Quayside Morning
Big cranes swing in cool air,
weathervaning the breeze.
New life grows in girder and glass,
beside the brotherly bridges.
Come to watch in the rising time
beside the flowing tide,
as old is renewed under washed clouds
from Baltic to castled hill.
Paul Morgan, Washington
Quayside
Lasses in crop tops
love singing karaoke
with goose-pimpled legs
Jadzia Race, Heddon
Quayside Mid Thirties
Was not just a place for buying bargains - it was a place of entertainment. Almost every other stall or barrow was operated by a salesman who was a very talented showman.
Most often, the Sunday morning was a damp one, light drizzle and misty too at times.
At the beginning of one's tour of the length of the quay from the Swing Bridge and up-river of the Tyne Bridge a man would be calling loudly:
"I know why you come down here! You want a free comb and a cheap alarm clock" throwing a handful of plastic combs in the air.
Next to him stood a coloured gentleman for whom I always felt a sympathetic pang; I imagined him coming from warm, sunny climes and therefore having to wrap up extra warm to ward off the bitterly cold North East air. He may, of course, have been born and reared only a mile of so from where we stood. He sold 'quack' medicines and his opening gambit was to proclaim in a very hoarse, strained voice:
"I come down here wrapped in scarves, gloves and winter apparel", wheezing chestily and barely able to speak. During this opening address he took from a waistcoat pocket a pink cardboard box about the same size as a packet of 10 Capstan cigarettes and from it a small white tablet, held in clear contrast to his coal-black beard; he continued as soon as he'd swallowed this small pill: "My voice is immediately restored to normal!" and it was!
My sympathies were also aroused by the antics of the Escape King whom, clad in only knee-length breeches and under vest plus numerous heavy clanking steel chains, rolled over the slimy wet cobble-stones in his rather slow attempts to unshackle himself. Coins thrown by the more or less appreciative were aimed at the large open canvas sack near his heaving contorted body. The next entertainer had standing in the centre of his push cart, the tiniest of brass paraffin stoves, perched upon which was an equally tiny fry-pan about a quarter of a block of margarine, plus a tray of around a dozen very small eggs, at those times referred to as Banties eggs, a Geordie term. The owner of this stall also wore a white apron and sometimes also a chef's hat. His sales pitch consisted of taking one of these eggs, then a glass cylinder almost exactly the size of a Horlicks mixing glass. Over the top of this, he, with a flourish, placed an egg separator. He poured the egg into this, the yolk remaining on the top, whilst the white slowly trickled down the sides. In the cylinder was a metal piston, which was a tight fit; the end of this piston was perforated hence, as it was pushed-pulled up and down the cylinder, caused the white to solidify rapidly. The dramatic climax of this of this demo was when the chef salesman raised the whole ensemble holding the piston with only two fingers:
"Is this egg beaten enough?" he would call, and then pour the stiff egg white (to which he also added the yolk) into the melting margarine into the now roaring stove. In a trice he added some cut up tomatoes and a little grated cheddar cheese and there, you had an omelette, which if you were quick, you could buy for thru pence.
Jo Mercel
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