Born 1924 in Dockwray Square but moved at an early age to a flat in Balkwell Green which had three bedrooms and an outside toilet. The Green was an ideal place for young children; families all working class. On the left side, the Hendersons -- never had any money but the four boys and one girl were great children. I used to call on them to come out to play by standing at the back door shouting, "Jimmy, Geordie, Jacky, Willie" -- never Charlotte -- girls didn't count at that age. My best friends in the Green were Jimmy Finlayson, Derek McGill and little Alan Liddle to whom we would sing mockingly, Alan Liddle played the fiddle, up the side and down the middle. He took seriously ill with I know not what and had a long, bedridden stay in hospital. When he came out he was taller than any of us -- became a six- footer! His sister Jean was a lifelong, close friend of my sister Marjorie. They sang together in a Ladies Barber Shop group which did well in several competitions around the country. After Marjorie died aged circa 64, Jean kept in regular touch with my Mother until right up to her death at 98 years -- she was a wonderful girl.
We played marbles (muggles) on the Green -- a game called, holey in which one flicked the marble into a series of holes in the earth and the lowest number of flicks won his opponents' marbles. The best marbles were not made of marble, they were Ironies and Steelies, (these were really ball- bearings) the most important of them was the biggest one -- a shiny steely called a sixer. Your status was increased according to the number of sixers you possessed. We played multikitty and knocky- door-neighbour, the latter to the annoyance of the residents. We shinned up lamposts to switch them off after the lamplighter had gone. We ran after Hunters buses and jumped on the small platform at the back for a ride. Right behind wor hoose was St. Peter's Church, situated in a small field and on Saturdays at about half- past twelve I watched out for my Dad coming across the field from his work at Smith's Dock (the basic working week was 48 hours in those days). He always brought me a copy of, Mickey Mouse Weekly and sometimes a Milky Way each of which I regarded as a treat. I joined the cubs at St. Peter's. The vicar who had the splendid title of, The Reverend Harry Pelham Pestle, was also the Cubmaster. He used to take us on long marches and somewhere there is a cutting from the local newspaper, known uneuphemistically as The Shields Rag picturing we cubs with our Cubmaster marching along to St. Mary's Island under the heading, On the Tramp.

Went to Collingwood Infant School and enjoyed it there. I remember often coming home and saying to my Mother, "Ten out of ten for Mental, five out of five for Sums and home soon for sitting up straight!"

Next on to Chirton Junior School under the excellent tuition of the elderly Miss Lumsden who always drank Horlick's at playtime and the youthful Dicky Dowden who I met in a pub about fifty years later -- still going strong and said he remembered me! We were well-disciplined by the strict headmastership of Mr. Barnet who I recognised in a street one day many years on. He was very old but I introduced myself and we chatted for a while. I mentioned that I had always admired his strong white teeth. He told me that the secret was to brush them with raw salt. I tried this for a while but if the gums bled at all, the salt would sting, so eventually it was back to Gibbs Solid Dentifrice or something like that! We left Balkwell Green when I was about ten -- moving to one of two semi-detached houses angled across the corner of Balkwell Avenue and Oswin Terrace

I never knew much about my Dad's side of the family tree. His parents died before I was born; he had two sisters -- Auntie Meggie married a trawler skipper, Uncle Jack -- big, fat and red-faced who rather liked me and let me sit and eat with the crew on his trawler in port on the fish quay. He was away at sea most of the time but managed to produce seven children. They were all being entirely brought-up by their Mother but it proved too much for her and she was confined to Morpeth, which meant, the lunatic asylum, as it was crudely called in those times. She died there. Four of the younger offspring were sent to Dr. Barnado's Home in London -- the eldest girl was happily married, living in Yorkshire -- the eldest boy was an engineer in the Merchant Navy -- when on leave he stayed with us and studied for his engineer's tickets. Although a cousin, he was much older than I was so to me, he was always, Uncle Norman. He became a Chief Engineer in The British India Steam Navigation Company. In those days, a Chief Engineer in that Company and other big shipping lines such as Cunard and Alfred Holt were very highly respected and well-paid. They went to sea for three years at a stretch which earned them six- months leave. He stayed with us during leave and would often give me half-a-crown, a vast sum indeed then, to go out and leave him in peace playing Whist and Solo with my Dad (who was only ten years his senior), my Mother, who he adored and various friends. He repaid his indebtedness to my parents by buying them a nice house in Mowbray Road for which he paid £500! Such wealth! We moved there in 1938 which was just as well for our house in Balkwell Avenue and the next-door semi were completely flattened by a direct hit from a land-mine two or three years later during an air raid.

