Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

  Sunday evening after tea. Always the same time each week. He would take his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, pause, compare the hour and the minutes then reach for the brass key at my base and start to count the turns under his breath until we were both ready to face another seven days. Then my chime, the voice of my movement, wound until all my wheels danced to a steady beat. The glass was closed, the key replaced and I felt primed, taut. She never liked my black, slate body with its mock Corinthian columns and its polished dome. I remember hearing her ask him why I had pride of place. ‘Why can’t we have a pretty ormolu timepiece with a gentle ting-tang instead of this monstrosity?’ He thought me a thing of substance, something which seemed to fit his self-image, upright, solid. He died more than 20 years ago and afterwards, she reluctantly shouldered his weekly routine. At first, I feared she would lift me down, take me to the pawn brokers three doors further down the...

  Hi, I’m Alex, here to give you the story of my latest journey … as it unfolds. If you’ve followed me before, you’ll be used to my style. Laid back, a little laconic as befits a seasoned traveller, plenty of humour. If you’re a newbie … welcome! To start painting the picture for you, I’m on a ship which set sail from Narvik on the west coast of Norway. As it happens, I’ve been to Narvik once before. This was in 1968 when I arrived by train from Kiruna in northern Sweden, famous for its iron ore mining. Back then, I went immediately south, to Bergen, to catch a ferry to Newcastle. On this trip I’ll be travelling north and then east, enroute for Kirkenes which is on the Norwegian / Russian border. Unknown territory for me! And probably most of the other passengers. It’s described in the brochure as an Arctic Immersion journey, (AI for short) but I’m hoping we won’t experience that literally! And there’ll be another AI dimension to the trip, more of which in a moment. Now, let...