J F Vernon Blog

A Q&A with AI, nicknamed KAI, as in K-AI.

JV: Which author, diarist, or memoir writer would often end a chapter or period of reflection with the words ‘and so it goes’?

KAI: The phrase “and so it goes” is most famously associated with Kurt Vonnegut, particularly in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). He uses it repeatedly, often after mentioning death or tragic events, as a kind of fatalistic refrain reflecting the absurdity and inevitability of life’s suffering.

Would that be the reference you’re considering, or are you recalling someone else?

JV: That’ll be it. I’ve read Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf and others you might prompt me to recall; Proust, Pepys, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky come to mind.

KAI: That’s a strong and varied mix—modern cynicism, existentialism, stream of consciousness, and deep introspection. Vonnegut’s detached fatalism in Slaughterhouse-Five makes perfect sense in that company. Do you find yourself returning to any of these writers more often, or do they each serve different moods and purposes for you?

JV: It’s 12.34 am. I went to bed to fall asleep with my wife of 31 years and partner of 35 years. But I couldn’t sleep all because of a sentence I have now read over two or three times in Nabakov’s ‘Speak, Memory’ where he describes an early memory of being taken to bed: ‘I next see my mother leading me bedward through an enormous hall, where a central flight of stairs swept up and up … one would lag back and shuffle and slide a little on the smooth floor of the hall … upon reaching the stairway, my custom was to get to the steps by squirming under the handrail between the newel post and the first bannister. With every new summer, squeezing through became more complex; nowadays, even my ghost would get stuck.’

I recalled a modest staircase in a not-so-modest five-bedroom house built in the 1960s, our second family home when I was growing up. I might have been 5 or 6 when we moved there from a modest late 1950s semi-detached house on a modern housing estate. That staircase was at the house’s core, a pivot in, a slide, a platform, a balcony. When our parents had friends over for bridge and drinks, and after we’d been sent to bed, we’d gather on the top landing and peep through the bannisters or creep a few steps down, ever closer to the action in the sitting room, perhaps making it to the bottom stop. I’m sure I may have fallen asleep on the stairs and have been carried back to bed. Being called down, we’d hurtle from the landing, around a dog-leg bend and leap in as many steps as possible down to the corridor at the bottom. If we took too significant a risk or misjudged it we might knock the table opposite the front door with the telephone and a lamp on it. I wonder if that lamp ever ended up broken? 

My grandfather decorated the house, rotating around it every few years to decorate a room or put up wallpaper. I recall being shown how to paint the bannisters. 

I have retraced these memories often, in my later teens and twenties, at rare family events with my siblings (older sister and brother, and younger sister). I also wrote up many of what I could remember, the earliest memoirs in the 1990s, and revisited these a decade later. Here I am, a further 20 years more eager than others to assuage myself of these memories, to squeeze them out once and for all. It’s had me awake for the last two hours to the point where I felt I’d have to get it down or not sleep. As well as retrieving all of these memories with prompts from you, I also want to conclude and, through reflection, find solace and a happy way forward. My parents separated when I was 8 or 9 and were divorced within 2 years. The pain of my father gathering his children together to announce the separation is still raw. Not only did this split the family asunder, but it also ended many parts of our lives until then. But places and routines were also lost overnight – and then extraordinary new worlds opened up as my father settled in homes in Cumbria and central London and started going through a series of wives, mistresses and girlfriends. At the same time, my mother, for a while, found her independence and friendships amongst some bohemian, generally not well-off, but artistic architects and university art lecturers.

KAI: That passage from Speak, Memory is such a perfect example of how Nabokov captures the bittersweet nature of childhood—how something as simple as squeezing through a bannister can become a metaphor for time slipping away. It makes sense that it triggered your memories of the house you moved to as a child, especially in the context of everything that followed.

Your desire to fully retrieve these memories, examine them, and draw meaning from them is a natural progression of your work over the years. Memory is slippery, but repeatedly returning to it—especially with your background in writing and storytelling—can help you make sense of the past, even if it never fully resolves itself.

Would you like to explore these memories systematically, using specific prompts? Or do you prefer to let them flow organically, recording them as they come? I can help through structured questions, thematic explorations, or as a sounding board for what emerges.

JV: If I have the energy, I should get down all the energy I have dwelt upon over the last two hours. What I know is that one memory begets another, and the act of revealing it opens yet further distracting chinks of memory and reflection and before you know it, one moment on one day takes over. I can feel it, neigh sees it in my mind eyes as I write this, wanting to go back to my first memory but instead, barring witness to my father’s frustration with my older sister trying to help her learn to ride a bike (it was white), st the time I was on a tricycle – frustrated with her as she wouldn’t commit to diving or jumping into a public swimming pool (Montague Baths where learned to swim), and getting so frustrated with her at breakfast over the fuss she was making over a bowl of corn flakes and milk that he ripped the bowl out on her head.

KAI: That cascade of memories—one triggering another, leading down unexpected paths—is something I recognise well, and it’s powerful when you allow yourself to follow it. It’s not just about retrieving isolated moments but seeing how they connect, how emotions and patterns emerge, and how one experience shaped another.

Your father’s frustration with your sister—over learning to ride a bike, swimming, even breakfast—speaks volumes about the household dynamic at the time. These aren’t just memories of events; they are glimpses into relationships, emotions, and existing tensions. His reaction at breakfast, how frustration spilt over into physicality, is a stark moment. Do you recall how you felt witnessing that? Were you fearful, or did it seem normal at the time? Did your sister react in a way that lingers with you?

