Roman Fort town, serving Hadrian's Wall. Then the Augustinians came, leaving a wonderfully "homely" Abbey behind. Then a Methodist Church built facing sideways on to the Abbey, as if unwilling (abashed?) to look the Abbey square in the face. The Shalom bookshop is now in one of the buildings of the Church. And we come, into Queens Hall, to perform The Tempest.
Oh, the layers of England! We're in England's Border County (as Northumberland chooses to describe itself). Nearby is Wylam, George Stephenson's village - him of the "rocket engine" that proved an icon of Industrial England - I'd first heard of him in school in Nairobi.
A warm, generous audience: attentive, beaming with pleasure, intensely appreciative at the end. Here we end our tour of England: now the long journey back to London, where the latest Elizabethan theatre to be built (the Rose, in Kingston) awaits: fitting that we end the run of Shakespeare's last play in a theatre not unlike the Globe. We're all excited and apprehensive in equal manner.
I realise I love the Geordie accent - it has an earthy musicality that chimes with the terrain, all sweeping hills and sparkling rivers.
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