SATURDAYS
Before we got our telly (TV), Saturdays were a mixture of a bit of a ‘lie in’, playing in the street or football (or cricket in the summer) on the playing fields at Temple Park, and sometimes accompanying Mam to the shops at The Nook.
However, there was one golden rule after 5pm – no interruptions when Mam checked the football pools against the scores announced on the radio. This particular ritual carried on for years, even after we got the telly. My brother Tom and I had to sit mute until a deep sigh from Mam signalled another week’s disappointment; except for one Saturday, when she jumped up from her chair, whooping and clapping, shouting “We’ve won the pools!” “We’ve won the jackpot!” It was the highlight of her life, justification for all the years of diligent checking. The winnings arrived soon afterwards – 17s and 6d.
The Journey
Auntie Annie was Mam’s younger sister. Mam came from a family of five children. Her beloved brother, Charlie, died in his teenage years. In the 1930s, Annie had been classed as ‘mentally retarded’, and she was eventually sent away from home to the residential mental hospital at Northgate, just north of Morpeth, in Northumberland. When Annie’s mother could no longer visit her, Annie’s brother and two sisters (including Mam) took it in turns to visit, on different weeks, on a monthly basis. Mam’s brother and sister lived in Newcastle and it was relatively easy to travel to Morpeth from there. We, on the other hand, lived on the coast, making it a journey of double the length and time because we first had to travel by bus into Newcastle.
This journey, every fourth Saturday, was my own personal nightmare. More often than not it began badly because Mam usually contrived to miss the ‘quick’ bus (number 86) which meant that we had to catch the ‘slow’ one (number 87). The latter was a red Northern Omnibus Company double decker, with a jump on/off platform at the rear, like the London Routemasters. We never went upstairs because there was a danger of getting lost in the smokers’ smog. The bus left its terminus at Marsden, picked us up at The Nook and then chugged its way through the dreary railway arches of Tyne Dock and then followed the riverside roads of the south bank of the Tyne, via Jarrow, Hebburn and Pelaw, before re-joining the route of the quicker 86 at Heworth, and going on via Felling and Gateshead to Newcastle.
Jarrow
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| The Venerable Bede (allegedly) |
Whoa! Stop the bus! Back up a bit! Before we go on our merry way, let’s tarry awhile in Jarrow. In the 1930s, Jarrow became infamous for its mass unemployment, which led to the poignant but ultimately unsuccessful ‘Jarrow March’ or 'Jarrow Crusade' to London. However, Jarrow had an even greater claim to fame, dating from centuries before. The Monastery of Saint Paul in Jarrow was once the home of the learned monk who became known as The Venerable Bede. When it was founded, it was said to have been the only centre of learning in Europe north of Rome. Bede is most famous for his work ‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum’, translated as ‘The Ecclesiastical History of the English People’, and he is recognised as the father of English history. Bede died in AD 735 and, less than 60 years later, in AD 794, the Monastery at Jarrow became the second target of Viking raiders in England, after they had sacked and plundered Lindisfarne Priory a year earlier.
Now take two giant steps forward, first to the 1960s and then to the 1990s. The good burghers of Jarrow, with all that ancient and modern history on their doorstep, are about to commission (in the 1960s) first a statue, and then (in the 1990s) to re-name their new town shopping centre. Who would YOU put your money on? That’s right, in a double fit of masochistic sentimentality; they chose to commission a Viking statue and then re-named their retail hub ‘The Viking Centre’. Murder, mayhem, robbery, rape, destruction. Now there’s a legacy to look up to!
The Journey Continues
I had (and still have) a weak stomach when it comes to long distance travel, and I dreaded the trip on the number 87 particularly because I was always sick on that bus. Mam was ever alert to the tell tale signs - my skin turning yellow, the slumping forward on the seat, the hair falling out and limbs dropping off – and she would yank me up from the seat and push me down the aisle to the rear, open platform of the bus and hold on to me as I leaned outwards to be sick. As I got older and bigger, she kindly let me hang onto the handrail myself as I threw up. All this took place as the bus sped along the road, with the conductor not even alerting the driver as to what was going on behind him but, no doubt, hoping that I wouldn’t fall off as he would have to report it and, no doubt, miss his tea break at Newcastle as a result.
