Symptoms

GGG - yep, the Patton's house was a bit further up as you say. The Patton's had a fruit and veg shop opposite. They had a son and daughter; Jeremy, the son was a friend of mine and the daughter was a little older and was very, very attractive (but I can't remember her name). She might have gone to the Royal Grammar in the Toon. Obviously, I lost contact with Jeremy when my folks moved from Bedders ... I wonder where he is now? Foggan's Yard was derelict but still in decent condition in the mid 60s ... we had a 'camp' in the loft spaces and it was via the yard that we gained access to Jimmy Millne's orchard; I vividly recall masses and masses of rose bay willow herb growing in the yard. Dowsen's Buildings, at the top of Hartford Road (next to the old Sally Army buildings) was another similar 'derelict' yard to Foggan's; we had a camp here as well, this time in the cellar area. I remember, the last of the residents just up and left (maybe they croked?) and after the house was cleared and barred shut there was a ton of stuff left. We helped ourselves to WW2 gas masks, old ration books, tin helmets, a stirrup pump (later turned into a banger-gun). Maybe the old guy had been a warden during that last bun-fight with Fritz?

Maggs - you're right about Monday washday ... I also remember there being some Bye-laws preventing hanging laundry out on a Sunday. With the advent of universal hire-purchase in the 1950s my parents bought an English Electric washing machine ... a big, square creamy green thing with a circular lift-off lid on top and an electric mangle above. The tub had a big aluminium vertical agitator inside. My Dad wore shirts with detachable collars so the collars were washed separately in the tub with starch and Dolly Blue; it was always my job as a nipper to remove the collarbones* before the wash and to replace them after ironing. *collarbones for our younger viewers were 1/4" wide by about maybe 2" long strips of white plastic which slipped into small pockets at each end of the shirt collar, thus maintaining the collar shape, i.e. no curling. Years later these old collarbones were often use as 'emergency' guitar plectrums when the real one broke or couldn't be found. Below is a picture of the beast (I found the snap on the web):

Our method of knocky door ginger was to fasten a length of black sewing thread to the door knocker then reel it out to where we hid, usually across the road in some garden opposite. A couple of light pulls of the thread was enough to activate the knocker, the victim would open the door and we'd let the thread go slack. When the victim closed the door we would immediately strike again causing much confusion to the victim; our best score was four repeats before we were clocked and the chase began. What a laugh.

We'll have to burn more coal in the powerstations to keep up with Micky's A/C lecky consumption.

Reports have come in that he's been away for a themed weekend:

This 'coal-shovelling racket' was similar to the 'potato-picking racket'. I remember a lad* at Westridge who had the 'concession' at Ridge Farm - come the picking season he would stand in the cloakroom at school and take names of lads who wanted work. He'd ride on the tractor in front of the pickers and was paid 10 bob, the pickers were on half that. Oh, and you had to bung him a shilling. *I'm not going to name him as I know his older brother is on the Forum.

Thanks for that photo Foxy ... my pal's front door was the one immediately behind that petrol pump. I can't remember the lad's name. I'm sure it was a BP garage in the 60s.

I say 'we should burn more coal.' That's what China & India are doing to power their economies.

I've just taken a stroll down Front Street on Google Streetview to check-up the Lion Garage. In an earlier (1968) incarnation of the place (but was it called Lion back then and wasn't it BP??) my Dad bought me my first car - a Ford Popular 100E, it cost him £35; it was a sort of very light sage greeny-yellow in colour. That didn't last very long as I re-painted it matt-black all over and with a single 12" blue stripe from front bumper, over the roof and down the boot to the back bumper. My Dad taught me to drive in this car - it had a three-speed gearbox. The first lesson he took me along Hartford Road and back with subsequent sessions up at the Acklington Camp. I also had a pal who lived in one of the old cottages which were at the back of the forecourt.

Eggs ... wise old Sym always attempts to avoid those bear traps. There was a craze at school in the mid Sixties for talking in code - it was a sort of Pig Latin or Turkish Irish; it was based on letter addition where the first letter of a word in a sentence was added to the end of the previous word. So, "What wise words did old wise Symptoms say today" becomes "Whatw isew ordsd ido ldw iseS ymptomss ayt oday". Whilst I never mastered this code I remember some lads being able to speak it fluently, almost like a second language. There was a suggestion at the time that it was invented in the WW2 prisoner of war camps to prevent Fritz from earwigging-in. I can't remember what we called this code language.

Reports in the papers about UK Coal going into administration and the effects that'll have on their miners' pensions got me wondering about the scale of this problem in Northumberland. I don't know if UK Coal operated in N/land and if there are any/many miners affected. I think that the old guys who worked for the NCB (or whatever they might have called it pre-privatisation) are OK but post-privatisation guys will maybe forfeit 10% of their pension value. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jul/09/uk-coal-enters-administration-pension-scheme

Yet!!! Give those Yankees time to snoop on all the dirt of our political masters who'll then be blackmailed, resulting in ye olde Blighty being ceded to the US of A and becoming a new, poor Hillbilly State. The KeithL will then be able to declare his Right to Bear Bows.

Oh, Mal ... just remember the trouble Mrs Speaker (Sally Bercow) got into by posing a similar sort of question. I don't for one minute believe that our glorious leader would stray ...

Friar Tuck was the fat monk in the brown habit. That boss Catholic Priest I mentioned earlier had the same type of habit as Tuck. Maybe some 'left-footer' (apologies for using this term but we're operating in 60s mode with our memories ... anyway, is it considered to be inappopriate today?) here might be able to shed some light on what order the boss Priest & Tuck belonged to. KeithL's Right to Bear Bows could be described as his Second Amendment Right.

Back then there always was a ton of stuff to keep us busy/active/interested all the time; I'm not sure that youngsters these days have as many healthy pastime choices as we did. We've all posted here previously of the pastimes we got involved with as kids and hinted at, in addition to the activities we did ourselves, the organised stuff that was available. Westridge had a youth club (next to the caretaker's house and the building seems to still exist ... Google Maps) and was open every evening. To be a member you had to do an activity class and obviously footy was the most popular with the class coached by Danny Douglas and on three nights per week; there was metalwork (taken by Taffy Williams) and woodwork in the school workshops. I remember canoe making in woodwork and one year a Mirror Dingy was built; a land-yacht and go-karts were built in metalwork. Once the classes were finished we'd go the the club building for drinks (soft), crisps, chocky, snouts around the back, and the girls ... lots of girls. That was three nights a week for me. I was in the Scouts (1st Bedlington) based at the Scout Hall on Ridge Terrace (just opposite the Primary School I attended as a nipper) and this was a couple of nights a week. Willy Hall was the Scout Master and I think he built the Scout Hall before WW2 – it was a great facility with a double-fronted building at the front serving as offices, shop, coffee bar; an assembly hall at the rear with a stage, parallel bars on the walls, basketball hoops, gymnastic hoops and other ropes hanging from the ceiling, vaulting horse, etc; a courtyard at the back surrounded with outbuilding/workshops. We'd chop sticks to sell around the doors to folk for fire lighting and to raise funds, we learnt how to fight with wooden staffs and get the badge, sing songs in the hall, British Bulldog and Murder Ball in the hall with all the gym equipment out. Weekends we'd camp the 1st Bedlington's own Humford Hollow campsite ... chopping/sawing wood for fires, making bread with no yeast, collecting berries, setting snares for bunnies, climbing trees, building aerial walkways with ropes through the tops of the trees. I recall a whole gang of us had been volunteered by Willy to dig out this enormous tree stump and its roots as part of a site clearing project but the thing was just too big and we'd been at it for a couple of days, so Willy Hall got a mate of his from either the pit or Costains open-cast to bring some explosives to shift the thing. We all stood around and watched as this guy placed his charges and blasted it out the ground – we got covered in falling dirt and wood, it's amazing nobody was killed! Once a year we'd go to the Scout/Guide camp at the back of Gosforth Park for a long weekend jamboree. Obviously, Saturday up to the Toon for the footy. When not out the house, every spare minute was taken up doing something and we all had hobbies at home. I loved electro-magnetism so was always making stuff like morse-buzzers, intercom systems to my mate who live next door, shock apparatus. My Dad used to get half-used reels of thin cotton-insulated copper wire from a pal for my experiments and there was always the lenghts of cap wire to be found mixed in the coal. I also spent what spare time I had left with my Meccano set. The only thing that cost any money was going to the match at St James. Maybe parents today are sh*t scared to let their ankle-biters out unsupervised for fear of them being lifted by kiddy fidlers but there were just as many monsters back then preying on youngsters (statistical fact!!!). It's just that the national news of missing/murdered kids wasn't reported fully before the Moors Murders so there was a view that it was safe for kids to be out; now the oppositeis true. The other factor is that there aren't the same number of organised places for kids to go to these days and anyway, they now seemed glued to games consoles.

