What was the neighborhood you grew up in like?

When I think of where I consider I 'grew up', I think of Whitley Bay, in Northumberland. We moved there in 1952 when Dad at 37 had a promotion from the Glasgow office of the Vaccuum Oil Company, which subsequently became the Mobil Oil Company. He became Marine Sales Manager for the North East of England, a territory which covered from Hartlepool and Middlesborough on Teeside to the south, north to the Scottish border and over to Maryport and Workington on the Cumbrian coast.

We moved from a two bedroom flat on the fourth floor of a 'tenement' building in Langside in Glasgow, to the first house Mum & Dad ever owned, a huge step up for them, in Monkseaton in the seaside town of Whitley Bay, a dormitory suburb where most of the people commuted by train to work in Newcastle. It was a big move for Mum & Dad with three young children, David was almost one. But Mum would later say it was like heaven to her, a house with a garden where the children could play out in the street.

Sheila & I could both walk to school unaccompanied and she could walk to all the shops she needed. She could hang washing out in the garden and she didn't need to bump the pram up all those flights of stairs every time she wanted to go in or out. We even had our first fridge so she didn't have to shop every day. The house had three bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom with a separate toilet - luxury when there is only one.

The kitchen was quite small and we ate in the living room where Mum lit the fire every day when it was colder, the fireplace had a 'back' boiler which also heated our hot water, although we also had a very modern electric 'immersion' heater in the hot water tank by the airing cupboard in the bathroom.The living room had French windows that opened onto the garden, but to be honest I really don't remember them ever being open....the north east of England is a cold place and it was dusty from open cast mining quite close by, so I imagine Mum tried to avoid getting dust in the house.

I remember the black spots on David's nappies some days when they came in off the line. We had a sitting room at the front of the house for high days and holidays, where Mum had her china cabinet and the three piece suite - uncut moquette was very fashionable - and Granny Currie's antique chairs still stuffed with the original horsehair which were very scratchy when you sat on them. Whitley Bay has a beautiful golden sandy beach and used to be a popular holiday spot for Glasgow people at the 'Glasgow Fair holiday during the last fortnight of July.

It always used to amuse Mum & Dad to hear all the broad Glasgow accents in the town at that time. As residents, we used to go to a less busy part of the beach away from the tea shops, ice cream stores, funfair and amusement arcades. We used to walk everywhere, although by 1953 Dad had a car, one of the first off the factory run post war, he had to go to Leeds to pick it up. It was a Vauxhall Victor and he was very proud of it.

He used it for getting to work and his travels around the ship yards and across the north of England.Mum never did get her driver's licence. She did have a learners' for a while but was never very confident, not surprising with 3 kids and a dog in the back, all urestrained. I took probably 20 minutes to walk as far as the beach from our house and Mum used to take the pram laden up with all the things we would need. To this day I have enormous respect for the ocean, we had to learn from the get go that the tides were potentially dangerous and what seemed like a safe sandy spot to play, could very quickly turn into an island surrounded by strong currents.

We were NEVER allowed to swim or play in an outgoing tide. I also still have a loathing of swimming in COLD water, it physically HURTS me... but we used to go in and out of the water until we were blue and shivering, Mum used to give us 'chittery bites', something to eat to stop our teeth chattering!! Remember there is nothing between the beach at Whitley Bay and Norway and that North Sea is FREEZING cold. The street where we grew up, Ivanhoe, was in a relatively modern 'subdivision' and at the furthest part of the development at the time.

Beyond us was farmland. Relatively few people had cars so it was safe for us to play out in the street, and we did..... often trekking off to the farmland and playing in amongst the stooks and stubble. We even ventured as far as a bomb crater, but that was a bit scary.... The only vehicles I recall were the delivery vans, a fish man, a grocery van, a bread van.......and in the summer the ice cream man!

The lamps in the street were still gas lit and I remember the lamplighter coming round at dusk in the fall and winter. I remember a lot about when we lived in Glasgow and before my brother was born and I was almost six when we moved to Whitley Bay. We left in the North East 1959 when I was just thirteen, so it really does feel like the place where I spent my childhood. Maybe there'll be another question about teen years? 21, Ivanhoe.

Breezes on the beach!