Sunday, 5th September 1976
Gosforth — Age 14:11
I had been thinking of going swimming but gave up. I liked to swim most days and had even done drawings of the family home with its own swimming pool, where I could swim twice a day. Normally I would have got dressed, rolled my trunks into a towel, put my goggles around the towel and put the lot into a plastic shopping bag. I would have gone through the utility room into the garage, fetched my bike from the concrete rack on the other side, clipped my swimming stuff onto the back and negotiated the bike down the side of Mum’s car. I would grab the handle of the up-and-over garage doors and push them open, close them again behind me, hop onto my bike and let gravity roll me down the drive before taking the pedals and cycling towards the Great North Road.
I’d wince at the stink from the rookery and then at the exhaust fumes on the busy dual carriageway I was about to join, while my mind questioned why on earth I had left the warmth of my bed, let alone the comforts of home.
I’d try to focus instead on the joy of crossing the shallow end of the pool, putting my towel out on the heated tile benches under the window and slipping into the water. Goggles on, wet my head, deep breathe, drop, push, glide, kick, pull — and I was off, lost in a water wonder world of my own.
Not today. Thinking about it was tiring enough.
My brother realised his go-kart was bust. He was a dab hand at mechanics and took after Grandpa. Even Dad used to enjoy poking his nose around in an internal combustion engine. He’d made the motorised go-kart himself from spare parts in the school workshops: a soldered metal frame, one wheel on each corner, a bucket seat and a two-stroke garden lawnmower engine.
With one lawnmower engine knackered, we went round to Gran’s. The diary said we went to fix her lawnmower, which seemed odd because she had a professional gardener and had her lawnmower serviced every year. More likely, with one engine bust, I wonder if my brother had gone round to see what could be pilfered or adapted from her lawnmower for spare parts.
I tagged along – with our return to boarding school looming, stocking up on sweets and a little pocket money wouldn’t go amiss.
My bike chain broke while we were coming back. It was an old bike and Grandpa was forever fixing it, but I used a lot when I was at home. I went backwards and forwards south to Gosforth High Street one way and north to Gosforth Park the other. We cycled through the woods following the trails and looking for dips, rises and pools to go through. We used road bikes off-road, so punctures and damage were common.
Gran gave me £5 for my birthday (I’ll be at school) and £3 for school. Our grandparents treated us with pocket money. We never had pocket money from our parents, except perhaps a little when they were still together.
Then we went off to Belford in Mum’s navy blue Austin Maxi.
It was Mum’s way of preparing herself and us for our departure back to boarding school, a sort of send-off meal — or last supper, depending on how you looked at it.
We went to the Swan, the nineteenth-century coaching inn in Belford, for Sunday roast and Yorkshire pudding. I drank lager. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about older children being introduced to alcohol. Adults happily gave teenagers lager or bitter shandy, or a small glass of wine or spritzer at the table.
Back home a neighbours daughter was dropped off. She was seven years younger than me and somewhat feral. She was in awe of my kid sister. Her parents or brothers were out. At eight she could be docile enough and would happily sit watching television. She wasn’t very communicative. Perhaps she’d asked to go to the loo – she wee’d herself.
Afterwards we drove on to Bamburgh.
It had been ages since we had been inside the castle. There wasn’t much to see, or at least that was how it felt then. We parked in the village and went through the sand dunes onto the beach.
Mum was in full nostalgia mode about her own childhood and youth, holidaying with the Hoggs at their house in Beadnell.
Trips to Bamburgh had often included swimming in the natural tidal pool below the little white Bamburgh Lighthouse, reached from the Wynding. Mum knew it as the Egg Pool, part of the rock pools around Harkess Rocks and Blackrocks Point, a deep basin left behind when the tide went out and sheltered from the heavier North Sea.
We met our Uncle Jim, his son Bill (mum’s age) and John Foster.
Uncle Jim was my great-uncle, my grandmother Barbara Hogg’s brother. Bill was his son, Mum’s cousin and a close friend of hers, as well as my godfather. John Foster had a cottage in Beadnell and also happened to live next door to us on Fencer Hill Drive. I can’t believe this was a coincidence.
We played croquet on the manicured lawns of Castle Green, with Bamburgh Castle behind us. Uncle Jim supplied the hoops and mallets.
We also saw Mr and Mrs Ascough. Mum had met them shortly after our parents separated. She had taken our kid sister off to Majorca for an impromptu mini-break and somehow become firm friends with them. Mum and I had stayed with them in Glasgow in 1974, so by then they counted as family friends.
Later we had fish and chips, most likely at Seahouses, close to the harbour and the Pleasure Arcades.
I was supposed to be keeping an eye on her.
We got home at ten.
It had felt like a proper day out.
Then we watched Let’s Make Love.
Marilyn Monroe belonged to another generation as far as I was concerned and I was rarely interested in her. Her hair, her build, her clothes — all of it felt wrong. But at nearly fifteen even I could find her charming in this film, and My Heart Belongs to Daddy was fabulous.
Not that I had any hankering for a buxom older girlfriend.
I never expected Marilyn Monroe to have such a voice.
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