Out & About in the 40's

"Out and About in the 40's" by Michael Lawrenson

Life in the forties could sometimes be bleak and hard with shortages, rationing and a growing awareness that the end of the war wasn't going to bring in an immediate Utopia. In some parts of South Shields living standards were very poor although we in our family were lucky to be living on the Sutton Estate with its modern and well maintained houses. But even our lifestyle was light years away from what most of us know today.
I think back to our home in Wakefield Avenue and especially the kitchen, or scullery as we called it, which was full of the latest labour saving devices of the 1940s. There was a sink with a wooden draining board, a gas cooker and, next to it, a large boiler for boiling clothes on Monday washday and hanging from the ceiling was a rack for drying off clothes. We owned a wringer, a wash tub, a copper poss-stick, an electric iron, an ironing board and a collection of pots and pans. That was about it. Totally absent were fan-assisted oven, microwave oven, automatic washer, tumble dryer, electric kettle, food processor, fridge, freezer, electric mixer, ice cream maker, toaster, deep fat fryer, slow cooker and dishwasher all of which would have seemed like sheer fantasy in the forties.

Yet my parents and most other parents not only coped but provided a decent and memorable upbringing for their families and one often wonders how they did it. Every family had its own way of making life that bit brighter. In our home we had jellies made from gelatine stirred into lemonade with added sugar, countless dishes made from potatoes and there were my mother's long forgotten recipes where she made sweets from a variety of ingredients. Her cinder toffee was in a class of its own and I reckon that had any of us had crown fillings they would have been tweaked out in a jiffy. Woollen garments were recycled and make do and mend ruled the day. And who can forget proggy mats? My grandmother kept a steady production line going and she just wouldn't have believed how much kits to make these traditional furnishing items would cost in sixty years' time.
But it wasn't all scrimp and save: we did get out and about to enjoy ourselves. Family outings were a regular feature of life in those days. Today a family outing usually means climbing into the car, motoring for two hours or more before turning round and coming back home on the other side of the dual-carriageway. Our horizons were nearer and family outings meant Marsden Bay and Mum organised these with military precision. There were sandwiches to be made, drinks to be procured, bathing costumes and towels were packed into as small a space as possible as we prepared for the expedition. There was no question of slinging it all into a car boot. It all had to go on the SSCT bus from Sutton Estate to Marsden or, if the load was light, we walked clad in the usual holiday outfits of the 1940s. Oldest clothing for my mother and my sister and me whilst Dad wore the traditional adult male Geordie 'I'm on holiday' outfit of flannels and jacket with shirt worn outside the collar. But he never sported the full regalia as he refused to wear a flat cap or plimsolls. In fact Dad never wore a cap and would have been astounded to know that his son and heir wears one regularly these days.

Church picnic - circa 1948/49

Marsden was different. There were few buildings around in those days and if it wasn't quite the country it certainly wasn't like the rest of the town. Leading down from where the Home Guard camp had been there was the steep road leading down under the white railway bridge. The lamp posts I seem to remember were blue with the 'Always Ready' coat of arms painted on them and there was a general feeling of fresh air and excitement around with the smell of the sea and the sound of the seagulls as they circled round the cliffs. There was always great anticipation as we got to the steps at Velvet Beds although I can't recall anyone actually running down them. They were a curious repeated mixture of steps and a steep slope all lightly dusted with slippery sand and anyone going full pelt would have come to sudden grief at the beach steps at the bottom or have had to keep going until he or she reached Denmark.

Camel's Island or Velvet Beds - 2005

Naturally a dip in the water was a first priority. Mum would change for a swim and although neither my sister and nor I could swim in those days we gamely followed her into the water. Dad remained on dry land and no one ever persuaded him to get into shorts or bathing trunks. But he did take part and would eventually be persuaded into taking off his shoes and socks and indulge in a little plodging. It was all good fun for about a minute or so then the awful truth would dawn, as it had on previous outings. The North Sea was cold which probably explains why today's hordes flocking to the Costa del Sol or Florida don't occasionally have a go at Marsden Bay.

Family games - circa 1948/49

Beach games were part and parcel of the ritual, but only if we were part of a larger group. Eating tended to be more on our minds and we would settle for the picnic and realise once again how apt was the name 'sandwiches'. It was an acquired taste: spam sandwiches with a delicate sprinkling of sand which appeared no matter how careful you were. The same could be said of the drinks which were usually glasses of lemonade with a sediment of sand in the bottom. After picnic activities were more leisurely, perhaps building a sand castle or perhaps leaving my father in charge of the picnic site as the three of us went off to explore Camel's Island for the umpteenth time.

My Sister and me on Marsden Beach - 1946

All too soon it would be time to go. The outing had been good fun but, like all outings reality was never quite as good as the preparation and anticipation. Mum was the driving force behind those expeditions and there was always a slight touch of 'We have ways of making you enjoy yourselves' about it all. Then there was the slow climb back up those peculiar steps to the road above, a journey which took so much longer on the way home than on the way in.
Our big Marsden outings however were organised by St Mary's church and we had our annual Whit Monday picnic at Marsden. This was an altogether different affair with Mum relegated to being a mere foot-soldier as the menfolk from the church council went down early to hire and erect three or four tents for the throng which arrived later.
I can't for the life of me remember much of what we did but as the outing was wryly referred to as the Wet Monday picnic that may give a clue. Put it another way: Carnival in Costa Rica it wasn't. Some of the hardier souls braved the sea but the water was no warmer than it was on family picnics and we were soon huddled back in our tented laager wondering what to do next. Amongst the younger members there would be games and races with the middle aged looking benignly on and the elderly sitting still trying to keep warm and probably wondering what the hell they were doing there and when they were going to be taken back home.
Of course holidays as we know them today were out of the question. I'm not sure if Butlins Holidays had been invented at that time but they never featured in our family life. Holidays for us, and for most of the friends and relations I knew, meant decamping for a week and going off to live with other friends or relations. Our first holidays were spent with my cousin who lived in Slaley and the journey, like all our trips, began courtesy of SSCT as we caught the trolley bus down Prince Edward Road to the town centre. Those were odd vehicles, silent and with an acceleration which would make NASA thoughtful. In a trolley bus you boarded and then sat down quickly or grabbed hold of one poles which stretched from floor to ceiling and hung on grimly waiting for the conductor to give two quick pings on the bell to signal the monster to lurch forward. Try that carrying a suitcase! But they were quiet, efficient and environmentally friendly so, naturally enough, in a few years they were all gone.
Then a motorbus to either Newcastle or Gateshead, I can't remember which, and somehow or other we eventually ended up weary and tired at Shotley Bridge waiting, with our cases, for the final slow local bus to Slaley. It was a trip which took from just after breakfast until tea time, longer than it takes the average holidaymaker these days to fly from Newcastle to Spain.
The other early holiday destination was Normanby near Middlesbrough where a friend of my mother's family lived. I really do find it hard to believe we actually went on holiday to Middlesbrough but we did - and we enjoyed it. It caused some confusion early one summer's day in 1944 when, waiting with our luggage at the usual bus stop on Prince Edward Road, my mother answering some friendly questions said we were off to Normanby. Eyebrows were raised before she quickly made it clear that that she hadn't said 'Normandy'. The following year we happened to be in Normanby for VJ Night and spent the better part of the day painting jam jars to put on the widow sills with candles as our contribution to the festivities. Strangely enough I can't remember much about VE Night although I can remember the street party we held around that time. We had a long table stretching down the centre of Wakefield Avenue and later on we had games and races and I got sixpence from my uncle for managing not to come in last (although I wasn't all that far off).

Dad's car

After the war we began to spread our wings, just a little. Once freed from his Civil Defence duties Dad returned to his pre-war job as a commercial traveller and very soon bought a second hand car for his work. It was either the first or second car in Wakefield Avenue after the war and it created quite a stir in the street. A fairly immediate neighbour summed up her reaction by sniffing and announcing loudly 'Aye, we're better off than better folks' and never speaking to us again but that was unusual and GGF 362 became the centre of attraction for some time. But having a car meant that we could go further away on our annual holidays, far off places like Blanchland and Richmond and it meant too that my father could be with us.

Strolling through the woods with my Sister at Blanchland - 1947

Holidays, like outings, were organised by Mum and she tackled them with a great enthusiasm, perhaps not always fully shared by the rest of the family, with long walks across the moors near Blanchland and Edmonbyers and gruelling weekend bramble picking expeditions in the autumn. But as the sole driver Dad now had the upper hand and he showed this from time to time. Asked to pick a good roadside picnic spot he had an unerring knack of picking the only council road dump for miles.
Some holidays are hard to forget. One Blanchland B&B holiday was rather spoilt by the good lady of the house who was arguably the worst cook in Christendom. Her meals had to be seen to be believed and on one occasion she produced custard so ghastly, so solid and so full of lumps we pronounced it inedible and my mother had to take her to one side and demonstrate how to make custard which could be eaten rather than sculpted. Her plaintive cry to this and to any criticism of her culinary skills was 'It's the pans, y'knaa!' a phrase which was adopted for years by our family as a cop out excuse for anything and everything which turned pear shaped.
But gradually family holidays petered out. My sister and I went our own ways to Guide, Scout or church youth camps and eventually I was called up for National Service and my sister was away doing her nursing training. After my army days I was a student down in Leeds and that was the end of a family tradition going back to the early 40s. But not quite the final end. For some reason or other we decided to have a family holiday in 1963 or 1964 and we arranged a week's B&B on the Isle of Skye knowing it could well be our last holiday as a family.
A Hollywood version of this event would have had the whole family wallowing in a nostalgic golden glow for the week as they brought their family vacations to a final and glorious end with barbeques, picnics, cries of 'