I have recently discovered a parallel universe that I never knew existed. And it’s taken me nearly half a century.

You see, our family had a new arrival in late August – Gracie. Gracie is a blue roan cocker spaniel, we think. More of that in a moment.

Never having owned and therefore walked a dog, I simply never knew that there were two kinds of people: those that owned dogs and those that don’t.

I had spent the last 47 years in the latter category not realising that I lived alongside a particular breed that I never knew: dog walkers.

Arriving as a puppy, Gracie was confined to home quarters for her first four weeks with us – a somewhat messy period although not without its own charms, particularly for our children.

Vaccinated and micro-chipped (dog not children), it was time to venture out with lead, a precautious supply of small plastic bags, some treats and a very excited puppy.

Even allowing for the friendliness of my local community, I wasn’t prepared for such new levels of social interaction. Suddenly, dog walkers, where previously we would have walked past one another, stopped.

Whilst our respective canines became acquainted largely through the somewhat intimate use of smell, walkers exchanged all manner of canine details: breed, age, pedigree, coat, diet, exercise, history, previous dogs owned.

And it wasn’t just walkers. Owners, past and present, were equally keen to stop and swap extensive doggy biography whilst they made a fuss of Gracie and I looked at them stroking and petting our new addition.

I’m quickly having to become an expert. My previous ability to identify breeds was limited: alsatians, labradors and poodles. All of a sudden I’m having to spot a bichon frise, a dandie dinmont or a schnauzer from a 100 yards.

Dog walkers are perceptive bunch. Several have already spotted signs of our dark doggy secret. Gracie came to us from a breeder in Lincolnshire – a breeder who normally specialises in beagles. It seems that the lack of thickening of Gracie’s coat as she grows older indicates there may have been a little extra-curricular activity at the breeder’s. Gracie seems to share some characteristics of, well, a beagle.

I remember as a new parent, the first forays with a pushchair attracted a certain amount of public interest and enquiry. But it seems there is nothing like a puppy to stop complete strangers in their tracks. There have been times when it has not been possible to progress more than a few hundred yards at a time.

Entirely free of any previous self-consciousness, I already find myself engaging total strangers and their dogs in conversation: How old is he? Where did you get him from? Does he need much exercise? He’s a bit like a dandie dinmont, isn’t he?

by David Tickner © 2012

David Tickner is Headmaster and an English teacher at Newcastle School for Boys. He enjoys writing, has a fascination with all sports and a particular love for Gillingham FC! David and his family have lived in Tynemouth for the past six years. He can be contacted at djtickner@btinternet.com.

Not a headline we expect to see this summer. However, it did happen in the first London Olympics of 1908 when Gilbert Laws helmed Dormy to win a gold medal in sailing’s six metre class.

As the designer of Dormy, Laws’ intimate knowledge of the boat must have proved advantageous in its racing. Tom McMeekin, the boat’s owner, had nominated him as its helmsman and they were joined by third crew member, Charles Crichton.

Gilbert Umfreville Laws was born in Tynemouth on 6th January, 1870. The 1871 census records him living on Luis Hill Terrace, Tynemouth with father, George, a ship broker; mother, Veti, who had been born in Bohemia; and older siblings, Cuthbert and Kate. The family employed two domestic staff and had a distinguished name.

By age 21, Gilbert was boarding with his sister in Lambeth, South London and working as a shipping clerk. Two years later in 1893, he moved to Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex and started the Burnham Boat Building Company. The venture proved a great success and was soon established as one of the country’s leading boatbuilding and design firms. Laws was a member of the Royal Burnham Yacht Club when he represented Great Britain in the fourth Olympiad.

The 1908 Olympics had originally been scheduled to take place in Rome. Economic difficulties and the cost of reconstruction work in the Naples region following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906 meant that the Italian government couldn’t afford the Games. They were relocated to London.

Although the Games’ main events took place at the purpose-built White City Stadium, most of the sailing was held at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club at Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

There were five teams in the six metre event – two from Great Britain and one each from Belgium, France and Sweden. The event was contested over three races on consecutive days in late July. In each race, the teams completed two circuits of a six mile course in the Solent. Winds were light each day although they increased towards the end of each race to create some intense competition.

The first race produced a Great Britain one-two – Dormy finishing nearly two minutes ahead of second boat, Sibindi. The next race was closer. Dormy edged out the French by only a matter of seconds.

With final placings decided by the number of wins and the crew of Dormy having won the first two races, the gold medal was theirs. Third place behind the Belgians and French in the final race was academic. Belgium took silver; France bronze and the other British boat finished a narrow fourth.

Having won Olympic gold, Laws went on to serve in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in the Mediterranean during The Great War. He was discharged with ill health and died from illness in December 1918, aged 48, at Ryde on the Isle of Wight – the site of his Olympic victory.

by David Tickner © 2012

David Tickner is an English teacher in the independent sector and an aspiring writer. He has a fascination with all sports and a particular love for Gillingham FC! David and his family have lived in Tynemouth for the past five years. He can be contacted at djtickner@btinternet.com.

As this edition of Roundabout lands on your doormat, the start of the 2012 Olympic Games will be fewer than 150 days away. Billed as the London Olympics, there is plenty to excite us here in the North East.

In fact, the Games commence in Newcastle, at the stadium still referred to in Olympic publicity as St James’s Park, on 26 July – the day before the official opening ceremony in London. St James’s Park will host nine Olympic football matches, including quarter-finals in the men’s and women’s events for which tickets remain relatively available.

