(Illustrations: Zorro swords; The Pearl Cinema; Hopalong Cassidy and his sidekicks; The Dandy comic)

My dad, who was a skilled joiner by trade, made, not only all the furniture in our house, but also a curved shop counter for Joan and me, with shelves for tins and packets of food. We soon discovered that when we turned it on its side, it made a grand see-saw for us. I think mam must have seen us perform on it, too close to the edge of the top stair, and so it vanished from the house for some strange reason. Perhaps she didn’t want another stair accident again, and besides there was no room for it downstairs. Looking back, anything considered dangerous or grubby, often went missing!

For instance, I lost my favourite Teddy bear in the same mysterious way; it was a scruffy little thing, filled with sawdust, and I spent months looking for it, all to no avail. I reckon now it was probably considered ‘unhygienic’!

Then one Christmas, we were delighted to receive black plastic Zorro swords, which were a gift from an auntie. The plastic points of the swords held chalks, with which to write our Z’s on brick walls and doors outside, but once my mother realised how dangerous the plastic chalk grips were, without the chalk inside, we were unable to find them! They went the journey too!

Then my small ‘Robin Hood’ characters, which I had painstakingly collected from cereal packets, went missing, but this time for a completely different reason. They were actually abducted!

These models of Robin and his merry men, were made of moulded plastic of various colours, and I kept them in a special drawer at my nana’s house, and I played with them every single time I went there, and I made-up plays for them on her window sill.

I went to collect them one day, and they weren’t there in the drawer!

Later however, I discovered them at a cousin’s house, (nana’s grandson), and there they were, every single one, all set out neatly around the inside of his toy fort! 

When I confronted nana, she explained her ‘executive decision’ to me, saying to me apologetically, ‘You were too old to be playing with them, so I gave them to Brian.”

I was furious. They were mine, not his, and not my nana’s to give away.

Grrrrrrr!

And I’m still annoyed about this Brian, if you’re reading this!

(Well, not really, how could I be annoyed with you!)

One more missing item was a piece of jewellery, not a toy, which Joan and I bought at Woolworths in Jarrow, for mam, for Mothering Sunday. We had saved up our pocket money, and spent it on a very tasteful brooch, made of diamonds and emeralds, which spelt out the word: ‘Mother.”. Mam received it with such joy and enthusiasm, but she wasn’t quite so enraptured, later on. While wearing it on a bus, on her way to work, the conductor greeted her with a grin, saying, “Hello mother!” Strangely enough, you’ve guessed it, it too went missing! She seemed really ‘distressed’ about losing it.

Or was it all an act?

Children were forever making up their own games then, indoors and out, and Joan and I could be very creative.

We once made a beautiful crinoline skirt, with a hoola-hoop framework, using belts tied to my waist, and Joan covered the frame, with mam and dad’s pink shiny bedcover. Once I was fastened in, a long maroon scarf was placed on my head to represent hair. When I scrunched my eyes up tight, to my delight, it really did look like long hair.

Joan then went off to play elsewhere, but I stayed there in front of mam’s bedroom mirror, running back and forth like a princess through the woods, silken gown, and long hair floating, in the breeze. 

Life was such fun for us as we grew, and my sister and I were free spirits. We were allowed to go anywhere outside, as long as we were back in time for tea. We would walk for miles then, right across to East Howdon, down wagonways, and once we even ventured along the Lonnen, which was a very isolated path.

I remember the excitement of going through the Pedestrian tunnel, which ran right under the River Tyne, it was situated across the road from our house. Once inside it, my sister and I would hurry down a steep escalator and race to the point which marked out the border line between the two counties, Northumberland and Durham, to see who was the first to stand astride it, and claim possession of both counties at once. I loved the echoes our voices made down there. We would run on to the Jarrow side, yelling at the top of our voices, and then turn back and do it all over again.

Joan and I, would sometimes visit the local cinema, the ‘Pearl’, to watch films and cartoons on Saturdays. Some children called it ‘The Lop’, a fleapit! (Strangely enough the Norwegian and Danish word for flea is 'loppe'!) These shows were known as matinees, and I remember the children there all stamping their feet like fury if the projector ever broke down, especially in the middle of a good cowboy film, starring Hopalong Cassidy or Roy Rodgers! 

Some children even threw peanuts.

When the side doors were opened, to signify that the show was over, the screen would become red.

We had great adventures out of doors. 

We climbed a bombed-out building once, but never again; it had been a hotel, called ‘The Shipwrights’. I recall the thrill of us shuffling along quite high ledges, which jutted out from crumbling support walls. I got stuck once, and thought of turning round to face the wall instead of facing outwards! It’s a good job I didn’t! What were we thinking of?

We would often go fishing with nets by that former hotel, for tiny brown shrimps in a little stream, known to us as the Cundy, and we would drop our catch into jam jars full of water, sometimes the catch consisted of frog spawn. We were able to observe the amazing transformation of tadpoles growing legs on our very own kitchen window sill. it's strange though once the four legs grew, and the tail began to shrink we never did see them again. They must have disappeared with the fairies too!

We slid down a snowy pit heap on the opposite side of the Cundy, clinging to our sledges in winter, and sometimes we ended up in it, with bottoms soaked. 

I saw a pure white stoat there once, at that time of year!

We sometimes picked wildflowers, to take home; but never dandelions, or ‘pittleybeds’ as we called them, for we were told that if you picked them, you would wet the bed, and we certainly didn’t want to do that!

We often visited our friend Elizabeth, whose parents ran the pub on Tyne View, the Black Bull, and we were fascinated by empty racing pigeon baskets, which lay stacked high in the cobbled yard. In former times, coaches and horses were guided in to the stables there. Inisde the pub, we would tiptoe up the grand staircase examining trophy heads of black bulls (or were they buffaloes) on the walls; similar heads also hung in the large upstairs room. These stuffed heads were fascinating, but garish, with beady glass eyes!

Why did people ever think hanging severed heads of animals on walls was appealing?

I'm wondering now whether this pub was a meeting place for some fraternal, Order of Buffaloes? (RAOB?)

Another favourite activity was to climb up the back of billboards not far from our house, and leap off the  old air raid shelter beside them, and climb aboard several rusty engines which had been dumped on the field  there. This was our ‘adventure playground’. This was tough play, not soft play!  

Joan’s friend Lynne, one of her classmates, often joined us. I left them playing together one day on these engines, when I decided to try out an experiment I’d seen acted out in my comic.

Now children of all ages today are besieged by so many ‘influencers’ on Tik Tok, Snapchat and Instagram, and I'm sometimes  concerned what this might do to their self-esteem, their behaviour patterns, and their ability to fully give their attention to other tasks; but my ‘influencer’ then, was none other than Desperate Dan, the hero with the big stubbled chin, in the Dandy, my weekly comic.

Now read on, and see what trouble ‘influencers’ can get us into!

There was a narrow alley by our house which led to the shops, and it was in this alley, I attempted an impossible feat, which had only ever been successfully executed by Desperate Dan.

I was convinced that I could do what I’d seen him do, in my comic! By placing both of his hands on one side of one alley wall, and both of his feet on the opposite wall , facing downwards, he had climbed upwards simply by pushing against the walls, and he was able to keep on moving upwards because of his great strength.

Let me warn you now, before you try it for yourself, it can’t be done! Don’t ever attempt it, we mortals are not cut out for it! Cartoon characters can yes, but we cannot defy the laws of nature, namely gravity.

I got as far as placing my hands on one side of the alley, with one foot on the opposite wall, but my standing foot refused to leave the ground. No-one had explained gravity to me!

But I reasoned that if I pushed hard enough, I could lift that standing leg up quickly and make it happen, so I chanced it.

Now where I had intended to go in that upward trajectory, I’ll never know, I didn’t get the chance to find out, as I came crashing down heavily onto my other knee. I crumpled up in agony, and my mother, Joan and Lynne all came running, when they heard my loud screams. They told me afterwards that part of my knee bone could be seen through my skin.

No wonder I have a tendency now to faint at the sight of my own blood!

I was carried inside, pale and limp to have my injury seen to. At least my mother didn’t slap me this time to bring me round, she was too terrified as she looked at my pale face. When I think about what I put her through!

When the month of November drew near, local lads guarded our bonfire (our ‘bonner’) in case it got raided. The raids could come from anywhere really, but mainly  the East Howdoners! (Come to think of it, many of our cousins lived in East Howdon!)

But boy did we enjoy those bonfire nights, while our parents watched on. Penny for the Guy’ was a common cry in those days, just before November 5th, as children begged for coins in order to buy their fireworks. The the poor ‘Guy’ looking so forlorn, would be placed onto the top of the large bonfire, just before it was lit. Potatoes would be thrown onto hot ash in order to cook them.  I still remember the terror of a Jumping Jack cracking and exploding at our heels; the hypnotic sight of a Catherine Wheel nailed to a post whizzing around, and sometimes getting stuck, and rockets shooting up into the night sky with a whoosh or a whistle. 

What a contrast the next morning, when we hurried to the same spot to see ashes and charred wood lying there, smouldering together.

These were the days of free milk at school playtimes; milk turned to white ice in winter, and it often curdled on a hot summer’s day!

These were carefree days when we had such freedom, and played imaginative, sometimes hair-raising games for hours on end.

And these were the days of careful spending, and of the family budget box, where wages would be ceremoniously placed into dockets, so that every bill could be paid.

I still feel a warm wave of nostalgia, don’t you, looking back on those blissful days? Life then was uncomplicated, secure, predictable even, and lived at such a leisurely pace.

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

A. E. Housman (1859-1936)