My Holidays at South Shields in The 1940s And 1950s

My lovely memories are of going to South Shields from London to stay with my mum's brother, we stayed in Marsden Street and my cousins lived round the corner. We would leave London about 5 in the morning and get there about 10 at night, no motorsways then. We would stop on the way. We would arrive and my aunt would have fish and chips in the oven, it was a fire with the oven at the side of the fire. Going to the beach, there were great big sand dunes on the beach. What lovely memories I had as a child. My father died when I was 14, that was in 1959, and there were no more holidays but I go every year now I am 64 and would not miss going, just to remind me of the wonderful memories I had as a child. I stand at the beach remembering me in the sea pretending I could swim, my mum and dad watching me, with them sitting on the sand. Going to the sweet shop at the top of the road at my aunt's, the lady in the shop calling me flower, the man on a 3 wheeled bike with a big box on the front selling ice cream, what a wonderful time that was. Time to go home, trying to catch my cousing Donald to give him a kiss goodbye, if I could only go back just for one week and live that all again. Going to North Shields and getting some crabs, my aunt put them in a bucket alive in boiling water to cook. The pigeons in the yard and my cousin Eric shaking the tin for them to come back. So many things, cobblestone roads ... Oh dear, back to reality, only to dream of what we had, wonderful parents who adopted me at 6 weeks old, they were in their fifties. I never went without, I wish I still had them, thank you Mum, Dad, forever in my heart.