Several athletes from the North East are pursuing their Olympic and Paralympics dreams in 2012.

Among them is long jumper Chris Tomlinson, 30, from Middlesbrough and the current holder of the British indoor and outdoor records. A calf injury robbed Tomlinson of his medal chances at the 2008 Beijing Games, while he finished fifth in Athens four years earlier. Having finished11th in last summer’s world championships, Tomlinson has been recovering from a knee injury. “I build, improve and get better and as long as I can be fit and healthy I have the belief I can go the whole way,” he said in a recent BBC interview.

Jessica Eddie, 27, from Durham, started rowing on the River Wear when she was just eight years old. She finished fifth in the women’s eight in Beijing and more recent form is even better. At last year’s world championships in Slovenia, Eddie was part of the crew that won bronze and during the 2011 World Cup Series in Munich she raced in the women’s eight, taking silver.

John Robertson was one of the very first athletes to be named in the 2012 GB Paralympic team. The Sunderland man forms part of a crew of three racing in the Sonar class sailing event at Weymouth in September. Competing together since 2003, they finished sixth in the last two Paralympics but second at the recent world championships also in Weymouth, only narrowly missing out on gold. “We’re in a much better place coming into these this Games than at the previous two, and it’s amazing how much we can see that we’ve moved forwards,” Robertson has said.

These and other Olympic and Paralympics hopefuls are seeking to emulate or even surpass their Olympic forbears from the region.

Charlie Spedding from Bishop Auckland took an unexpected bronze in the men’s marathon in his first Olympics at the age of 34 in Los Angeles in 1984.

Steve Cram, ‘The Jarrow Arrow’, competed in three consecutive Games, each time making the 1,500 metres final. He took the silver medal in a GB one-two in Los Angeles in 1984 behind Seb, now Lord, Coe – the man responsible for the London Olympics.

Having won a silver medal in the men’s triple jump at Atlanta in 1996, then world record holder Jonathan Edwards went on to win gold four years later at the age of 34 in Sydney. Although born in London, Edwards, who still lives in Newcastle, was, like Cram, a member of the Gateshead Harriers athletic club.

The Olympic torch will be carried down the coast from Alnwick through Whitley Bay and Tynemouth on Friday 15th June on its way to Newcastle, where it will be zip-wired from the Tyne Bridge onto the Quayside. Eventually coming to rest in London for 17 days this summer, the Olympic flame should have already ignited the North East on its journey there.

by David Tickner © 2012

David Tickner is an English teacher in the independent sector and an aspiring writer. He has a fascination with all sports and a particular love for Gillingham FC! David and his family have lived in Tynemouth for the past five years. He can be contacted at djtickner@btinternet.com.

Most followers of local sport know about the success of Whitley Bay Football Club – Wembley winners of the FA Vase for the past three years. Fewer will be aware of their ice hockey-playing neighbours, Whitley Warriors – a short slapshot across Hillheads at Whitley Bay Ice Rink. In retaining the English National League North title last season, the Warriors became the first club to achieve back-to-back league and play-off trophy successes.

To watch a Sunday tea time game on the ice at Hillheads is an experience of contrasts – the translation of one of North America’s and Canada’s main winter sports into a local niche. The ageing indoor arena; the illumination of the ice; the refrigerated chill and the slide, slap and crack of this most onomatopoeic of sports creates a theatrical atmosphere. Most games attract a few hundred animated and partisan spectators of all ages.

Ice hockey is a game of perpetual pace and motion. The change from defence to attack of the seemingly impossibly small goals happens in an instant. There are seldom shortages of opportunity for players and interest for spectators – Whitley recently scored three goals in 63 seconds to defeat Blackburn Hawks.

The sport also has an inescapable reputation for physical confrontation captured by American comedian, Rodney Dangerfield – ‘I went to a fight the other night and an ice hockey game broke out’. Ice hockey has its own glossary of foul play – high sticking, tripping, slashing, spearing, charging, hooking, interference. In this season’s match with Nottingham Lions, two opposing players set about one another whilst the officials and players on the ice gathered round and looked on.

In football or rugby, both players would have been dismissed from the field of play and banned for several weeks. After some deliberation amongst the match officials and to an ironic blast on the PA of Edwin Starr’s ‘War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing’, the offending players were sent to the penalty box for ‘roughing’ – a euphemistically understated term – for two and four minutes respectively. Both reappeared on the ice later in the same period.

Warriors operate a squad of just over twenty players led by Head Coach Garry Dowd. Usually playing twice a weekend – away on Saturdays as far afield as Solihull and Telford; returning home to play again on Sunday – requires a great deal of commitment. “It takes up so much personal time that it has to be a sport you love playing. You need to be on the ice three times a week. I also cycle ten miles between eight and ten times a week,” says 26 year old forward, Daniel DJ Good, Warriors’ number 9 and one of their most exciting and experienced players.

At the time of writing, a third of the way through the current season, the Warriors sit third in National League North Division 1 with six wins from ten matches. “We are back to playing the traditional Whitley way – playing tough and with passion,” says Good. “The fans see competitive games each week – players who have pride in their local team.”

Why not get yourself down to Whitley Bay Ice Rink and see for yourself?

by David Tickner © 2011

David Tickner is an English teacher in the independent sector and an aspiring writer. He has a fascination with all sports and a particular love for Gillingham FC! David and his family have lived in Tynemouth for the past five years. He can be contacted at djtickner@btinternet.com.