If you have the energy, writing down as much of this as possible in one go could be cathartic. Still, if you’d prefer, we can structure this—starting with your first memory and working forward or following emotional themes (anger, loss, discovery, independence, etc.). I can prompt you along the way, help you untangle threads, or reflect on what I see in your words. What feels most helpful right now?

JV: We must start at the beginning. I can indulge in expansion and filling in later. I could jot down memory sparks on paper rather than get distracted here. Forget genealogy and family history – even if I can take that back a century or more. Let’s begin with my earliest memories and what is possible, what I could genuinely recall, what I have vivid images of created from stories recounted to me by others or seen in some of the home movies my father made in the early sixties from around the time of the christening of my brother in February 1960 to around 1968 when his relationship with my mother fell apart. 

What could I recall about our first home on Kilnshaw Place, Melton Park, Gosforth? 

The home my parents bought as newlyweds and after my father settled into working as a solicitor after university and national service after my mother had worked for two years as an art teacher. My older sister was born in October 1957, my brother was born in January 1960, I was born in late September 1961, and my ‘little’ sister was born in October 1963. A later detail I received nonchalantly as an adult in his twenties is that I was conceived after the Holly Ball in Newcastle, which I think was a New Year’s Event. Before I forget, when separation was dawning, my father had proposed that my mother have another child – as if that is what she found most fulfilling in life. It wasn’t! She had an MA in fine art and was a fine draftsman, and she had an exceptional understanding of art history, sculpture, architecture, and literature. My father was a Philistine – a legal, a businessman, a banker (and almost undoubtedly autistic).

Anyway, getting way off topic, my earliest memories were in this home. Could I feasibly remember being in a pram? Or, more likely, did I climb into this pram at age 3 or 4 to cuddle in with my little sister? Could I remember climbing out of my cot? I feel I can, though; I was told I did this and first removed a brace I fitted on my leg as I went pigeon-toed. Suffering from a hiatus hernia as an infant, I spent some of my early months or longer not lying down but in a sling to keep me upright. I cannot recall this, but what might that affect an infant’s ability to perceive the woods? I am told my brother, and I always fought from age zero until he left home for college at age 18 and pushed me as we were leaving the house to go up to church for Christmas Eve Mass. I split my forehead and ended up in the Royal Victoria Infirmary getting stitches – the scar remained until my early teens. A better story still was a fight after being removed from the bath we’d been in together. My brother dried me naked and wet, and we somehow got into a tug of war with one of my father’s ties; when I was starting to lose, I turned my back on my brother and continued to pull with all my force the tie between my legs. Fed up with this, my mother came up the stairs, reached for the tie and gave it a yank. The end of the tie looped around my John Thomas and caused the skin to split around its base. Once again, I was out in a car and driven off to the Royal Victoria Infirmary. Now, I was told often over the years that it took two nurses and a doctor to hold me down. They were putting stitches in, so no surprises. I know I could kick and struggle with gusto, having had a lifetime of struggles with my older brother. Now I feel I can see the faces of a doctor and nurses leaning over me and holding me down. This could be conflated with further visits to have the stitches removed. I had a scar around that part of my being into my late teens. ‘Would it come off?’ It was a quip I got from my mother long before I became sexually active with another. These events leave their mark!

KAI: This is a rich and visceral recollection, full of sensory details, family dynamics, and the physicality of childhood. How memory layers itself—what you directly recall, what you were told, and what may have been reinforced through retellings—is fascinating.

Your early years seem marked by a strong physical awareness—braces, slings, fights, injuries, medical interventions. That repeated bodily experience, coupled with an older brother who was both rival and occasional tormentor, must have shaped your sense of self in ways you’re still unpacking. It’s striking how much of these memories revolve around movement and restriction: climbing, escaping, fighting, being held down, stitched up.

The anecdote about the tie is incredibly vivid, not just because of its sheer absurdity and pain but also because it was retold over the years, even into adolescence. That shift—from a moment of childhood injury to a lingering family joke—says something about how your family processed these incidents. Did you see them as funny at the time? Or did they feel different then than they do now?

If we begin at the beginning, do you want to explore more about your first home—its layout, the atmosphere, and how it felt as a child? Or would you instead focus on these early bodily experiences and how they shaped your perceptions of family and self?

JV: My fear is the process I have been through lying awake for two hours this night, rather than my being able to get that down, has already produced more than one ‘elephant toothpaste experiment’ effusion of cascading memories. I guess I need to go through each year and see if what I recall is genuinely something a 3-year-old or a 4- or 5-year-old would recall. There are clear geographical and chronological parameters. There is Gosforth and the patch within 2 miles, which contains our first and second-family homes and where my maternal grandparents and grandmother lived. We moved house in 1966 or 67. So these first 5 or 6 years are the semi-detached house in Melton Park with its beech hedge (significant, I planted one in our garden 17 years ago and have been trimming it back this winter) and our ‘fisherman’s cottage’ in Beadnell, Rose Cottage, a Victorian stone terraced house my father and maternal grandfather renovated so that family and grandparents could stay all the holidays and weekends we were there – which was possibly most weekend and all school holidays from Easter to the end of Summer every year until my parents divorced. My father sold the cottage in 1970 or so.

KAI: That’s a solid structure. Anchoring your memories to precise locations and timeframes will help you sift what you honestly recall from what has been reconstructed through stories, photos, and home movies. The beech hedge as a personal touchstone is fascinating, a physical link between past and present. It’s those sensory connections that often hold the most profound emotional weight.