Eggs - I can remember that fighting game but not it's name. Penkers – big games of marbles (glassers) played at the back of Westridge School on that lawned area which soon turned to hard impacted earth .... the area is still visible on Google Earth but now appears to have a couple of curved hedges. The beaten earth was good to play on as the muggies 'ran true' and the 'cup' was easily dug/shaped with our trusty pocket knives. Apparently, the steel penkers were from the conveyor-belt bearings down the pit ... for our younger viewers penkers were steel ball-bearings about 1†(25mm) dia. .... they must have been salvaged by pitmen for their sons. Nicking apples – this must have had a local name but I can't recall what it was (elsewhere in the country it was known as scrumping but we didn't call it that). We were 'top-end' lads so our favourite orchards to go on raiding parties to were Jimmy Millne's (behind his house on Front Street) and the Priest's one behind the Rectory (in Catholic Row). Jimmy had a large Alsatian dog which used to chase us around the orchard and we often had to leap over the stone wall to escape its nashers – this orchard only had apples. The boss Priest was a guy in a brown habit (he may have been a monk of some sort) and his orchard had apples, plums, pears and gooseberries. My Dad was friendly with this Priest and would often have a drink with him, either in the Red Lion or a snifter of Drambuie in the Rectory. I've been onto Google Street View/Maps but can't locate the orchard in Catholic Row but reckon it's where that new church is. Also the Priest's front door is blocked-up and pebble-dashed.

KeithL wrote: "... unfortunately the neighbour caught me with my pants down...literally ..." and "... but there is a limitation to what you can do with your pants around your ankles with the sun in your eyes and I nearly did my back in ...". So now we know what you're up to when in the garden with your telescope ... and it 'ain't astronomy! (For new visitors here KeithL has posted in the past about his stargazing hobby).

Pyracantha (sometimes known as Firethorn). Wrong shaped leaves for hawthorn.

Remember the shuttering boards used to keep the coal in place in the coal hoose? As the hoose was filled the shuttering would be added to act as a sort of dam, as the coal was removed for the fire the stockpile would get lower so the top board would be removed. The removal process would be repeated until the hoose was nearly empty. The shuttering was held in place by the door frame. Did these shuttering boards have a local name?

Spot on Keith ... it was "Moont-the-Cuddy". Another game was tobogganing down pitheaps on a piece of Ballatta belting ... for our younger viewers Ballatta was the rubberised belting from pit conveyor belts. There were often dozens of yards of the stuff mixed/buried in the spoil on the pitheaps; a section about 2'6" long would be cut with our trusty pocket knives (see earlier post). We'd climb to the top of the heap, sit on the Ballatta and launch ourselves down the bumpy slope, thus ensuring a bruised ar*e. We sometimes played at Doctor Pit but mainly at Costain's opencast site - just over the fence from 20 acres. It's amazing that this fence was just a 4 foot high chestnut pailing job and so easy to get over!!! These modern skeleton bobsleigh bods have it so, so easy.

These sons of Pádraig Pearse, Michael Collins, Roger Casement, are keeping the distrust of the English alive and well ... and with good reason! I reckon being described as "that geordie fecker" is really just a term of endearment ... just as Mrs Symptoms sometimes calls me a "working-class Geordie git".

Football ... endless games of football on 20 acres. These matches would last for hours and hours with lads arriving to join in and with others leaving for some 'nosebag' at home; they would return after being fed. There'd often be dozens per side. Oh, and the ball was a leather caser not one of those namby-pamby lightweight plakka jobs favoured by soft southerners. I remember a game (but not its name) where a couple of lads would lean against a wall, more lads would join them until there was a line of them bent-double and holding onto the lad in front. Others would repeat this move but on top of the first group; more would join but on top of the second stack, and so on. The aim was to produce a high stacked snake of lads without the pile collapsing. Obviously, 'split-the-kipper'. Probably the most popular game after footy. We all had knives back then, the most common type was a cheap pressed folding knife with a three or four inch blade and a handle covered in a Fablon type material used to ape Tortoiseshell.

Why would you want to hold this Sword of Damocles over the guy's head? Be satisfied that you know his secret ... blab, and you'll be just like him - a bully. Why would you, our very own dear Wonk, want to terrify another person?

Yes ... always a double s. Maggs - teach the Is to behave properly.

Maggs - is that Beamish?