Sunday with Tamara Ashley, Holy Island, Northumbria, 25.5.08

Just returned from a splendid Sunday with Tamara Ashley, on Holy Island (a tidal island), Northumbria, the site of Lindisfarne. Tamara is an artist with a background in Dance, who is primarily interested in improvisation and with performance in relation to landscape in rural environments. She has worked with Simone Kenyon as Brief Magnetics - they did the Pennine Way together in the Summer of 2006. I first met Tamara at Unknown Terra-tories, run by Simone Kenyon and Neil Callaghan as part of DIY4. I met her again when she came to see Rules and Regs at the Nuffield Theatre, on the 26th April.

We met at Haymarket bus station in Newcastle and journeyed for two hours to Beale, about 60 miles. At one point a car was pulling out and the driver, caught between one car pulling out and another oncoming, had to swerve to avoid them. I had a very clear thought, amidst a sort of surge in the guts, that I could be involved, but we were fine, very lucky.
On the bus we met a woman names Jean, perhaps 65 years old. We learned that it was five miles from Beale to Holy Island and there was no public transport. Jean was getting a lift from a friend who lived there, Ian, and she arranged for us to be driven onto the Island.
Tamara had an idea to try and map the distances traveled by people we met, so we asked about fifteen people and had an idea that a visual representation of these journeys would document our Sunday together: Provisionally:

Brian and Family (Heaton Mersey): 170 Miles

Mikey (Ice-cream seller, 7 days a week) (from Berwick): 10 Miles

Tony, Janet and Bertie the Dog (Kent): 324 Miles

Claire, David and Robert (Walsall): 256 Miles

Evaline (Poland): 1,500 Miles (2000 Kilometers)

Vicky (London) 300 Miles

Alan and Karami (Teeside): 80 Miles

Rebecca (Morpeth) Unknown distance

Megan (Ryton): 70 Miles

Steph (Consett): 80 or 90 Miles

Rebecca (Whitley Bay): Approximately 70 Miles

Clelia (Gosforth): 65 Miles

We walked and talked, sometimes about work, sometimes trivia, autobiography, or considering the virtues of mutual friends. We moved towards a great white pyramid structure which we learned was called Emmanuel Head, local lore warns of a 'False Emmanuel Head', a crop of rock which sailors do well to avoid.
Back in the village we bought local Mead, and met Jean again in a cafe, where we had Cream Teas, and talked, the three of us, about fate.
In a gift shop I found a set of CDs by a harpist called Hilary Rushmer, gentle Celtic-influenced music. My parents own a tape of hers with a great piece of music called 'Give Me Your Hand'. Tamara bought a CD. We were talking to Lisa who was working behind the counter, covering for her daughter. Tamara asked where she was from, she said: "Germany, that she arrived here in 1951, "a long time before you people were born", and she told us about moving to Lindisfarne, hearing these birds that sounded like bells, and listening to her, Tamara and I both got a welling emotional feeling, lumps in the throat, trembling a little bit... (tbc). More soon...

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