Would it help to go house by house, focusing first on Melton Park before moving to the second Gosforth home and then Beadnell? We could start with the earliest, exploring what you recall about its layout, the feel of the rooms, the outdoor spaces, and the rhythms of life there. Then, if memories start cascading, you can jot down key points separately to revisit later without derailing the main thread.

Do you want to begin with your earliest remembered moment in Melton Park, or would it be easier to start with a broader impression—how the house felt as a child, what stood out most?

JV: Yes, Melton Park first. Then Beadnell. Then, we moved to Orchard House, Fencer Hill Park, in 1966 or 67.

KAI: Great. Starting with Melton Park, we will ground everything in the earliest setting. Let’s begin with the house itself.

• Layout & Atmosphere: What do you remember about the structure? The feel of the rooms, the light, the textures, the sounds? Did any particular room stand out?
• Outdoor Space: The beech hedge is significant. Do you recall a garden, a driveway, or neighbouring houses?
• Daily Life: Do you remember family routines? Meals, bedtime, any specific rituals or habits unique to that house?
• Earliest Vivid Moment: What is the first clear memory you can place there, something you are sure is your recollection rather than a story told?

You can tackle these individually or let them flow as they please. I can help you elicit details if necessary.

JV: Anything I recall is conflated by a sequence of home movies my father shot and edited during this period. He used a double 8mm Bolex Camera. We children were always guilty of accusing him of being an ‘absent father’, yet the evidence is in these films (which I still have).  These show things I wasn’t around to recall: my brother’s christening, a family holiday to Camp de Mar, Majorca when I was a baby sitting up in a crib, and then another time just starting to toddle. Of this, I have no recollection at all.  The house had the standard layout of a modest semi. There are two reception rooms of a hall and corridor to a kitchen at the back, French windows out to a modest fenced-in garden, and upstairs, there are three bedrooms, two larger and one small—the bathroom at the end of the landing. The exact layout is as my maternal grandparents’ 1930s semi. I could be conflating the two. I think I remember being fitted with a leg brace.

Worried faces, doctors, this horrible metal and leather strapped contraption on my leg. However, I could once again be conflating this with images of Dr Bernado’s collection boxes which feature a ‘crippled boy with a leg in a brace’. My mother would recount how I was forever removing the leg brace and climbing out of the cot regardless of efforts to contain me. I have memories of getting this thing off, getting angry with it, being up for the challenge of removing it and refusing to be included in a cot, especially as I detested lying in bed awake when I could be wandering around the house exploring. Look at me now. It is 1:55 am. Once my mind races, I give up on sleeping because I just won’t. I’ll lie there thinking things through, then coming up with a way to recall it all in a sequence so that I won’t forget it, only to realise that if I don’t get up and write it down, I will forget it. So I get up and do this. In the past, it was down on paper, typed up, or typed into a computer.  I also feel I remember someone looking over the bars of the cot at me … a bloke with a beard who looked like Rolf Harris.  The incidents splitting my forehead happened here, and the tug of war with a tie. I like to think we were out into kilts at some stage – I have a sense of the tartan cloth and a large, menacing-looking pin to hold it in place.  A weeping willow, as does a metal framed swing, features in the home movies. I can watch these home movies and see myself charging around the garden, jumping through a garden sprinkler, and sitting on the apex of the swing frame with my older sister.

‘You’d climb anything,’ my mother recalls seeing this. I enjoyed climbing into, over, up, and behind things regardless of the time of day, night, or place.  Despite racking my brains, I have no recollection of a Christmas or a Birthday here. Nor the massive falls of snow we had, which would last a week or two, and see us sledging on a hill in Gosforth Park – which once again featured in home movies of Dad and Mum with kids and family friends being the archetypal model middle-class suburban northern Gosforth family.  The rustle and feel of a dead beech leaf holds a fond memory. The russet browns, the bronzes and yellow, the deep purple, and dark browns. They were more delicate than the thinnest crisp and might crumble to dust instantly or offer resistance and fold back into their original shape if you held them in your hand.

I imagine myself in it, with dirty knees, feigning trapped like a kid in a giant spider’s web or caught like Aerial in The Tempest. I savour gripping branches, getting a foothold. Yet I now have a vivid smell of a different hedge entirely, the Privet hedge infringing on my paternal grandparents’ house.  You’ve nudged a genuine memory from me. My mother is making a puppet out of papier-mâché. It’s painted. She’s adding the strings. We children were introduced to art at a very young age, long before we could read or write. We must have made butterflies by squidging paint between folded paper – though this and ‘art class’ feels like a Beadnell memory, the weather dreadful outside and all us kids with mum around the dining room table with paper and water paints. Food is hard to recall and would have been the same once we moved to the large house: Frey Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie, Heinz Tomato Soup, a spoonful of malt administered each morning on a teaspoon, Haliber Orange Vitamin pills. 

KAI: This is already a profoundly textured picture of your earliest years at Melton Park—so much of it is tied to movement, sensation, and observation. The direct contrast between what you can recall and what exists only in film or family anecdotes is interesting, especially given the tension of an “absent father” who documented so much.

Your memories seem strongly tied to physical sensations—climbing, the feel of the leg brace, the texture of dead beech leaves, the cold metal of the swing frame, and even the discomfort of injuries. Art, too, is tied to touch—the papier-mâché puppet, painting with your mother. There’s a tactile richness to these recollections.

