End of the 1960s. End of a childhood

A journey back in time.

I was three and a half years old when my parents moved into the downstairs maisonette next door to a general dealer and newsagent shop which they bought in the summer of 1955. They had managed to scrape the money together from a variety of sources in order to buy the shop on the south east corner of the junction of Maria Street and Buddle Road in the working class district of South Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne. The shop was a typical North East of England corner shop but the actual front door of our one-bedroomed home was in Maria Street, number 110. The 1950s style hardboard-clad door had four quite steep stone steps leading down from it and onto the pavement.

Dismal grey Britain was still in the throes of austerity brought on by the Second World War and even if things were starting to brighten up a bit by then; ration books, coupons, food shortages and the like, although no longer an everyday fact for adults, were still the order of the day and remained fresh in their minds. But for a little lad like me, as far as I was concerned, I was going to live in a shop with comics, sweets, pop and ice cream! This was my introduction to the area that would grow to mean so much to me and many of my friends both then and now.

Growing up in these streets and back lanes was as natural a place for me to be raised as it was for a baby gorilla inhabiting the mountains and rain forests of central Africa, though not so fragile an existence. The whole place no doubt shaped my future life and gave me the tools to deal with the trials and tribulations usually associated with modern living. It was a tough, hand-to-mouth existence for most people who lived there and our shop together with my parents, were a welcomed refuge in these difficult trying times

I must have lived every day of that decade in the moment, carefully filing memories away, because now I feel it is just like one huge multi-media library in my head, music, art, films, TV, books, comics and so forth, all gathered together in the filing cabinet of my brain.

The end of the 1960s could not have been more different for me than the beginning. The decade began with me as a young, innocent, but confident, eight year old boy full of wonderment and not a care in the world. It ended with me being transformed into a rather cynical, bemused and perplexed eighteen year old young man who had just been thrust out of a comfortable womb-like situation into the great big, wide-world of worry, work, wages, women and woes.

It was October 1969, a few weeks before my eighteenth birthday, when our beloved corner shop, which had been the family cash cow that had kept us going for over fifteen years, was closed and boarded up forever. My dad struggled at fifty five years old to start working life anew and my dreams of going to Art College were shattered. Working life was now the reality of the day, in fact, all my family had to postpone any dreams they may have had for the future.

It took me about four months before I could return to the area with my camera. I am so glad I did because this was when I took some of the photographs used in this story before the whole place was demolished. I knew the area only had a few more weeks before the bulldozers moved in and the physical landscape in which I grew up and shaped my life was going to end up as just so much dust in the wind. The whole episode was very difficult for me, almost like going to see a dying friend in hospital. Sounds a bit over-the-top I know but that was how I felt.

I got off the number one bus on the corner of Mathilda Street and St John’s Road and walked down onto Buddle Road. As I turned the corner of this very familiar landscape, my heart jumped a bit disturbing the butterflies lying in the bottom of my stomach. Why on earth I didn’t start taking photographs right there and then I’ll never know? I suppose I was giving myself time to take it all in, the landmark bits of wall and pavement slabs.

For some silly reason I thought our shop would somehow be left alone and the kids who knew us would have had too much respect for us to go in and wreck our old shop after we had departed. I had to guess again? They had been into the shop and trashed the inside completely.

Tears welled up in my eyes but stayed there as I surveyed the old paper bills and records my dad used to keep tab on the papers we delivered scattered all over floor. The polished display glass cases we used to keep the sweets in that were always as spotless as they could be under the circumstances, were smashed to smithereens. The large, battered old white freezer standing in the corner where we would make our own ice lollies in was covered in scratched graffiti and full of broken bricks and bottles.

The smell of damp decay filled the air as I struggled to see beyond the destruction and visualise once again that vibrant little corner shop so full of life and vitality. My mind went back to where I was standing when I first heard The Beatles singing and playing ‘Love Me Do’ on the first ever transistor radio I had ever seen. And over there, standing by the side counter playing ‘The Cruel Sea’ by The Dakotas on his electric guitar to my parents, the amazingly talented Joe May who was only 13 years old; we were all mesmerised.

