Best Place In The World

A Memory of Wallsend.

I was born in Wallsend in 1951 at the Green and first lived at Rose Hill.

Everything about the High Street, the shipyards (Slipway, NE Marine, Swans), the Rising Sun Pit, St Peter's School, the Grammar, the Burn, the Gut, the Green, the Park, the Shows, the Riverside Railway, brings back the fondest memories.

I must have had the best childhood, poorish, but happy, in the safest place with greatest extended family. I could wander between my Gran's in Carville Road and my Nan's in Point Pleasant Terrace from an early age without any fears. There was always a relatives or friends of the family that could be used as food and drink stop.

The Pease Pudding shop on the High Street was one of my favourite locations and later the Ritz on a Saturday morning.

I was lucky to represent the town and play for Wallsend Boys at football, at the Rising Sun Colliery Ground in front of miners going on or coming off shift, that's an experience and a privilege.

The shipyards, the pit, the engineering and associated industries may have been hard places to work, but they made the town into one family. A romantic notion maybe, but it makes memories worth having.

I travel home from time to time from West Yorkshire, but things don't seem the same, the town seems to be missing its sparkle, or may be my memories are playing tricks.