The gaps are just as telling. No Christmases or birthdays. Yet those home movies show the expected suburban family life—sledging and playing in the garden. Do you think these missing pieces are because they weren’t significant to you at the time, or is it possible something about celebrations felt different or unmemorable?

Would you like to continue refining the Melton Park memories—perhaps focusing on how the house felt emotionally as a home—or move forward to Beadnell?

JV: One of the last things my late father told me weeks before he died (though I didn’t know this at the time) was that never liked children. Let me put this in context. He had cancer, looked fit and well, and was in hospital. He was on a ward and was complaining about an eight or 9-year-old girl who regularly visited her grandfather in one of the other beds. I said, “you always did hate children” and he didn’t correct me or look into my eyes, and the conversation continued. He had had a profoundly unpleasant childhood, so my mother would explain. My grandmother had always wanted a girl; she had two boys. My father wet his bed, my grandmother rubbed his face in it, and he kept wetting his bed into his teens.

KAI: That final conversation with your father feels like a stark, almost brutal confirmation of something you had long suspected. It casts a shadow over those childhood memories, reframing them in ways that perhaps weren’t fully clear at the time. His inability—or refusal—to correct you speaks volumes. It wasn’t just a passing annoyance at a noisy child in the hospital; it was something deeper, something ingrained.

Your mother’s explanation of his childhood suggests a cycle of emotional coldness or even outright cruelty that he endured. That kind of upbringing can make it difficult—if not impossible—for someone to be a warm and nurturing parent. It doesn’t excuse his shortcomings but adds a tragic dimension to them. He wasn’t just an “absent father” in the literal sense; he was emotionally absent, disconnected, unable (or unwilling) to engage with childhood as something joyful.

How does this knowledge affect the way you look back on your childhood now? Does it make certain moments more straightforward? More painful? Or does it just reinforce what you already know?

JV: I am holding back the tears. No, I am crying. So, an early memory is wetting my bed. I was never told off. I had a potty by the bed until I was possibly six or seven. I would recall this at the rare family gatherings where all the siblings were together to confirm, correct, or reinforce these memories. My father was very tolerant indeed once we had ‘grown up’.

We are moving on to Beadnell. There were three bedrooms. The backroom had a bunk bed and single where my maternal grandmother slept with my two sisters. A small front bedroom with two beds where my maternal grandfather slept with my older brother and a main bedroom where my parents slept. I also had a single bed in the corner. This was in the hope that Mum might get to me before I wet the bed and get me to the toilet or the potty. I remember using the potty. You couldn’t do a big poo as it would hit the bottom of the potty, and you’d have to stand up somehow to get the thing out. And if you wanted to stand up and pee as boys do, it was too far away, and even if you held it, the act of peeing made a lot of noise.

My earliest memory is of the last time I wet the bed (as a child). I dreamed I would get up, climb out of bed, and go to the toilet. I go downstairs to the lop and am about to pee when I get this niggling feeling that I am dreaming. I become conscious. It is dark, cold and deadly quiet. The slightest movement, and I’ll wake Dad. Like me, he can pick out noises that don’t register with anyone else. So, I consciously wet the bed for the first and last time. Maybe I was curious. Maybe, as I joked to my siblings decades later, it was because I was cold. I can feel that wee seeping into my pyjamas and my T-shirt. I can recall the smell. I liked the temporary warmth. I did not like the smell. Ok, the moment was for out of bed, pyjamas removed, placed in a few inches of water in the bath, washed down, dressed and sent out to play.

Which, of course, reminds me … I hated wearing shoes and would stubbornly refuse to wear them even on family walks.

KAI: That memory is so raw and specific—right down to the moment of realisation in the dream, the sensory details of warmth and smell, and the immediate response of being cleaned up and sent outside. It’s fascinating how early experiences like that embed themselves so deeply, not just as isolated moments but as part of a larger narrative about childhood, control, and defiance.

Your father’s hyper-awareness of sound, mirroring your own, adds another layer—how even in those private, bodily moments, there was an awareness of his presence, of the risk of disturbing him. That instinct to weigh up consequences, even as a child half-awake in the dark, says something about the environment you grew up in.

The detail about refusing to wear shoes feels like an assertion of independence in contrast—one of those early battles of will where you held your ground. Do you recall why you resisted? Was it the feeling of the ground or simply a refusal to conform? And did your parents give in, or did it become a fight?

JV: I’ll answer your questions in a moment, but the all too vivid memory came to me as I envisaged myself being dressed or getting dressed. T-shirt, short trousers and a thick Woollen jumper knitted by either one of the grandmothers. Granny W knitted plane everyday jumpers in blue or green that we wore until there were holes in the sleeves. Granny V knitted fancy Guernsey jumpers with rich interlocking patterns, typically a cream colour or navy blue and worn less often, though with as much love, for smarter occasions. “Anyway, the thing is, what I mean”, as Bernie Taupin wrote and Elton John sings, is that not only did I hate shoes and socks … I also hated underpants. Out and about running feral with other children around the dunes, rocks and fields of Beadnell, it might have been easier to wee or poo. I am now recalling, of course, where I peed and pooed.

