Did you ever move as a child what was that experience like?

We moved from Glasgow to Whitley Bay in Northumberland in January of 1952 when I was almost six. I had started school in Langside in September 1951 and have just a few memories of school there. The school was literally around the corner from our flat in Dundrennan Road, Shelia went there too - our school uniform was bottle green tunics with the school crest on. It was a promotion for Dad from his job with the Vaccuum Oil Company ( subsequently the Mobil Oil Company) on St Vincent’s Street, near George Square - to become the Sales Manager for Marine Lubricants for the North East of England, in Newcastle.

Our flat in Glasgow was rented but I remember Dad having to look for a new house for us and his being away from home for some time before we were able to join him. It was probably hard for Mum on her own with two little ones and a new baby, in a flat without many of the ‘mod cons’ that we have become used to. I remember she had to bump David’s big ‘pram’ up and downstairs from the 4th floor as she couldn’t leave it in the ‘close’. Prams were hard to come by in the post war years and there was every likelihood that it would have disappeared if it had been left unattended.

We did have a washing machine by then, but drying the endless terry towelling nappies indoors must have been a chore. Remember that the only source of heating in the flat was a coal fire in the living room and coal had to be a carried up all those stairs from a coal shed at the green, a common area between the rows of flats, I don’t remember it being very green...There was a washing line down in the back green, but again that meant four flights of stairs carrying laundry on the off chance that you would actually get it dry.

I have strong memories of glass feeding bottles rattling in a pan on the stove as they were boiled. Mum had been told not to attempt to breast feed my brother as she ' would not have time with two other children'. After the war, there were free supplies of powdered baby formula supplied - great idea for infant nutrition in the post war years - but I remember having to walk what seemed a long way to me, to the clinic, with Mum pushing the pram to get the supplies… that doesn’t sound so time saving?

Dad found us a house in Monkseaton, Whitley Bay and I remember leaving Glasgow. We stayed in an hotel in Langside the night before we left and I remember staring out of the bedroom window in the dark at street lights, across from a small park with trees. Living in a flat on the fourth floor, that was quite a novel experience! We left the next day from Central Station.

Uncle Joe came to say goodbye and was still on the train when the whistle blew. I remember him racing off down the train and having to jump off as it pulled out! Nowadays all the doors would be electronically locked….. The train would have gone through Edinburgh, though I don’t remember that.

What I do remember was seeing the grey ocean rollers of the coastline on the north east of England. The rail line folows it quite closely, and I saw a ship wrecked on the rocks below, very dramatic. I also remember the lunch we were served in the Dining Car on the train. Dad was probably on ‘expenses’ for the trip,moving his family, because I can’t imagine that we would usually have done anything quite so fancy.

The meal was over steamed white fish with boiled potatoes and I can smell it yet, ugh, it was awful! When we got to Newcastle I have no recollection of how we got to Whitley Bay, I don’t think we had a car at that time. That again was a luxury, there were few cars post war and you had to put your name down on a list and wait for one to become available. I think that some very good friends of my parents, Margaret & Alistair Clarke, may have helped out.

They lived in Jesmond and subsequently became a big part of our lives, an honorary 'aunt & uncle’. Alistair’s father had worked with my Dad at Denny’s Shipyard in Glasgow and introduced them when Dad was moving to Newcastle. They became lifelong friends and Uncle Alistair died only a couple of years ago. Sheila had kept in quite close contact with him.

I remember now that Dad stayed with them in Newcastle before we were able to move and join him. Alistair was veterinarian and Dad spent many happy hours with him out on his rounds of the farms around the Tyne Valley, helping to deliver calves and visiting the Pit Ponies. I remember getting to our new house at ‘21 Ivanhoe’. In the cold and the dark, it was January and the days were very short.

The house was cold and Mum set to making coal fires in all the rooms, bedrooms included. The house was so cold, in fact, that the toilet was frozen! I remember Mum pouring a kettle of boiling water down it to help it unfrost. I also remember then, and subsequently, the amazing frost patterns on the insides of the windows.

Shortly after we arrived the snow started. The furniture van, which had left two days before, had got stuck on Soutra, one of the passes between Scotland and England, and didn’t arrive until late. I remember them unloading in the snow & the dark. After we were all settled in Mum found that the curtain rails were missing.

Back then when you moved house, post war ( a recurring theme), you moved everything… lampshades, light bulbs, curtain rails….. she thought they must have been forgotten in the van in the dark. Sometime in March, when the snows started to melt, we found the curtain rods stacked on the sidewalk by the front gate! I started my new school at Bygate Infant’s School, I remember being very uncomfortable left in a class room full of children I didn’t know.

I have no other memoriesof that class except for the show case at the back of the classroom that had, amongst other ‘treasures’, a huge Ostrich egg. Remember that this was the days before TV and our experiences as young children were limited to what we had been told about and what we had seen in books. That class, or part of it, was very soon moved out to extra rooms at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, which actually later became ‘our’ family church.

My class was part of the post war ‘baby boom’ and the schools were very stretched for space for the numbers in their intake classes. I remember being very upset by yet another move, and hated going to school and made it very difficult for my Mum. I also remember feeling very alone and lonely because I couldn’t understand what a lot of the children were saying, they probably couldn’t understand me either, if I ever opened my mouth. They had strong ‘Geordie' accents and I of course had a Scots accent.

I do remember the first day I tried to say something the way they did, it was in the Hall at playtime and we were not suppposed to go near the stacked chairs at the end. I remember playing tag and some kids ‘tagging the chairs… to which the cry went up: ’Eeee…. you’ll get wrong!’ … roughly translatable as: 'No… you’ll get into trouble’. The dialect was a very big part of getting used to living in the North East. This has been something of an essay! lots of memories of what was a big upheaval in the life of a six year old.

Langside Primary School. Tantallon Road Our flat, four floors up. 14 Dundrennan Road. School behind. Inside the ‘close’ - it was quite posh as it had tiled walls - a ‘wally close’ Our house (R) at 21 Ivanhoe… with our first car a Vauxhall Wyvern - OUB 798 -outside