Mother took in and looked after the remaining boy, Jackie, who became part of the family. He and I slept in the same bed -- he was called up to the RAF, married shortly after, moved to Darlington, had two lovely children and a good, religious wife who converted him from a harem-scarem lad into a God-fearing, hard-working Christian! One daughter, Vera, on leaving Dr. Barnado's came to the Tyne where she lived and worked as a maidservant in a house in Percy Gardens, Tynemouth. She joined the Womens' Land Army when it was formed where she contracted severe arthritis and was invalided out. We took her in at Mowbray Road and she lived with us until she died sometime in the mid 1990s. She was, especially after Dad died in 1955, a super companion and friend to my Mother who outlived her.

Then there was Dad's other sister, Auntie Jenny -- a bit of a nutter and it's a wonder she didn't end up in Morpeth alongside Auntie Meggie. She married, had a daughter but became totally estranged from both husband and daughter and lived alone for most of the rest of her life in one of the bed-sitters in a big old place called Salween House in Coach Lane. I rather enjoyed her eccentricity and visited the flat quite often where she spoiled me something awful!

Dad by the way played the violin, though I never heard him do so. Anyway he must have passed on to us his musical gene.

Mother's side was completely different. Her father was a Danish seafarer name of Anton Petersen -- lived until he was about 91 or 92 -- such a nice fellow --I'm sure he would never have been involved in raping and pillaging like his forebears. Her mother was from Middlesbrough -- a strong character, mentally and physically -- she was on her death bed one year and the next year, climbing to the top of St. Mary's Lighthouse!! They lived in Waterville Road then moved to the lower part of Balkwell Avenue. One brother, Uncle Anton and sister Auntie Harriet went to Australia when I was about one year old. Auntie Harriet came home eight years later and lived with her parents. I particularly remember that she brought home a few jars of a spread which we at that time had never seen at home and to which I and my family became addicted -- it is called, Marmite! Another brother, Uncle Ernie (always pronounced, Arnie) had a fine bass-baritone voice, played the piano rather well, had a son David who looked rather like me -- a younger version -- he's married and lives in Southampton I think. The baby of the family was Uncle Peter, a seaman in the Merchant Navy who was something of a war hero having rescued some of his shipmates when their ship was sunk in the Atlantic. He was the Best Man at my wedding.

Mother by the way did not play an instrument, but she was very musical and sang like Gracie Fields. She knew countless songs -- words and music.

I sat the eleven-plus, passing at a high level but failing to obtain a free place, without which in those days, one had to pay for a grammar school education. Dad was on the dole for three years around that time and we just couldn't afford it. So I ended up at the brand-new, Ralph Gardner Senior Boys' School. (adjoining it was Ralph Gardner Senior Girls School but ne'er the twain did meet!-- separation was enforced!). All the eleven plussers were marched from our very old Chirton School, singing all the way to our beautiful new Ralph Gardner. The brightest pupils went into the second-year. I was placed in Form 2A, wherein I was academically stretched to the limit of my ability. From then on I was never, as had been the case at the previous schools, anywhere near the top of the class. Nonetheless it was a good school for me. I played rugby for the school team, heaven knows why me, a skinny lightweight (Dad said I was length without breadth), not a good runner and scared stiff of the big lads we played against from other schools. I did some drama, taking the part of a girl called Nancy (would you believe) in a play called, The Crimson Coconut. My voice hadn't yet broken -- maybe that's why I got the part. There was another play, called, The Scarlet Thread in which I wore my first long trousers. They were darkish brown and made of very coarse material -- hated them, but there was no going back to shorts. I sang in a musical concert -- I was the second best boy-soprano in the school (in my opinion) -- joined the choir at Holy Trinity Church in Trinity Street, off Coach Lane -- the thing most readily coming to mind there was having to pump the bellows for the church organ -- bored stiff.

Now, nearly 14, wearing long trousers and graduating from Mickey Mouse Weekly and Milky Ways to Hotspur, Wizard, Rover, the occasional Boys Own Weekly and Mars Bars, I encountered Cath who persuaded me to join the Sunday School at her church on the corner of Landsdowne Terrace and Hawkey's Lane. Walking home together (she lived in Orlando or Willoughby Road, just round the corner from Mowbray) we swapped naughty words vis-a-vis our private parts and their functions. How daring that was at 13 years of age in those innocent days.

Left school at 14 and a half, worked as an errand boy for a short while at a chemist's shop in Percy Park Road, Tynemouth then, again as an errand boy, at the Co-op Store in Cullercoats for a few months. Dad had my name down at Smith's Dock to become an apprentice fitter. In those days it was a privilege to, "have a trade". This would begin at 16 and end at 21 -- two years longer than they serve nowadays. However they called for me at 15 and so I started work there as a letter boy in the main office and later moved to the General Stores, serving nuts and bolts and lots of other bits and pieces for use on the ships in the yard until the start of my apprenticeship.

But that's another story.......