Well, our time off went really quickly as we gradually ease back into our routines, not quite full power, at first. Thanks for all your kind comments previously.
We're planning to go to Newcastle to visit Dawn's 91-year-old mother. Long journeys are a bit testing for me. So we have found that planning the trip to include specific stops, like old folks, keeps things less stressful. Last time we were there, I realised the northeast is noticeably colder than here on the west coast. In fact I think Newcastle is colder than Edinburgh.
I'd forgotten how the wind can cut your kidneys clean out of your body. The coldest winter we ever spent was 81-82 in a crummy flat with wallpaper held on with sellotape because of the damp. It's now demolished but it was on Walker Road, Newcastle. It got down to -23 one night and all the diesel in the buses froze. Lads were still in town dressed in t-shirts though with girls in mini-skirts. One night we came across such a lad passed out drunk in the gutter. We got the police to put him in a cell overnight because he'd have died of hypothermia. Not that he was aware we saved his life.
As I've previously mentioned, I feel especially bitter towards the doctor that didn't diagnose my stroke 3 days before I had it, despite what I later learned were classic symptoms. A doctor friend urged me to sue him because there's too many bad doctors, apparently. So that's what I'm doing, on a no win no fee basis. Less for the money and more because he shouldn't get away with it and to save someone else being cursed with his inadequate perceptions. It's had such a profound effect on my life, I can't just brush it off as 'one of those things.'
Still no offers to buy the house, so there's not much point in looking online for something new...not that it stops us. It's a certain type of torture to see great places that would be perfect and not be able to make an offer on them.
We had the first frost of the autumn. I'm sure when we were kids it was more typically in early October and we went to school on bitter cold mornings but that could be a false memory. But then, we led less warm lives without central heating and it was a challenge to put your cold clothes in the 'frost-on-the-windows' morning as quickly as you could.
That seems a long time ago now, literally and culturally and I must say I don't look back on it romantically at all. Music aside, anyone who looks back fondly on the 70s didn't grow up in the northeast without any money. Life was harder than we can appreciate now, down to the fact that there was almost no food in the house, only what was needed for the next meal, which was bought 24 hours before it was eaten. I thought we were posh because we had a fridge - something my grandma considered a frivolous waste of money - let alone a freezer.
They could never have imagined sitting down to a breakfast of smoked salmon and eggs as I did this morning and were they alive would probably think I'd married into royalty. It's easy to get the cultural bends sometimes. For example, knitting was part of everyday life. Mother and grandma would do it at every spare moment. Clicking needles were the soundtrack of my youth. But now it's become a middle-class luxury craft.
And foods that were working class cheap staples like liver and kidneys have been reinvented as the artisnal delights of restaurateurs. Boiling bones for stock was common but now bone broth is sold as an elixir. Processed foods were thought of as posh but now it's the opposite and cooking from scratch, something my mother was desperate to get away from and wasn't very good at unless it was egg and chips, is now regarded as essential.
Times change I suppose. It's strange to think all these things seemed so permanent when we were young but it was all just a phase.
Photo by Pauline Eccles
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4 comments
Great memoies gordon. Getting in the Farmers at 5,30 was a ritual for me too
I was brought up in Benton Newcastle. My fondest memories are going to town every Fri to the Farmers Rest fir a 5.30pm start and getting the all night bus home having been to the Mayfair. Most of the time we had no idea who was on but saw Irom Maiden, AC/DC seemed to be on every other week, UFO, Pat Travers co headlining with Journey. Ted Nugent who jumped into the crowd when some twat spat at him, the bouncers had to drag him off this lad. He got back on stage and finished the set. Going to the match on a Sat and getting the last metro home. Camping outside the city hall for tickets, bloody freezing but got great seats for Rainbow, Sabbath, Bad Company. Happy days. I still have the ticket Stubbs for the gigs, sad thing is l cant remember most due to drink and age but l know we had a bloody good time. Suffering now health wise but still hot my albums and CDs and Radio Caroline to keep me going. Good luck flogging the house hope it all works out for you.
The hardships were real but I don’t understand why people look back with this ‘but we were happy’ attitude. As if being warm is a luxury and being beaten up by teachers was character forming
When my dad was alive, we talked about his childhood and growing up in post war Britain ..2 baths per week, family shared the same water..bit of a bugger if you were the last one to have a bath!…all the food had to last, once it was gone, you had to wait until pay day..no phones, no tv, logs on fire in winter, that was central heating…times were tough up north..I use to live in a cardboard box in a puddle in the middle of the road, went to work in coal mine 25 hours a day then home only to be beaten with a stick by my father ..but try telling that to kids these days, they won’t believe you..