Whitley Bay with Barry Stone
Ramblings
BBC
4.5 • 768 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2012
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) throughout this series of Ramblings.
Prog 6 - Whitley Bay with Barry Stone
In this week's programme Clare Balding meets author Barry Stone, his partner Paul and their dog, Bonzo the black Lab.
Barry's childhood was coloured by the secret of his father's homosexuality and alcoholism; both parents had been traumatised by their experiences during the second world war and Barry had a deep personal struggle in coming to terms with his own sexuality.
Over the years he attempted to write his story - eventually burning one manuscript of 300,000 words - and it was only at his mother's funeral that he was struck by the need to write through the 'voice' of Brucie (his childhood pet dog). The resulting book, a semi-autobiographical novel called 'Barking at Winston' was initially self-published with local distribution but was quickly picked up commercially and is now selling successfully around the country.
Barry and Paul take Clare on a favourite local walk through Whitley Bay to the village of Holywell. Starting at Barry's childhood home, the place where Brucie first came into his life, they head down to the beach and then the promenade of Whitley Bay sea-front. From there they turn inland and walk through Holywell Dene - a beautiful and peaceful area of ancient woodland - before heading home.
Producer Karen Gregor.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I want to tell you why I love podcasting. Hi, my name's Tommy Dixon, |
| 0:06.3 | and I make podcasts for the BBC. I'm a big fan of stories, always loved a good book. But when I started |
| 0:12.0 | commuting for my first job, I discovered podcasts. I was blown away by how a creative idea and the right |
| 0:17.8 | mixture of sounds could take you into a whole new world full of incredible stories. You know, the type that make you go, wow. And that kind of inspired me to |
| 0:25.2 | give it a go myself, which, to cut a long story short, led to a BBC training scheme and a whole |
| 0:29.9 | new career giving other people that exact same feeling. So if you want to hear amazing stories |
| 0:34.1 | that make you go wow, like I did, they're just a tap or click away on BBC sounds. |
| 0:45.5 | This is the Coast and Country podcast from the BBC. You can find that terms and conditions on our website |
| 0:51.8 | at BBC.com.com..uk forward slash radio four. |
| 0:56.6 | Today you can hear ramblings with Claire Balding. |
| 1:01.2 | This number 20, late Victorian early, Edwardian house is our house, which we came to in 1964, |
| 1:08.0 | one hour's five. It was an astonishing thing to say, this new place we're coming to, |
| 1:11.9 | the huge sea at the bottom of the road, this wide red road, which is battered now, but then was |
| 1:16.6 | kind of gleaming and big in a boy's mind. And here was this house and you see now it's a |
| 1:21.8 | concreted garden in front where they park the cars, but there was a little garden here where for |
| 1:26.5 | the next 18 years my mother had it |
| 1:29.3 | absolutely crammed with plants and where you're standing there claire there was a big kind of dog rose |
| 1:35.3 | bush with them tiny little roses and one year there was one rose that was exceptionally big and mum was so proud |
| 1:41.9 | of it and a drunk nicked it but the garden garden was there and Brucey dog, the legendary family dog, there was a metal gate here |
| 1:49.7 | and he used to leap the gate, flee with all us kids chasing after him. |
| 1:55.8 | And he used to go just along the road to a place called Victoria Avenue where they have |
| 1:59.2 | long gardens, one after the other, |
... |
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