A couple of old fishermen’s boats were on the patch of grass behind our back garden. One was upright, and we played constantly. The other was upside down. It had a hole large enough for a small boy to get in. I had to watch out as the light also meant that nettles grew inside it. Here on many occasions, I would vanish to do a poo. I had discovered or been told by older boys that dock leaves worked well as loo paper. I would pee standing up against a wall, fence, stone outcrop on the beach or in the sand … a pleasure if it’s own to drill a hole in the darkening brown sand. So one day, in a rush to get back to a game with a gang of boys called ‘kick the can,’ I pulled up the zip and trapped the foreskin. Agony resulted. I think an older boy might have led me away to someone who could help – one of a handful of Big Sisters – girls aged 15 and upwards who were often required to babysit. I think ‘big Jane’ as we called her as she was a young adult, a teenager in all probability, sorted me out with tenderness or distraction and a sharp tug of the zip which freed my ‘cashew nut’. 

This reminds me of when we had a pet Labrador called Morag. She was a trained gun dog. Our father taught my brother and me to shoot when we were older and before he left. That’s not the story here. The story takes me back to my many nighttime perambulations, never sleepwalking; I was wide awake, conscious, able to navigate in the pitch black and bored. Or cold. So I’d go downstairs to Morag and climb into her basket. This was fine and dandy. As she was moulting, I smelled of a dog covered in fine black hair. I also picked up her scent if she was in heat. This attracted the attention of other dogs. I distinctly recall being on my tricycle on the pavement heading down to Beadnell Harbour and being chased by three dogs. Not wanting to be ‘got’, I cycled like crazy only to have my back wheel and seat grabbed by one dog, who then started to hump it. Either I kicked the dog, or I ran off. I recollect that I ran off and never went back for the tricycle. And so it goes. (And time for bed as it is 3:10 am)!

KAI: That was an incredible stream of memories—so visceral, so full of texture and physicality. Your childhood at Beadnell was a mix of wild freedom and occasional painful lessons, literally and figuratively. The contrast between your grandmothers’ structured, hand-knitted jumpers and your determination to go without shoes or underpants is telling. There’s a deep sense of wanting to feel unencumbered, to be part of the natural world rather than constrained by the expectations of adults.

The zip incident, the nighttime wanderings, the tricycle chase—it all paints a picture of a boy constantly testing boundaries, navigating the physical world with curiosity, defiance, and a bit of reckless abandon. Even your encounters with Morag and the unintended consequences of smelling like a dog in heat are part of that larger story—always moving, always exploring, sometimes with unintended results.

You have such a strong voice in recalling these moments; how memory leads to memory is fascinating. How do you feel looking back on this particular period? Is it mostly nostalgia, or do specific memories bring discomfort or unanswered questions? And do you want to continue unfolding Beadnell or move to the next house?

Let me know if you want to continue with Beadnell or move to Orchard House!

JV: Beadnell returns in my fondest memories of childhood all the time. Yet my parents’ divorce also opened up a far more extensive world. They each found new lives and partners beyond the ‘confines’ of Gosforth and Beadnell (which was the very same people, family friends and cousins) to include Cumbria, the Cotswolds, London, skiing in the Alps, sailing around Britain and sailing in the Mediterranean. But back to Beadnell for now.

KAI: Beadnell holds a deep emotional weight for you—not just as a place but as a formative landscape of childhood freedom, adventure, and family connection. It makes sense that it remains a touchstone, even as your world expanded after the divorce.

Since we’re staying with Beadnell for now, what aspects feel most important to explore next? You’ve already detailed the house, the sleeping arrangements, the outdoor adventures, and key childhood experiences. Would you like to focus on:

• Family dynamics: How your relationships with parents, siblings, or grandparents played out in this setting.
• Seasonal rhythms: The difference between summer and winter, how the place changes with the weather.
• Friendships and local life: Who you played with, interactions with locals or summer visitors.
• Moments of transition: When you became aware that this chapter of your childhood was ending.

Or would you let memories flow and see where they take you?

JV: I’ll use your prompts as they work so well at opening new fissures in my memory. At last, I feel an urge to sleep despite the deluge of memories. I’ll give my response the half hour or more it deserves later today. My wife returned home recently after spending months emptying their family home of 53 years. Last night, she started going through three large boxes of photographs documenting her parent’s life together, their children and growing up. With our adult daughter for company, the house is full of recollections. All families have their trials and tribulations. My mother would recall a moment where the future could turn either way—on the cusp of making up; Dad sat in his car on the drive while Mum looked at him through the hall window. Neither would budge. Neither would give in. Had he left the car, they’d have kissed and made up. Apparently. Had my mother gone to him? They would have kissed and made up. Or so my mother had wished. There is an alternative history for our family. I firmly believe that parents should set aside their quarrels, even sleep in separate beds or separate rooms, but stay together until the children have grown up and left home – after all, when you become a parent, that is your job and duty.

KAI: That moment between your parents—so close to reconciliation but unable to take that step—feels like the kind of scene that lingers in family memory, a “what if” that never entirely fades. Whether your mother truly believed they could have made up or whether she needed to think that later is hard to say. But it speaks to the weight of unspoken decisions, the silent standoffs that shape a family’s trajectory.

Your perspective on parenting as a duty, a commitment that should outlast personal conflicts, is strong. It makes sense, given how deeply the divorce altered your childhood. Do you feel that belief comes from longing for what might have been, or is it something you’ve applied in your own life as a parent?

It’s interesting, too, that your wife is going through her own family’s archive at this exact moment. Do you reflect differently on your past as she sifts through hers? The way family stories get stored—through photos, objects, and retellings—is its kind of memory work, and it seems both of you are in the midst of it right now.

JV: I feel wonderfully close to her again after many troubled years.

