lively, friendly city – but these are my top Five Things I Love About Newcastle.
⭐ The Accent ⭐
Geordie is more than an accent – it’s a whole way of speaking, and I love it. On my first day living in Newcastle as an 18-year-old southerner, a couple of teenagers asked if I had any ‘tabs’. I thought they meant drugs and shook my head, but it turned out they wanted a cigarette. (I didn’t have any of those either, as it happened). That was my first introduction to the Geordie dialect, but later I made lots of Geordie friends and got to know their way of speaking well, regularly using words like ‘canny’, ‘radgie’, ‘mint’, and ‘mortal’. Sadly, none of it sounded as good in my Hertfordshire accent as it did in theirs! These days, when I hear a Geordie accent, it always makes me feel happy.
⭐ The Football Team ⭐ Although my kids would never forgive me if I didn’t support Arsenal, the Toon Army has always
been my second team. Not only were Saturday mornings in town a sea of black and white stripes, but for a few months, I worked in a pub called The Hotspur, just around the corner from St James’s Park. During matches, the game would play on the big screen. When the final whistle went, some of the fans would be coming through the pub door before the screen had even finished rolling back up again, to order their celebratory or commiseratory bottle of ‘broon’ (Newcastle Brown Ale).
⭐ The Quayside ⭐ When I first moved to Newcastle, I loved the Sunday market on the Quayside. Although the market is still there, the Quayside has been transformed since the 90s, with up-market bars, restaurants, and hotels all along the north bank of the Tyne, as well as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (the old Flour Mill) and the G
lasshouse International Centre for Music, a stunning, glittery silver peanut-shaped building, on the south of the river. (This makes a fleeting appearance in the book). There are also some pubs on the Quayside which are uniquely quirky – Offshore 44 has a strange, low-ceilinged labyrinth of passages that link different rooms, and I’ve spent many nights in there drinking two-for-one cocktails among the damp-smelling cobbles!
⭐ The University ⭐
I went to Northumbria University and I loved every minute of it. I recently revisited it with some of my old uni friends, and I was amazed by how much it’s grown – there’s a whole new campus! But the main city centre campus and Lipman building where Modern Languages classes are still held will always hold a special place in my heart.
⭐ The People ⭐ It’s true what they say, you know – northerners really are the friendliest people in the world. And as Newcastle is the most northern city in England, I think it’s safe to
say the people are the friendliest too. Having lived in London for many years, I definitely notice it – people chat wherever you go, and I’m quite a fan of being called ‘pet’ or ‘bonny lass’!
⭐ The Quayside ⭐
