I was born in Dorset but at the age of five moved to Durham, in the north east of England.
And despite living in Scotland for twenty years, whenever I say I’m going home for the weekend, I mean to Durham.
It’s a stunning city, which most people will never have visited. But they may well have admired it from the train window as they whizzed past on route to Edinburgh or London, because the line runs past the city’s finest feature, It’s towering cathedral. (Described by many as the greatest Norman building in Europe,actually).
And last week it looked even more amazing. Because the whole city became the stage for ‘Lumiere’, a collaboration between 60 light-and-sound artists, staged as part of Durham's bid for UK culture capital in 2013.
The highlight, for many, was the phenomenal lighting up of the cathedral, with imagery of pages taken from the 7th-century Lindisfarne Gospels. The work was by projection artist Ross Ashton.
Thanks Ross for putting the spotlight on my home city.
(An not ‘town’ As Roger Whittaker insisted on calling it, in his god awful song.)

Walking up South Bridge in Edinburgh I couldn’t help noticing these fantastic old ads for long gone tradesmen (and their long gone trades). On the ground floor was a sorting office (sorting what exactly I’m not sure) there was a working jeweller in the second floor flat (as opposed to an unemployed jeweller?)
And in the top flat Mr Wright advertised his presence as a straw & felt hatter. The signs are in a pretty bed state, if I lived on that stair today I’d be trying to persuade my fellow residents to preserve these tiny bits of social history, but somehow I suspect they won’t be around much longer. Pity.

This is my favourite building in Soho. Tucked away in a lane off Wardour Street you’ll find this fantastic reminder of a time when the country made its money making things. Clearly that was a while ago because you just don’t see gentlemen in bowlers and top hats anymore, even in the city of London. Still at least someone had the sense to preserve the building. Hats off to the developer.