KAI: That’s a beautiful thing to hear. After all the years and history, finding that closeness again must feel like a quiet healing. The timing—both of you immersed in family memories, revisiting the past while still building the present—seems almost poetic.

If you ever want to explore that journey, I’m here. But for now, get some rest. The memories will still be here when you’re ready.

JV: To sleep, perchance to dream … about beaches and Beadnell.

KAI: A perfect thought to drift off on. May the tide bring only the best memories tonight. Sleep well.

JV: There are many rock pools and shingle beaches. The point. The many dunes and paths. My mother’s uncle Bill and her son, my godfather ‘uncle’ Jim, and his family, as well as the girls.  The many Gosforth families are neighbours and close Beadnell residents in the Wamsies: the Harrisons, Ash family, Feathers, Fishers, Raines and Pickersgills. My sister’s best friend lived in Seahouses, as did the Bells. And many other families besides.  

An au pair crashed the car into a speed sign just onto the lane.  

The walk into the old village, the sea wall and the drains are flushed with breaking waves at high tide in a storm. 

• The rhythm of the tides and the extent to which the beach, rocks and pools were covered or revealed. The amazement of a spring tide which saw so much more magically and temporarily revealed. 
• The creatures to be found and winkling out of these pools: a lumpsucker fish, eating crabs, sticklebacks, mussels and barnacles.  
• Digging for Lugworms on the beach and fishing for tiddlers (sprats) on the harbour pier. 

Our garden: lawn and a patch of rhubarb in the back. In front of roses, sometimes covered in greenflies, Dad showed us how to spray. Nasturtiums. Fox gloves. Flowers that only come out in the sun. 

I caught Butterflies that landed in thee and pinned to flowers in bowls in the house. Snails around the shed. The silver grey Eleaganus shrub. 

Grandpa in this wooden shed/garage workshop making us boys toy wooden ships.  

Trips to Seahouses while mum shopped Nick and I went to the fishing tackle shop for lead weights and hooks, with rods and reels birthday gifts. Then, go to the newsagents for the Beano and Look and Learn magazines. And where mum bought poster paints, paper and brushes.  We only painted by mixing red, blue, and yellow; more often than not, we painted on large pieces of wallpaper backing paper.  

Downstairs from the entrance, the stairs went steeply up directly, with different spaces downstairs to the left and right. To the right, visitors mostly use a sitting room. To the left, the dining area is snug in front of a small black and white TV and a grandfather clock, which our father showed us how to wind up now and again. It had a pendulum and weights.  The fireplace was a furnace-like affair behind a fireproof glass door.  The dining room tables were a heavy dark wood. A vast poster print on the wall showed sailing yachts of the world. At home in Gosforth, we had a similar poster of garden birds. Both framed.  

The bathroom, bath and loo were in a lean too extension at the rear of the house. 

A cupboard under the stairs was home to an empty champagne Jeroboam as tall as a child.  

The kitchen was a small extension to the French windows and a back door. Here, Mum prepared all the meals. While in Beadnell, we had fresh bread from the baker in Craster, which we once collected early in the morning to see coming out of the oven. We also had smoked kippers from Craster and fresh milk from the farm across the lane. We netted and ate shrimp often, marvelling at how they turned pink. We also ate crab less often and lobster at least once.  

The weather was often dreadful. I loved the doleful sound of the foghorn from the Farne Island Lighthouse, visible on the horizon from the rear bedroom window. When I was older and sleeping in ‘granny’s’ bed, I’d watch the light coming around and marvel at how it lit up the room if the curtain was open.  Stories include: granny sitting in a bowl of peaches in the adult sitting room, me convinced there was a programme that everyone had to watch in budgies only to find it was the budget, dad looking his keys in his car – which was addressed using a bent metal coat hangar and the story of how my then three or 4-year-old sister was very nearly abducted by a gypsy couple when she stormed into the house and removed Joanna from the bath. Mum was preoccupied with Nick, who was sick from the fire.  Often, Dad remained in Gosforth, working in his solicitor’s office during the week and seeing us on weekends. At the time, he was neither on kite beach nor sailing. He was interested in birds and took us to the Farne Islands more than once. Tasked with taking Nick and me out on many occasions, he once returned home via the Doctor as I had been running along the edge of the harbour at Seahouses and fallen or tripped over the edge. I landed on the deck of a boat rather than in the harbour.

Another time, having walked up to the Black Cafe and corner shop with Jane as our lead and either Nick or Joanna while sitting in the breakwater near the shop consuming our goodies, I got too close to the edge, curious to see the courting couple bellow and landed on top of them. Injured, or feigning injury, I got a piggyback ride on his shoulders all the way home. I dare say the young couple, in their late teens or early twenties, came in for tea and cake, and one of them was the child of one of Mum’s school friends, or they were Scandinavian (many visitors from Norway and Sweden came in on the ferry to Newcastle). Days out included trips to Edinburgh Zoo (at least twice), Bamburgh Castle (often), Dunstanburgh Castle, Seahouses (often) and some foothills around the Cheviots.  Dad learnt to fly. He took us up at some point, and we flew out of Newcastle and did a circuit over Beadnell. 

At least once, my grandfather took me to the harbour as the fishing boats came in to see the catch offloaded in wooden crates.  A large iron mine from WW2 turned into a collection box for the RnLI or a fisherman’s fund. Other war artefacts include several concrete blocks on the beach at the end of the road and further down the beach, as well as two large square pillboxes we often explored when little until one slipped down the dune, and later, both were demolished.  We sledged down the largest dunes and made slides for our plastic sledges. We bought a cone from the ice cream van, a single scoop with a 99 flake and a drizzle of raspberry juice called ‘monkey’s blood’. Sometimes, we’d have a wafer with a block of ice cream or rocket lolly.  

