One of my favourite memories from this past year began with Tom spotting a cowboy on Bamburgh Beach.
An actual cowboy.
Or at least, that’s what he looked like from where we were standing.
It was a cold, blustery Sunday morning, sometime around late October or early November. The sort of morning when Bamburgh Beach feels enormous — wind coming off the sea, hardly anybody around and Meg perfectly happy to chase the same ball for the four-hundredth time.
Then Tom saw him.
A chap some distance ahead of us, walking along the beach in a black Stetson and tan field coat.
Proper cowboy.
Now, I laugh at Tom because I’m not entirely convinced he ever grew up.
In my mind’s eye I can see a very small Tom running around in a cowboy outfit — hat, neckerchief, chaps and plastic pistol.
Bang, Grandad. Got you!
He’s always had a thing for those old-fashioned male archetypes. Cowboys. Adventurers. Men in battered jackets who look as though they might have crossed a desert before breakfast.
What have I married?
Anyway, back to Bamburgh.
“Tom… where are you going?”
No answer.
He had already doubled his walking pace and was heading directly towards Clint Westwood.
I decided I wanted absolutely nothing to do with this and carried on throwing the ball for Meg.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Every so often I looked up.
Tom was getting smaller in the distance.
Then eventually I could see the pair of them standing together, apparently having a full-blown conversation while I waved from half a beach away and muttered:
“Come on, Tom.”
Eventually he came back.
Absolutely beaming.
All y’a need is a heed, kid
Apparently Tom’s opening approach hadn’t gone particularly well.
With the wind howling across the beach, he’d started shouting from some distance away while pointing enthusiastically at the man’s hat.
Understandably, our cowboy’s first expression apparently suggested:
Who is this idiot?
Once Tom got close enough to explain himself, he said:
“I’m sorry. I was just admiring your hat. I love the whole cowboy look. I just wouldn’t have the confidence to pull it off.”
The reply came immediately, in a wonderfully broad Geordie accent.
“All y’a need is a heed, kid!”
For those requiring translation:
All you need is a head.
And with that, they were friends.
The story behind the Stetson
This was the part I was sorry I’d missed.
Tom reckoned he was about 84 years old. A lovely man who had clearly been around a bit and had plenty of stories to prove it — including, apparently, a little poaching in his younger days.
But then came the hat.
According to the story Tom brought back, the Stetson had originally been given to him by keyboard player Alan Clark after returning from Dire Straits’ first world tour.
And he’d worn it proudly ever since.
Suddenly the cowboy on Bamburgh Beach had a history.
And Tom was fascinated.
For the rest of the walk I heard about the hat.
Then the poaching.
Then the hat again.
Then something else the chap had said.
Then how Tom wished he’d asked his name.
Then the hat.
You get the idea.
The Geordie Cowboy
By the time we got home, Tom still hadn’t quite got the encounter out of his system.
We make no secret of the fact that we enjoy playing around with AI tools, and before long he’d started writing down a few lines about the man we’d met on the beach.
Those lines became a song.
He put it together using Suno, played it to me… and something rather lovely happened.
We kept playing it.
In the car. Around the house. On other walks.
What started as a chance five-minute conversation with a stranger on a freezing Bamburgh Beach somehow became part of the soundtrack to our year.
And perhaps that’s why I remember that morning so fondly.
You can plan days out. You can choose walks and book tables and decide where you’re going for coffee.
But you can’t plan meeting an 84-year-old Geordie cowboy in a black Stetson who once did a bit of poaching and tells your husband that all he needs to carry off the look is a head.
Those bits just happen.
Thankfully.
So here’s Tom’s little song about The Geordie Cowboy.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we have.
And one last thing…
If by some extraordinary chance you know who our cowboy is — please tell us.
Tom still wants another chat.
Probably about the hat. 🤠