The QT

Monday 21 October 2024
21/10/2024

The Storytellers

Ticket to ride

One morning lately we boarded a London train (โ€˜Daytripper yeahโ€ฆโ€™) and were advised over the PA to get our tickets ready for inspection. This sometime pedant knew this was impossible. We should have been asked to produce our mobiles and find an image on a screen. There was no ticket, no โ€˜itโ€™โ€” and I wondered …

Straight from the horseโ€™s mouth

Ernie, the retired racehorse, stands sleepily in a stall, his mouth clamped wide open, ready to have a troublesome tooth extracted. Itโ€™s another busy day for James Marshall, who looks after the teeth of thousands of horses every year in his role as one of the North Eastโ€™s leading equine dentists. โ€œOpen a bit wider …

My life through a lens: Steve Ellwood

It was during the 1980s when 68-year-old Steve Ellwood started taking photographs of Newcastleโ€™s architecture. โ€œAs a result of the mass demolition of buildings in Newcastle to make way for the Eldon Square Shopping Centre, I started to find it difficult to recall some of the buildings that I had witnessed pre 1970s,โ€ he says. …

Unlucky break has a Silver lining

A slip on the ski slopes proved to be a lucky break for Teesside engineer-turned-author Fiona Erskine. After a career spanning 30 years at the forefront of chemical engineering, Fiona decided to put pen to paper and create a jet-setting explosives expert โ€” and that expert would be a woman. It took a skiing accident …

New principal sets his goals

There can be few greater tests of resilience than the world of football. But as newly appointed college principal and chief executive of Bishop Auckland College Group Shaun Hope is discovering the skills he developed in the game are crossing into education. โ€œWhen you are growing up with football you donโ€™t realise the lessons you …

My life through a lens: Thomas Jackson

Thomas Jackson is a full-time photographer who specialises in capturing live events.  A former software developer for the NHS (โ€˜photography is a lot more interesting!โ€™), the County Durham-bred and now Gateshead-dwelling 42-year-old is the top man at Tynesight Media. Although he canโ€™t remember the first photo he took for sure, thereโ€™s an old pack of …

Igniting a passion for music

Billy Taylorโ€™s off to Germany next week, playing in an emo band fronted by Thomas Nicholas โ€” the actor best known for playing Kevin Myers in American Pie.  Prior to that he recorded the guitar parts for the latest series of top-rated ITV show The Masked Singer. And later this year heโ€™ll be hitting the …

Weaving a hobby into a new career

Victoria Conner laughs as she recalls her fatherโ€™s impassioned advice when she was contemplating going into business. โ€œYou need to get yourself into coffins โ€“ thereโ€™s money in coffins,โ€ he would tell her. But Victoria was not keen, replying. โ€œDad, I wouldnโ€™t trust myself. What if someone fell out the bottom?โ€  Instead, Victoria runs a …

Much more than Just a Pit Lass

It was during the Minersโ€™ Strike of 1984 that the paths of filmmaker Ken Loach and pitmanโ€™s daughter Heather Wood crossed. Ken says: โ€œWe were filming in the colliery club in Easington where women had set up one of the many canteens that provided free meals for striking miners and their families.โ€ Heather and her …

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