The Bonny Lad

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These are mostly delivered through the grandfather's lips with all the bitterness Tulloch can summon to the page.

The young lad would usually be apprenticed to the saggar maker, and would move up through the ranks as the older men retired.if you tell somene "you'll fettle it" this means you will mend something broken or suss out how something works. The bottom of the saggar was made by hammering another piece of clay through an iron ring to form the shape, using a wooden mallet - he was the saggar maker's bottom knocker. You are showing your age Keelefarmer - my mum used to say it, but she is eighty-five, and the potteries' mainly female workforce are long since redundant, and slowly passing on. I discovered today that none of the versions of this tune previously posted on “The Session” represent the way it is played up here in Northumbria today.

I agree with celticrichie that it sounds great as a GHB strathspey, and it’d be good as a highland fling too. Sonny Gee (aka "Bonny Lad"), is clever, insolent, hilariously rude, wild, streetwise to an alarming degree, but underneath it all, still posses the glow of innocence. You’ll hear it all the time if you go to a pub and watch all the old chaps greet friends as they come and go. Back in the days when we had potteries, women were employed to scrub off the stray bits of clay from part-fired pottery - usually the parts where the two halves of a mold joined, leaving a little ridge of clay which was scrubbed off with a hard brush. This also makes a perfect birthday card or new baby card and a true representation of the recipients true Geordie credentials.

Not with these bonny designs, which come complete with translations to celebrate your favourite Northern expressions. Tulloch continues his brilliant melding of Alan Silitoe and Roddy Doyle in this, his second novel, once again mixing humor, despair, anger, and hope in a unabashedly social novel that tugs the heartstrings until they come close to breaking the heart. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. There are a number of subplots built in, such as the slow revelation of why the grandfather and daughter are estranged, and Macca's desire to use the bonny lad as a mule again. The bulk of the book then consists of the duo feeling out a relationship, with all manner of "odd couple" disturbances and disruptions.

Set in the same Gateshead ghetto as The Season Ticket, and written in the same lyrical dialect (which does for Geordie what James Kelman and Irvine Welsh have done for Scots), the story concerns the relationship between a difficult six-year-old boy and his grandfather. And if anyone thinks the portrayal of Gateshead is overwrought, read Danziger's Britain, and prepare to be depressed about the state of modern Britain. In fact you could play it as a fast single reel if you simply speed up and straighten out the rhythm. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

I knew how the book would end - there are certain rules in literature that this one seemed in no way minded to defy - but it was a good journey, featuring some moments of pure tragedy, entertaining support characters (Audrey in particular, with her different coloured towels - genius), and a dramatic finale. But the dominant question is what the old man is going to do with this wild boy and whether, through him, he can find hope and meaning at the end of a lifetime of suffering. Full of character and wit, our Geordie ware has become the favoured mug for thousands of Geordie folk.