Over at the side widows, which were partially obscured by advertising decals and the old doors my pal and I helped my Dad nail in place, was where the paper lads and lasses would congregate and buy single penny Woodbines and generally ‘hang-out’. At times, especially when it was cold outside, there were so many paper lads and lasses in the shop with their pals, valued customers couldn’t get through the door. That was when my dad would put his foot down and send them all packing.

Parts of the shop counter were still intact including the three foot square bit that was hinged so you could get from in front of the counter to behind it. My hand felt the worn out bit on the side where countless hands had lifted up the well-used piece of wood. I made my way through the boarded-up back door which used to be so familiar to me.

It was very painful when I remembered what a thriving little business this had been and how the whole place had been such a hive of activity. I think this must have been the first time I experienced pain without a physical cause if you like. I felt like part of my soul had been metaphorically ‘ripped’ out of my body and had been laid bare for all those kids to trample over. As my eyes soaked in the scene, there was a lump in my throat which definitely wasn’t metaphorical but nevertheless my eyes stayed dry, I couldn’t cry.

The way through to the back looked dangerous and very dark so I decided to go around to the back and see if I could get in through there. All the windows in our former house had been broken and the back yard we played in so happily a few years earlier was now covered in detritus and debris so familiar to run down, dilapidated old buildings ready for the demolition crews to move in and raze to the ground. I made my way up the stone steps and with a gentle push the back door opened up and walked into that familiar old scullery.

I stood there for a few moments as my eyes became adjusted to the dim light. Could this be the room that had been so instrumental in feeding my family and keeping us clean for all those years? It certainly didn’t seem like it then.

I carefully made my way through to the back living room of the shop. It was quite dark despite being the middle of the day. Some of the boards had been ripped off the window allowing some light to stream in sprinkling the dust floating around with heavenly alchemy.

It was a very eerie feeling standing there looking around knowing this tiny little room was where we, as a family, did most of our living when we first arrived fifteen years earlier. Over there in the corner where our Christmas tree was located and where we would open our unadorned presents. Diagonally opposite was the corner where we kept our first record player on a small table made by my dad. After a few minutes my eyes started to become more accustomed to the limited light and I began to make more things out.

I remember thinking even the old 1920s styled, art deco inspired, fireplace was the same except that now it was no longer the clean, shiny tiled masterpiece it used to be; still no tears. I could make out the alcove next to the chimney breast where the old sideboard used to stand and where I could climb underneath and hide away from the world. I suppose it was just as well that I couldn’t see very well, knowing me I would have definitely started collecting anything I thought reminded me of those lost times. Now, whatever was there is crushed and buried in the land, covered by the John Buddle Work Village car park.

Treading carefully across the floor because some of the boards were missing, I could see certain parts of the room allowed me to peer through them and wonder what the cellar below would be like by now. If I’d had a torch, or even a match, I would definitely have tried to get down there to see what it was like after a few months of constant darkness and damp, and of course the harsh North East winter. The cellar was one place I would have loved to have seen but that windowless place was just too dark.

Carrying on through to the bedroom where four of us were all crammed together; my mum and dad in a double bed and my brother and me in small singles, I could remember how you had to negotiate your way through the channel made by the sides of the beds. It was a fantastic place to play jumping and diving from bed to bed and hardly any floor space to land on.

The window of the bedroom was totally ‘blacked-out’ by an old piece of hardboard covering it so it was very difficult to see anything in this room. I did remember the wonderful, highly revered, tall, dark-eyed Doctor Kumar visiting me once in this room when I had mumps and I was isolated in my little bed over in the alcove next to the chimney breast.