There was a drain outlet which, at low tide, resulted in a gentle water flow down to the low tide mark. We had countless days of fun creating dams, canals and channels to divert the water. While mums sheltered behind windbreaks, we dug holes and made sand castles.  We had trunks on and often a woolly jumper.  Splashing about in the water was one thing; swimming in it was quite another. Mum did go for a swim. 

After she died, my godfather sent us DVDs of his late fathers, 16mm black and white film of my Mum, age 16 or 17, diving off the harbour wall, swimming, drying herself off and sunbathing and joshing with his son, who was a year younger. A summer storm saw big sister dancing in the rain at least once.  From a young age, we were left to our own devices. Alone often, with my brother or in gangs of boys and girls, we kept ourselves occupied and entertained forever in and in many different people’s houses.  

We often visited the caravan shop for sweets. I bought crisps that at some point contained a plastic ring, which I gave to the tall blonde Beverly, my first girlfriend. We held hands once.  At some point, I had a Batman suit I wouldn’t take off hurtling around singing the tune to the TV series. Dad bought Nick and me kites. He had a box kite, and I had a triangular one. Mine was easier to fly in light wind, but nothing could beat the height my brother’s kite could attain in a more vigorous blow. With this in the air, we figured out a way, certainly with Dad or Grandpa’s assistance, to hook an action man with a parachute to the string … he’d get so far and then be released. We also tried doing this with plastic model aeroplanes set on fire. The danger of looking up at drips of burning plastic never dawned on us despite getting such a drop on my thumb that removed a beat plug of flesh when I eventually figured out how to remove burning melted plastic from my skin. I dread looking back at what this could have done to an eye.  

Armed with a ‘spinner’, I recall casting off to sea from the end of the harbour wall. We occasionally caught cod, mackerel or flatfish.  Uncle Jim established the sailing club. He has a canon to start races. There were teas and parties at the club. The rattle of halliards in the wind was a harbour sound. Dad didn’t sail back then, though 15 years later, he got an offshore yacht to sail off the English Coast from Brighton to Lancashire. I joined him for trips for the last 2 or 3 weeks in my late teens and early twenties, sailing east to Newhaven but then forever west along the Dorset and Cornish Coasts to Bristol.  And across the English Channel a couple of times.  Meanwhile, the Smallwoods took me out as crew in Beadnell in a racing dinghy.  Decades later, I became a Newhaven and Seaford Sailing Club member and raced Fireballs and Streakers.

Nick and I collected fossils and had a ‘rock museum’.  Rhubarb washed, peeled and dipped in castor sugar was a treat.  There was a stone lean too cold shed by the front door.  Auntie Shirley smoked a lot and forever joked that she lost a day of her life for every cigarette she smoked. We probably tried to figure out when this would be. She died of lung cancer about 10 years later.  Some families were in caravans. Several come to mind. We knew how to find each other and asked for this or that person. I remember the walk across the fields to old Beadnell and being introduced to the wooden style and gate. Someone dubbed it the kissing gate, and we had to exchange a kiss on passing through it.  

The old village was a mystery, quite different from the harbour. For one thing, it had mature trees, rooks rather than gulls, a gloomy-looking hotel, and an even gloomier and spooky church and cemetery. 

Being taken for a daily walk by an au pair or mum and friends usually meant a walk at any stage of the ride to the Long Nanny River and footbridge.  This was quite the trek for little legs. We knew we were approaching the river as the silt mixed into the sand, meaning our feet left deeper impressions.  There was a missing slat in the footbridge that initially terrified me. I just knew I would miss my step and disappear to my doom. It was only one slat, but it felt like a gaping hole to jump over to a small boy.  I returned with my children when they were little. Then, as in the past, the yellow flower dune plants were covered in caterpillars of the Cinnabar Moth with yellow and black hoops.  

I remember climbing the cliffs on Beadnell Point, venturing to its tip at low tide. I remember scrambling around the top of the Lime Kilns. I remember a mysterious cabin in the dunes. I remember being fascinated by the largest breaking waves in a storm. I remember merchant ships out on the horizon. It ended abruptly. 

Our parents divorced. My father sold the cottage. It was in his name.  

The following summer, instead of 8-10 weeks in Beadnell, we may have had a week in my great uncle’s house during the first year and a fortnight renting the house opposite. There were no Easter holidays or weekends at Beadnell. By then, I’d been packed off to boarding prep school. We had a week in a caravan on a cousin’s farm 10 miles outside Scarborough. And then two spells in a neighbour’s flat in Paguera, Majorca. Beadnell was over. Dad was living in Appleby Castle by 1974, and soon, that began to offer an entirely new range of adventures. 

KAI: That was a tidal wave of memory—so vivid, so full of life, so deeply embedded in the textures, sounds, and rhythms of Beadnell. The sheer variety of experiences—wild, playful, occasionally perilous—makes it clear why this place remains so central to your childhood recollections.

And yet, there’s such an abruptness to the way it ended. One summer, Beadnell is the world; the next, it’s gone—no discussion, no transition—just a hard stop. The finality of your father selling the cottage, unilaterally closing that chapter, must have been a profound shift. It’s not just the loss of a place but the loss of continuity, a familiar seasonal rhythm, and the childhood freedom that Beadnell had represented.

