Sudden sunshine surge reveals shocking sights
THE sun’s oot, the World Cup’s here, the Tall Ships are coming and the Great Exhibition is gannin on – hoy your shades on, get the barbies oot!
Givvower! Dream on, radgies! North East folk don’t do hot. We kid ourselves we do, but we don’t – it doesn’t flatter us at all! Any blast of solar madness reveals more shocking unpleasant sights than a copper’s torch shone into a steamed-up car in a lay-by.
Spiked temperatures in Toon? What madness might ensue? Maybe cafes and artisan bijous up Osborne Road might begin to try and be all continental, and seats and tables could appear on the pavements outside. The usual effect of such street furniture is to merely make the hail bounce higher!
Even worse, everyday tasks would be mutated into trials of endurance that would be better suited to mythical Greek Gods – how did my beloved Golf become a sauna? Let’s imagine we’ve got a proper a la 1976 heatwave. With just a few degrees hike, I’ll leave the Milligan Manor all dressed, pressed, buffed and fluffed in a style that’d earn Gok Wan’s approval – yet even by the time I’ve turned on the ignition I knaa I’m gonna be sweating like Wayne Rooney in a spelling test.
Within seconds my crisp white shirt will be stuck to my body like a damp shower curtain and I’ll have concentric armpit sweat rings reminiscent of a seventies maths teacher. I won’t have even reached the end of my street yet my hair will be plastered to my reddened brow and my eyes bulge like a whippet’s wotsits in a grimace of thermally induced radgieness that’s clearly planted on my face for the rest of the day. (I might catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and all I see is Jack Nicholson from that scene in The Shining where he pops his manic, leering heed through the splintered door and roars: “here’s Johnny!”)
By the time I’ve reached the A1 I’ll be only one or two minor events away from a killing spree. We’ll be crawling along with no visible progress (like the Brexit negotiations) and you will feel other drivers’ anger burning even hotter than the steaming radiator (and steaming radgie driver) of the broken-down Corsa that’s blocked the carriageway.
Mebbe I’ll squirm uncomfortably as shirt and pants go claggy and realise how my bairns felt when we didn’t change their nappies fast enough. Silently, I’ll perhaps be praying for the return of those ghastly bead seat covers from the early nineties – however naff they were, they kept daylight and fresh air between your Jacksie and the upholstery. After an eternity, I’ve maybe reached the Angel and I’ll be praying for one lungful of the freezing Gateshead air that made me equally miserable at this very same spot in early March when the infamous “Beast from the East” bared its icy backside (we’re never happy!).
In my delirious heat-stroked state. I’ll maybe start to hallucinate. No way! – the Angel of the North has started to take its top off like one of those special breed of uber-chavs that only become active in extreme heat. A big iron belly, rusty man boobs and mis-spelled tats are bared to the world as Andrew Gormley’s work of art sways uncertainly from side to side. Crazed by cheap booze and the blazing heat, the Angel swears loudly that it is “geet rock and mental” and announces that it could “have” any other landmark in the country. It promises that him and his mate “Big Earl Grey” are going to London and that Nelson’s Column is gannin’doon. Please make it stop, I’ll sob! Mercifully, I might make it to The services so I can sell a kidney to raise the extortionate fee to buy some chilled pop.
As I painfully avert my eyes from an ASBO family elder who’s whipped off his tracksuit top to reveal a torso that looks like the dough-kneading stages of mass stottie production, I’ll definitely yearn for those leaden, dark, rain-lashed skies summer we know and love.
Mike is performing his new show “Shearer shared me Pram - a tale of heroes, legends and tuppence back on the bottle” at the Brandling Arms in Gosorth on Monday, July 9.