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| The Tatler Cinema |
After an hour or so, when we arrived at the terminus at Worswick Street Bus Station at Newcastle, Mam would clasp my hand and drag me along the busy roads of Pilgrim Street and Northumberland Street (which were then part of the route of the A1 or 'Great North Road' which ran through the centre of Newcastle) to another bus station at The Haymarket, where buses left for destinations northward. She was careful to circumvent the odd looking men in brown raincoats and trilby hats who were queuing to get into The Tatler Cinema (just renamed 'The Classic' in the early 1960s) which was once a news cinema but, I discovered later, now showed ‘adult’ films.
Without a break, I would be bundled onto another bus that would take us on through Morpeth and drop us off on the A1 outside Northgate hospital. This was another hour-long, uncomfortable ride and, sometimes, I would have to get off the bus in Morpeth Bus Station to be sick again in the station toilets. This would annoy Mam, as it meant that we would have to wait for yet another bus to take us out of town to the hospital.
Auntie Annie
Northgate Hospital, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was an alien world to a small boy. This was just simply because nobody talked openly about mental illness. It was something you kept quiet about and, if someone in your family was ‘backward’, ‘retarded’ or ‘loony’, you locked them away from view. Thus, as I walked through the grounds of the hospital and into the block where Auntie Annie lived, I was both puzzled and alarmed by the behaviour and demeanour of the patients.
Auntie Annie herself was a sweet, kind and innocent woman, who lived an uncomplicated if regimented life at a place she regarded as her home. She looked forward to her weekend visitors and always greeted Mam and me with affection. Mam, as the nearest in age to her, had had to look after her at home before she was sent away, and they had a close bond. In later years, when I was in my teens and twenties, Mam would arrange to take her out on holiday to stay with her for one or two weeks. The first few days were fine but, as the holiday progressed, Auntie Annie would become more anxious and overwrought, and would become terribly homesick for the known sureties of her hospital home. These holidays became less frequent as the years progressed.
When I was about 14, I refused to go with Mam to visit Auntie Annie, I’m rather ashamed to say, with the selfish interests of youth taking precedence. Auntie Annie outlived Mam by a few years. Her demise was very sad. The only place she felt safe was at the hospital, with her fellow patient and staff friends and following her routine. She may have become institutionalised, but that was a process that had happened over many decades. She fell victim to a change in government policy and conventional wisdom which said that mental health hospital patients would fare better ‘out in the community’. After more than 50 years at Northgate Hospital, she was transferred to a smaller unit in Newcastle. Within a very few years she became ill and died. I had not seen her for many years and had not visited her at all since Mam had died. I was no longer a self-absorbed schoolboy. Auntie Annie deserved better from me.
SUNDAYS
Sunday evoked ambivalent feelings caused by it simultaneously being part of the weekend but also, particularly in the latter part of the day, as the beginning of preparations for the next working week.
The day usually began with a quick read through the two Sunday papers, ‘The People’ and ‘The News of the World’, which was our rather low-brow way of acquiring a perspective on the wider world. Mam, in common with all the other mams, would have been up early and, after she cleaned out, made up and lit the fire in the living room, she would prepare the Sunday dinner. A particular family favourite, to go with the potatoes and veg, was tinned Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie. This was such a favourite (and handy) working class meal throughout the country that, by the early 1970s, everyone understood the joke about the break-up of the former great but now ageing Manchester United football team: ‘They’re going to sell George Best to Juventus and the rest to Fray Bentos’.
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| The Great Ken Dodd |
After or during the meal we would listen to ‘Two Way Family Favourites’ on the radio and also the genuinely hilarious comedy shows, such as ‘Beyond Our Ken’, ‘Round the Horne’ and ‘The Ken Dodd Show’. Ken Dodd, in his later life, may have revealed himself to be a rabid Thatcherite with unreasonable fears about the trade unions, but he was, and remains, Britain’s greatest living clown. He had many catchphrases over the years, but the one I remember from my childhood was ‘Where’s me shirt?’ delivered in a thick Liverpudlian accent, and he used to weave it into all types of sketches and punch lines in his radio shows, such as:
‘The boy stood on the burning deck
The flames began to hurt.
He said ‘If they get much higher, lads’
‘I’ll be shouting – Where’s me shirt?’
The afternoon would be a final opportunity for a bit of play in the street with the other kids before tea and an early bath. Freshly scrubbed, I would settle down to watch ‘Rawhide’ or ‘The Saint’ or whatever else was on before the last TV programme I was allowed to stay up for, which was announced as ‘Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium’. This was magical, live, variety entertainment and it skipped by too quickly before I was packed off to bed. The end of the weekend.
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