There was not much more to see in here so I decided to try and take a chance getting down into the cellar but this proved futile. The cellar door on Maria Street had been removed and from what I could see inside it was just full of rubbish and rubble. There was another door into the cellar from the yard so I went around the back and tried to opening it from the outside. It was impossible; the battered old door was completely blocked up from the inside.

As I turned around to look back at the yard my pals and I played in all those years ago, my emotions began to get the better of me. I stood there looking around at all the devastation and it was then that a small tear beginning to swell up in the corner of eye. I felt such a palpable sense of loss of a bygone age, remembering the fantastic times we had in this yard during those year-long summer days.

It was time to get the old camera out and get on with what I was there to do in the first place before the veil of tears descended.

Outside again in the streets and after doing all the old ‘that was where that happened and over there was where this happened’, I more or less just went around taking pictures some of which are contained in this piece. I was beginning to get a little bit depressed thinking about that long-gone, safe, lost world, and apart from a few strips of celluloid and the faded memories of relatively few people, gone forever.

What do you do when you are confronted with such a piece of truth like that? Thinking that very thought I made my way to the familiar number one bus stop on St John’s Road. On the journey back to college (the only reason I managed to get the time off work to visit South Benwell was to say I was doing a photographic project for my City & Guilds College course) my mind was racing through past events and happenings. I really did feel that I was leaving a small part of me behind and that’s how I feel today when talking to my friends and relations; we all left a little part of ourselves behind among the dust and debris of broken bricks, shattered glass and cracked tiles.

We thinking creatures of nature don’t like change very much yet change is the true nature of nature and therefore something that must be accepted and endured with grace just as it is with living an ordinary life. I think that is one of the ‘things’ about truth and what is true, we all experience it differently based on our upbringing and genes yet it must be the same for everybody otherwise it’s not the truth. Try telling yourself a lie for instance? You can’t do it.

There may well be many different roads to the truth but there is only one destination, one journey’s end that’s the same for us all. This is why nostalgia and memory are tricky things for human beings sometimes, especially if they can’t come to terms with the truth of their own pasts and even more especially if they know in their hearts that have told a lot of lies or done bad things.

For quite a while, 25 years in fact, after my Benwell experience, a shrouded cloak of nostalgia and memory had dropped down over my past reality until I decided to lift that cloak and confront it all by turning the nostalgia and memory into something tangible and real by writing about it. Now I find the past, the past of my friends and my past in particular, such a rich source of material that there aren’t enough hours in the day to express it all in the many forms I would like to express it in.

I can see clearly now that my rose- tinted spectacles are put back in their case. I look back to that last visit and see in reality, the place was just an empty shell. All the roads and lanes, streets and houses were just dead, lifeless bricks and concrete, bits of sticks and stones that had served a purpose and were now surplus to requirements. ‘Time Marches On’ … Buddle Road and surrounding district, was a body without a soul. Of course it was the people and characters that were the real heart and soul of the place, the pulse that kept it going … that was it, hope springs eternal.

My hope is that the area will have another influx of people living there very soon making it once again a memorable place for someone else to write about in 60 years’ from now. My feeling is, apart from the nature park and some of the houses still left standing, also because of its close proximity to the town and wonderful aspect on the banks of the River Tyne, the area will once again be inhabited by folks who may well be able to feel the latent vibrancy of those who went before them and who once inhabited that very same space, dancing underneath them.

It’s slightly ironic that in its last throws of existence, the area should be immortalised in the iconic Mike Hodges film, ‘Get Carter’ starring Michael Caine and Britt Ekland. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt in seeing that film for the first time on the big screen in 1971. They had to rig up generators to light the house in Frank Street where Jack Carter’s brother lived because the electricity had been cut-off earlier that year.

The film was shot in the North East between 17th July and the 15th September 1970. By the time it was released, South Benwell had been flattened and work had started on a ‘New’ South Benwell. However this modern estate proved to be not as resilient as the old one. Within a matter of a generation or so, the majority of newly-built houses themselves had been demolished. Time may well indeed march on but not necessarily in the right direction.