Childhood Memory

A Memory of Blaydon.

I recall moving house from the Spike, Blaydon, to a newly built house in Linden Road, Blaydon. The steps leading down from the gateway where not quite finished so my Dad had laid wooden planks down so my mum could get down to the house with the pram containing my little brother George, my sister Teresa and I where lifted down, I remember how lovely the house smelled - all brand new. We had two fires - the kitchen had a triplex range and boy did my Mum enjoy cooking with it, memory's of all the lovely smells of home made pies and bread. We had a garden too and we enjoyed all the lovely vegetables fruit and flowers my father grew there over the years. There was a park just through the cut which is still there today, I remember thinking how much we would enjoy living there. My Mum often said she was so happy to have such a lovely house to live in, no rats running around to scare her. Our neighbours brought us some little gifts, Mrs Mc Fail and her husband and two son's lived next house down and Mr and Mrs Finney next door up with their family. I attended Blaydon West school, the boys where separated from the girls I remember, and we had a caretaker called Mr Clark and there was a little tuck shop just up the lane where we would go on our way to school and buy some sweets. I recall something called liquorice root, which, by the way, I did try in my adulthood and found totally disgusting, but as a child I loved it, and coltsfoot rock was another favourite from the tuck shop. We used to cut through the Dene to get to school and all I can remember is lots of wooden stairs cut into the bank and of course the witches chair which was a tree which had grown like a chair with its roots bent into the shape of arms. A little stream trickled its way down through the Dene and there was a chap who used to oversee the Dene, he used to sit sometimes in a little house with lots of glass windows - the frames where painted green. My dentist surgery was in Lucy Street and the doctor's surgery too. We lived in Linden Road for about 15 years until we moved up into Winlaton.

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