Global warming

HIS email headed “The Globe”, Ronnie Chambers writes mordantly. “Bad news from Hartlepool,” he says. “From tomorrow, Strongarm up to £2.05p a pint.”

The abstinent may fail to detect tongue-in-cheek. There are pubs these days, not least in Durham City and parts of North Yorkshire, where £2.05 will barely buy a half.

Should the thought of a £2.05 prove insufficient temptation, however, Ronnie further recommends a visit to Hartlepool Art Gallery, where John Edwin Wigston has an exhibition.

The name rings bells. The last time I interviewed John Wigston, circa 1974, was when he’d started a hue and cry about the colour of Cleveland Transit buses. “A pretty horrible turquoise green,” he recalls.

The day before the visit, Ronnie emails again. “The landlord read the brewery agreement wrongly,” he says. “It’s back to £2.”

HARTLEPOOL Art Gallery is in the former Christ Church, closed for worship in 1973, but still with lectern pulpit and stained glass.

John’s exhibition is shared with Bob Watson, retired head of creative studies (nee art master) at the town’s Sixth Form College.

Primarily, John’s a steam buff, mainly railway locomotives, but also ships, traction engines and something described on the accompanying panel as a steam powered thrashing machine at Houghton-le-Spring.

It’s possible that this is a misprint and that it’s a threshing machine. Either that or there are some pretty interesting experiences to be had in Houghton.

It’s also possible that it could be a misreading. Most of the descriptive information is about 2ft off the ground, suggesting that many Hartlepool inhabitants might be of similar stature to the most famous, Mr Capp.

Several of John’s newer works combine another passion, music.

Sir Hubert Parry is there and glad of it, Gustav Holst is on the same planet and another water colour incorporates modern jazz man Dave Brubeck. Steam enthusiasts will understand that Black Fives are inevitably involved.

One of his works combining steam with music, entitled Take Five

There’s also a Gershwin rhapsody, painted at Adelaide Shed in Belfast. It is, of course, in blue.

THE Globe is on The Headland, a 45-minute walk from what formerly was West Hartlepool.

“Near to where East Hartlepool railway station was,” says Ronnie.

It’s a truly fascinating place, streets laid out on the medieval pattern established in 1090, Town Wall built as a 14th Century fortification after marauding Scots sacked the town. Not least at Hartlepool United, there’ve been sackings ever since.

The Headland Story Trail leads a lively dance. Information board No 17 records that, during the cholera epidemic of 1849, Hartlepool crofters hung a fishing net over Throston Bridge in order to arrest the disease’s progress. Inexplicably, it still somehow slipped through.

Housing and heavy industry still exist cheek-by-jowl, seagulls ceaselessly shrieking overhead. There’s a lasting feeling of community and at 11.45am The Globe is warming up nicely.

IT’S a proper pub. A coal fire bright blazes in the bar, another in the room. Though there’s no one in the posh end, it still warms the heart from 15 yards.

Another ten or so are in, seated so sporadically that the only real elbow room is somewhere labelled Bullshit Corner. This is, of course, wholly coincidental.

The conversation’s steered to that price rise. “They nearly killed him,” says one of the bar lads.

Landlord Phil Hall – not to be confused with the Borough Hall, that’s around the corner – is having a couple of days in Scotland. His Strongarm is sublime, exactly as John Willie Cameron intended it when first he brewed the ruddy red ale to assuage Hartlepool’s thirsty steel workers.

The temptation is to have another one, or two. The reality is that John Wigston’s waiting back in town.

Near the station there’s a fast food place called Pizza Hart. So far as may reasonably be ascertained, they haven’t yet been sued for breach of intellectual copyright.

PLAN A was to meet him in the Rat Race, the micro-pub on the railway station where on Saturday evening he sketches the locals and answers, apparently, to Wiggy. It was aborted when landlord Peter Morgan upped and offed to Manchester Beer Festival – “a right good do,” said the apologetic note on the door.

Plan B was The Globe. John couldn’t make it early doors, but recalled – what goes around comes around – that once a “world” had hung outside, suggesting a case of mistaken identity. Almost certainly, he thinks, the pub would have been named after a steam engine built in Shildon by Timothy Hackworth.

Plan C is the King John, a Wetherspoon’s pub in the town centre where it’s January sale and a pint is only £1.55. The downside, as often with Wetherspoon’s, is that service is haphazard.

I ask for a pint of Northumberland Pale. The guy’s a bit harassed. “Is that with custard or ice cream,” he says.

If that’s a bit confusing, the sign indicating that the ladies is closed and that they should use the gents is positively intimidating. Whatever the embarrassment, that’s what they do.

JOHN’S 74, arrived seven days after the war began, lovely bloke.

He was born is Essex, retains a jellied eel accent despite nearly 50 years in the North-East, did National Service with the RAF in Aden and there, as you do, met a young lady from Horden.

A house down south was £6,000; in Seaton Carew it was £2,500.

“I’ve never regretted coming here for a second,” he says.

“It was my late wife who persuaded me to take the painting up again. I’m very glad that she did.”

We fall to reminiscing about John “Basher” Hollywood, a Horden lad who made it pretty big in Hollywood, and about actress Diane Keane – “lovely lady” – who John reckons is from Hartlepool, too.

He travels widely, was a trans- Atlantic artist-in-residence on the QEII, but still spends most weekends painting steam engines at Locomotion in Shildon. “I’m a Duchess man, I love the Duchess of Hamilton,” he says.

“I still like my buses, but it’s much more difficult to paint a bus.

Steam engines have real character, haven’t they?”

At the gallery, his work sells for up to £2,000. He’s done well, admits to being “comfortable” and to owning a second home – “down by the Waggon and Horses” – in Stanhope. “I feel quite guilty about that,” he says, remembering Socialist principles.

Strongarm – as John Willie Cameron intended it

“We thought about moving up there permanently once, but I’d miss Hartlepool. I’d miss the Rat Race. It’s a lovely place, whatever people say.”

He’s never grown tired of painting, never run out of steam.

“I think I’ll die with a brush in my hand,” says John. “I just hope it’s not for a little while yet.”