If you get the chance you should try to get too.......oh and an unexpected visitor!

This is probably a bit of a long shot, but if you are up in either Newcastle or Gateshead there are currently two fantastic exhibitions at the Baltic Mill art gallery on the banks of the Tyne. 

A friend and I headed up to visit on Friday for the weekend, and no visit to Newcastle is complete without a visit to the Baltic Mill, so Saturday morning ish was the time decided upon.  

Just getting there is an adventure! From the city centre there is a long wander down to the quayside, well it is a long way down, and from there across the Millennium Bridge, a spectacular piece of architecture that spans the Tyne and ends just outside the Baltic.

At the moment the artists being displayed are Anselm Kiefer, Dan Holdsworth and Dirk Bell. Whilst I am not a hugely artistic person and I am a proper Yorkshireman......I know what I like (and I like what I bloody say!).  Dirk Bell is a German, who I have to say I had no idea what his art was trying to identify or symbolise, although Anselm Kiefer, a fellow German's pieces were really spectacular. I will not try and tell anyone what to enjoy or what the pictures were representing to me, but for me I really loved his pieces "Urd Werdande Skuld (The Norns) 1983",  "Man under a Pyramid 1996" and "Lilith 1987-9".

Not the Baltic but rather the Sage, but just loved the photograph.

The other artist whose work was fantastic is Dan Holdsworth's "Blackout" Collection, in which he displays slow processed photographs of glaciers, providing fantastic images of almost extra-terrestrial intensity. The Baltic is such that you can spend a couple of hours wandering around without melting your brain, but which can be real food for the soul.

I would also like to tell you about my surprise visitor........we were staying at a friend's house in Jesmond. After a night out on the quayside......a real experience! and several drinks in a bar that I was advised was owned by "Ant n Dec" we headed back to the house, to find a cat on the doorstep.Well at 3 a.m. with no-one around to let him in next door, he let himself into the communal hallway. Thinking nothing more of it, we got into the flat, headed to our rooms. This was until about 4 a.m. when this arrived on my chest....well the photograph was taken in the morning, but he was a very bonnie laddie, who ended up needling my chest all night ( I really couldn't be ar*ed to get up and let him out!)