It was an arching run up with trailing bowling arm and slightly unorthodox delivery action I mimicked on numerous occasions during my 1970’s childhood. This then homage to Warwickshire and England cricketer Bob Willis ordinarily undertaken during ‘Test Matches’ my brother Ian and/or friends participated on the tarmac wicket of Dorchester Gardens, or dog dirt strewn cricketing square on Allerdene field, in Gateshead. When the game was played at the […]
I’ve just dropped my car off in Whitkirk for its annual Ministry of Transport test (MOT). Following a meander down the road to Crossgates shopping centre I’m cafe in situ, as I commence this prose; my trusty a laptop and Americano coffee, Yesterday’s narrative Anniversary Stoicism told of how the day would’ve been my parents 59th wedding anniversary. During that essay I also briefly alluded to the fact 1st October was the date […]
After my brief overnight stay in Gateshead, I’d an incident free odyssey south on the A1(M); arriving back in Leeds yesterday afternoon. My journey predominantly spent with the late morning/midday solar rays positioned just to the left of the driving seat sun visor. Consequently, my singing along to the refrains on Sting’s ’10 Summoners Tales’ album was accompanied with pugilist-like weaving and bobbing of my head while seeking refuge from […]
I’m writing this prose in a hotel around a mile from the Low Fell home I was brought up in on Gateshead’s southern suburbs. Sitting in the lounge of this guesthouse, even though I’m unable to see those places currently residing in my neurological corridors, memories flood back of childhood. These epiphanies including recollections of my Dorchester Gardens home, along with the nearby Allerdene field where I learned Johan Cruyff-like […]
Yesterday evening I watched a recording of a BBC Four broadcast of the John Wilson Orchestra from the Royal Albert Hall; a performance forming part of the 2019 Proms season. The Gateshead-born conductor’s orchestra treating their audience to a selection of music from Warner Brothers movies. John Wilson was educated in the same Low Fell alma maters of Breckenbeds Junior High and Heathfield Senior High as I was. That being […]
The 1972 Miners’ Strike introduced me, along with the rest of the UK populous of that time, to the joys of power cuts. Not to mention more frequent use of the query “Has anyone seen that box of matches?!” January and February’s frequent electricity shortages, caused by the Central Electricity Generating Board’s fuel saving strategy, hit domestic residences hard. My childhood home in Low Fell, Gateshead, included. Always a pragmatist, my undemonstrative […]
Recently, I’ve felt moved to pen a few unreliable memories from my upbringing on Low Fell. The Gateshead borough which on its southern border, shared with Low Eighton and Birtley, resides one of the countries most iconic sculptures, the Angel of the North. When I left my parent’s three bedroom semi-detached home on Dorchester Gardens in 1987 would’ve been only a twinkle in the designers eye. Like George Bailey’s guardian angel Clarence in […]