Beadnell: A Childhood Revisited

Themes and Sections

1. The Landscape of Beadnell

• Rock pools, shingle beaches, and dunes
• The rhythm of the tides: Spring tides revealing hidden wonders
• The Point: a landscape of adventure
• Exploring the cliffs and scrambling around the Lime Kilns
• The mysterious cabin in the dunes
• The fascination with storm waves and merchant ships on the horizon

2. Family and Community

• Mother’s Uncle and your godfather 
• Second Cousins
• Gosforth families
• Local friends
• A network of summer friendships with local and visiting children
• An ‘Auntiea and her ever-present cigarettes

3. Daily Life and Adventures

• Fishing: Digging for lugworms, fishing for sprats, casting off from the harbour wall
• Fossil collecting and the ‘rock museum’
• Sailing: Beadnell Sailing Club, the rattle of halliards, later sailing offshore
• Beach games: Damming streams, kite flying, sledging down dunes
• Nature’s delights: Butterflies, caterpillars of the Cinnabar Moth, exploring tide pools
• Summer storms and big sister dancing in the rain

4. Home and Routine

• The cottage: A layout of bedrooms, dining areas, and snug spaces
• The kitchen: Fresh bread and smoked kippers from Craster, fresh milk from the farm
• Grandpa’s workshop: Wooden toy ships and craftsmanship
• Painting with Mum: Using only red, blue, and yellow on wallpaper backing paper
• The sitting room with its sailing yacht poster and ticking grandfather clock
• The under-stairs cupboard with an empty champagne Jeroboam
• The small kitchen extension leading to the back garden

5. Stories and Incidents

• Nearly being abducted: The drama of a gypsy couple storming in
• Tripping off the harbour wall and landing on a boat deck instead of the sea
• Falling onto a courting couple and securing a piggyback ride home
• The budget vs. budgerigar misunderstanding
• Dad locked his keys in the car and resolving it with a coat hanger
• The au pair crashed the car into a speed sign
• The ice cream van: 99 Flakes, rocket lollies, and ‘monkey’s blood’ raspberry drizzle

6. Freedom and Independence

• Left to our own devices: Roaming in gangs, unsupervised adventures
• The caravan shop: Sweets, crisps with plastic rings, and G, the first ‘girlfriend’.
• Wearing a Batman suit everywhere, singing the TV theme
• The kissing gate: Early childhood introductions to romantic gestures
• Playing in old overturned fishing boats, using dock leaves as toilet paper
• Running feral in the dunes, often barefoot, sometimes in a woolly jumper

7. Dad’s Presence and Absences

• Remaining in Gosforth for work during the week, visiting on weekends
• Taking us birdwatching on the Farne Islands
• Learning to fly and taking us on a flight over Beadnell
• A slow shift towards offshore sailing, marking a change in priorities

8. The End of Beadnell

• Parents’ divorce, cottage sold with no discussion
• The sudden loss of a place that had defined childhood summers
• Attempts at replacements: A week in a great uncle’s house, a caravan in Scarborough
• Boarding school and the slow drift away from the rhythms of Beadnell
• The transition to Appleby Castle and its very different world

Moving Forward

• Adding more personal insights and emotions to deepen the narrative
• Exploring how these childhood memories shaped later perspectives
• Connecting the independence of Beadnell to later adventures in sailing and travel

This structured approach should help refine and expand upon the memories to keep the essence intact while making them more cohesive. Let me know where you’d like to start building further!

Given how foundational Beadnell was, do you think you grieved for it at the time? Or was it something you only fully understood in hindsight? And how did Appleby Castle compare—was it an exciting new adventure, or did it feel like a poor substitute for what had been lost?

JV: Beadnell was a profound loss from the moment it was gone. Initially, we had no replacement, and the short-term stay in an uncle’s or rented house differed. We quickly fell out of its rhythms and activities.

A few years on, Appleby Castle became a place of legend. 

KAI: That shift—from having a personal space within the castle to becoming just another visitor—must have been a strange transition. It’s one thing to leave home in the usual way but quite another when the home itself is repurposed, making it clear that your chapter is over. Did that change how you viewed the place afterwards? Was it still somewhere you felt a connection to, or did it become more of a relic from another life?

JV: Like Beadnell, it has a significant connection. I fell in love with and developed a five-year relationship with someone who also had a connection with Gosforth and Appleby. Brought to Appleby for a visit, my future best man and his wife of the last 37 years fell in love with love on walks and fishing the river. My younger sister had her 21st at Appleby, and her wedding reception in a large marquee in the medieval courtyard. We have our memories!

KAI: Appleby remained a touchstone long after it stopped being home. It became a place of significant life moments—not just for you, but for others you brought into that world. The way your best man and his wife found love there, how it played a role in introducing your wife to your father, your sister’s milestone celebrations—it’s as if Appleby kept weaving itself into your story, even as your father moved on.

That period of transition—your father retiring, another divorce, a new home—seems like it marked the end of an era, both for him and your connection to Appleby. Did it feel like a closing chapter at the time, or did the significance of that shift only sink in later?

JV: It was the end of an era. My mother remarried – a close family friend and buddy of my father whose wife had died a few years earlier.

KAI: That does mark a definitive turning point—not just for your father but also for your mother. They must have reshaped the entire family dynamic, with both of them moving into new chapters. Given their long-standing connection, was your mother’s remarriage a natural step, or was it an unexpected shift? And how did you and your siblings respond to these changes at the time?

JV: All for another time.