The Late Shows

For one night only something other than bars stayed open late in Newcastle: a gin workshop at the Centre for Life, beer tasting at the Discovery, champagne and chicken-on-a-stick at St James' Park.

We started off at the Castle Keep, where a hunchbacked Richard III was turning Shakespeare's ghost Stone Colde (and taking a long time about it, too). Up on the roof the sun was setting over Elswick; through the camera lens the city looked black and red, with scaffolding poles in one corner.

Next stop was St James' Park and a twenty-minute queue in the late-May cold. As you'd expect from a club that's won fuck all of consequence since 1969, the museum was not exactly overflowing with honours: a collection of trophies and caps won by Terry McDermott as a Liverpool player, gifts from abroad (a nice silver jug from Basle and a ceramic vase from Japan) and an awful child's scrawl of a painting showing Mirandinha mis-kicking a ball in front of the Tyne Bridge (as I remember, a little further out than his usual efforts at goal, but presumably with the same end result). The champagne had run out so I snaffled two bits of not so spicy chicken and spent the rest of the time trying to dump the sticks in a corner.

And then we were off. Up the grubby stairs where Keegan placated the mob after selling Andy Cole, straight ahead at the bust of Bobby Robson, then left in front of the tunnel, Howay the Lads glaring under lights. Inside the door to the home changing room was a whiteboard reminding the players WINNING IS WHY WE'RE HERE and EVERY TEAM HAS A WEAK LINK! On the far wall, above Owen and Viduka, an old clock ticks off the minutes since the Fairs Cup win. The room's massive (twice the size of the away one, which we snuck into on the way back out) with showers that run hot when you raise your right hand and cold when you hold out your left. Jogging down the steps we were out on the pitch (or what was left of it after a week of five-a-side kickarounds). In the muddy centre circle I shrunk Gulliver-like to about six inches tall, while on the Gallowgate penalty spot, lining up a last-minute penalty to win the league, the pitch felt about as big as a Subutteo mat. I walked the touchline to the Leazes snapping shot after shot with my camera, scoring six unanswered goals against Sunderland in my head.

Last stop was the Laing, where nothing much was happening at all. We scribbled love letters to Yoko Ono and sellotaped them to canvas, my brother showed off blades of stolen grass, the clock struck eleven, and we took the metro home before Adam's shoes turned into a glass carriage. Or possibly a pumpkin (which would at least have matched his head).