Fifty Years Ago: Thursday, 19th August 1976
(Gosforth, Age 14:10)
I didn’t want to join the family on a trip to the Roman Wall. After an hour the others eventually went out.
It wasn’t just about the Roman Wall. I’d seen it often enough. The trip wasn’t about Hadrian’s Wall anyway; it was about mum getting us out of the house for a walk. My interests are mercurial, led by enthusiasms that wax and wane, and that day the Roman Wall and its history or the aesthetic of the ruins or people-watching visitors weren’t appealing.
What put me off more was taking an hour simply to get ready to leave the house. How could it possibly take that long? If I wanted to go somewhere, I’d grab my coat, keys and wallet and be out within ten minutes. But an hour of differing about kills the time. Already the trip is an hour longer. The first hour is spent in the turmoil of trying to get ready to leave.
Eventually they left.
Our cleaner Joan turned up. Her mother had cleaned for Mum’s parents for decades and now Joan cleaned for us. Families employing families, the arrangement carrying on from one generation to the next. Not everyone gets stuck in their class from one generation to the next: my paternal grandfather’s parents had been domestic servants, and my maternal grandmother’s father had started his working life at fourteen in a shop – only later did he own his own successful toy retailer and importer of fine china.
I found things to do. I syphoned the water from the bath to put on the garden. Dads hybrid rhododendrons needed it. Plants I’d helped him (or at least watched him) put in the ground.
This is the summer of the drought and we had entered into the sport of saving water. Mum had lived through the war and I’m sure some of the Dunkirk spirit came from her. A bath meant only a few inches of water and two or more of us might use the same water before it was allowed anywhere near the plughole. Then I could syphon it out onto the garden.
Waste nothing.
After that I just felt like lazing in the sun rather than going anywhere – not even into Gosforth. Though we were getting plenty of it this year it was generally a rarity.
I lay on a sun lounger in the garden in swimming trunks, covered in tanning oil. The point was to get brown. If I had a tan it looked like I’d been on holiday even if I hadn’t.
Not even Gosforth tempted me, although almost everyone I knew, give or take, lived somewhere off the High Street. The High Street itself had almost everything we needed: a wide variety of shops and roads leading off towards friends’ houses. Mum often said how she wished they’d bought a house amongst our family friends in that part of Gosforth.
I rang Julie-Anne; she was out but would be back in five minutes. When she spoke I told her I was coming into Gosforth.
I’d had enough of the sun. I finally worked out what I wanted to do. I was coming into Gosforth wasn’t arranging anything exactly. It meant: I’m going to be around if she was interested in coming out to see me.
Something about this interchange got me into the writing as mood.
Writing meant at a typewriter. A boy’s longing to see a girl he’d just met on an interstellar space ship on the way to Terra Nova – that sort of thing.
Eventually I went over Julie-Anne’s for coffee (I cycled over). She never came down to see me.
Her house was one of those large Gosforth semi-detached houses with two sitting rooms, the front room for special guests and occasions and the rear room used during the day, the snug or parlour. I think that was where we sat, with the record player.
I never went up to her bedroom.
Talk. David Soul. Rod Stewart. All very middle of the road. Like Julie-Anne. I often thought I was the kind of boy who’d pull off the main road or end up in the ditch. This wasn’t Julie-Anne.
She told me about her family holiday. They often went to Devon or Cornwall.
We had sandwiches.
Then to Jesmond swimming pool, a lovely, characterful pool which already belonged to my own history. I had first competed there in a swimming gala when I was eight. Did Julie-Anne come along with me for a swim? It sounds plausible; it sounds nice but it also sounds improbable. Fifty years on the sight of Julie-Anne in a one piece bathing costume comes to mind.
Some kids had let my bike tyres down.
Both tyres.
That made me angry. One flat tyre might have been a puncture. Both tyres meant somebody had done it.
And with both tyres flat I couldn’t even wheel the bike properly. I had to carry it.
I carried it all the way back to Gosforth. Perhaps as far as Grandpa’s. However far it was, the bicycle which had given me the freedom to decide where I went that afternoon had become something I had to pick up and lug home.
Mum picked me up and we went back round to grandpa.
Then my older sister arrived with her friend Lizzie.
Later Julie-Anne rang. We spoke for ages. I told her about the bike. She had a similar story of her own. We could talk for longer on the phone than when we were sitting face to face.
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