Dominoes and a day of eccentricity in Newcastle
Novum's grand finale
It was, at the very least, a novel incentive for a stroll through Newcastle city centre, taking in sights that might normally pass unnoticed and some that are unlikely to be seen again.
There was a frisson of anticipation among those in the know; among others an air of bemusement.
“You know you’re blocking the road” advised an elderly gent outside the Tyneside Cinema, his words falling on deaf ears as volunteers in green T-shirts hastily unloaded breezeblock ‘dominoes’ from a van.
“What’s it made of?” queried an ominously smirking teenager lurking near the top of John Street.
“Concrete,” declared one of his ominously lurking and smirking mates after an explorative poke.
“Now where are you going?” one of the T-shirted volunteers (there were lots of them) asked a meal delivery rider, his electric bike hemmed in near St James’ Boulevard.
A gap was created and presumably someone’s Sunday lunch did not get cold.
The finale of Newcastle City Council’s summer Novum Festival was both audacious and eccentric, adjectives that could perhaps be applied to the whole programme.
I had, after all, just witnessed eight people with suitcases clambering on top of a council van at the top of Northumberland Street.
Just prior to that they had performatively shared a single ice-cream outside Fenwick and encouraged people to lie down with them on the street, using the suitcases for pillows.
This, according to the festival programme, was Kamchàtka (the name, Google tells me, of a vast expanse of eastern Russia) whose silent performers strove to match their billing.
“Follow a curious group of suitcase-carrying strangers as they explore Newcastle, transforming everyday moments into unexpected adventures filled with connection, curiosity and wonder,” the programme urged.
Once on top of the van, whose smiling driver had surely been pre-warned, these mute strangers brandished antique black and white photos at our upturned faces.
“Why’ve they got pictures of the Queen?” one bright spark queried in ringing tones.
Queens, of course, are very old. But this youngster was barking up the wrong tree.
Who, though, were the people on those creased and faded snaps? Lost relatives? Loved ones left behind? A message about empathy and inclusivity seemed to come with their amusing antics.
None of which inspired the nearby evangelist who was not on the festival programme but whose utterances were becoming ever more frantic and frustrated.
“We have food here!” he thundered into his microphone as he and his acolytes continued to be studiously ignored.
His takeaway lesson might have been one Gandhi learned and acted upon to great effect, that silence has a power words can’t match.
Even before encountering the suitcase carriers, I’d seen (half seen) young people hurling themselves from a height at the top of Grey Street in a muscular display of poise and daring.
This was Block and people looking out of the upper windows of End, the clothing store, had snaffled the best view. From my position at the back of the crowd beside Finlay’s, I caught only the apex of each manoeuvre.
But it was an impressive apex with young women twirled aloft by strong men and numerous plunges into a void, beneath which I can only assume a soft landing was to be had.
As the 4.30pm finale approached, a ripple of activity suddenly became a flurry as the green T-shirted ones swung into action, supervised by more important looking people with walkie talkies and an air of knowing what the heck was going on.
A caterpillar trail of breezeblocks was being assembled before our eyes, and around us and among us.
I’d seen a few early ones being put in place near the city library, not far from the starting point up on the concrete walkway, and a pre-built structure of intricate complexity lay beneath Grey’s Monument.
But suddenly the things were snaking everywhere – in and out of the Theatre Royal, along High Bridge and into the building housing the gallery called Newcastle Contemporary Art.
It was starting to rain (trust the weather to be huffy) so we followed the breezeblocks inside and up the stairs to the first floor.
Here, in a sort of madcap amalgam of Hobbiton, a florist’s and the set of Bob the Builder, women were sitting at a large table making paper flowers while people in green T-shirts were putting up breezeblocks and other people were trying desperately not to fall over them.
Nobody, it seemed, wanted to go down in history as the person who accidentally triggered a monster domino run – although the accolade was there for the taking.
From this maelstrom of cement and flowers, it was evident that a breezeblock plunge was intended into the courtyard of the Stand comedy club before the line snaked onwards to brave what Julian Maynard Smith, the founder of Station House Opera who conceived this Dominoes phenomenon, had suggested were the top two potential hazards.
One was cobblestones and the other was folk under, shall we say, the influence.
Nevertheless, in a display of pure chutzpah, the Newcastle domino run embraced The Duke of Wellington, The Old George and The Beehive, that famous bastion of clear-headed discourse, before crossing the Bigg Market and shooting down Pudding Chare.
I followed it all the way, thinking I’d seen some daring performance art displays in my time (and I have… including the burning grand piano, the cars that didn’t quite float on the Tyne and the 1,700 naked people) but this really was tempting fate.
The white blocks did a kind of crazy pirouette on Pudding Chare, nipping up the dark alley where the bins are kept, before entering the sanctity of St John’s churchyard and hurtling up towards the Assembly Rooms.
Here, in a clear act of lunacy, they had been arranged to nip across the porch, before descending and heading onwards and upwards to Newcastle Helix on the burgeoning campus of Newcastle University, negotiating on the way a ditch beside the City Wall and the aforementioned St James’ Boulevard.
At the finish, beside a crenelated confection of domino blocks, a small crowd waited along with Mr Maynard Smith, sanguine under a blue bucket hat, and some hard-hatted men with serious expressions on whose shoulders, you sensed, the burden of success or failure weighed heavily.
It was via the amplified messages they were receiving from others down the line that the progress of the breezeblock tumble could be ascertained.
Goodness, it was exciting! A bit like being at the finish of the Grand National (I was once and saw only jockeys’ caps bobbing past the line, the horses being left to the imagination).
“Entering High Bridge now…” “Safely through Old George Yard…” “Onto section (whatever number it happened to be)…”
Anticipation mounted. It was getting nearer. The serious men made a few last breezeblock adjustments… and suddenly our numbers were swelled as a crowd came running.
Yes, while this might have struck you (as it did me) as a spectacle for which a chosen vantage point was a pre-requisite, others had opted for supreme exertion, which I suppose is natural in a populace raised on the Great North Run.
Here, huffing and puffing, came the horde who had sought to follow from start to finish and had managed to do so without disaster.
Hats off to them!
The end, truth to tell, was neither overwhelming nor sensational.
The last breezeblock having toppled before me, there was no explosion of fireworks. Nobody did somersaults although hearts may have skipped beneath those hard hats.
The crowd applauded and happily dispersed, a few people swiping a souvenir breezeblock in a gesture they might already have come to regret.
But it had been an event, an adventure, another of those madcap crazy things that can happen in this beautiful, lively city… and at the very least an interesting way to explore its nooks and crannies and see the place in a new light.
So that’s Novum Festival done for another year.
Meanwhile, Julian Maynard Smith’s thoughts will have turned already to Tilburg, in The Netherlands, which is due for the Dominoes treatment on August 23.