My Home Town

A Memory of Wallsend.

Born in 1945 in Dinsdale Ave, Kings Estate, over the field from the pit. My aunts and cousins lived round the doors, it was a very safe and happy environment. The youngest of four, the world was our oyster. We roamed the fields and streets at will. We made houses with the corn and stole the sweet turnips. I remember going to the Tyne pictures with my lovely mam and coming home to fish and chips from Evas chip shop. I remember the dickie nurse at the buddle, I was terrified she would catch me not wearing my glasses. My dad worked at the pit and some of the kids would ask for left over bait. My dad would have went mad if he'd seen us. I remember my mam sending with a penny for the old street singer, we would look for lads on Wallsend High Street and mostly end up marrying someone we went to school with. Sometimes we might even marry a foreigner from like Daisy Hill or, god forbid, Sheilds. People were kinder to each other and much more moral, if we didn't have much we didn't know it and if we had something to share, we did. We did the almost unheard of thing in those days, we travelled to America by ship. My sister was a GI bride. On our return, my mother hired the kera hut at the bottom of the street, all the neigbours piled in to see film of us abroad, very embarrassing for a 12 year old.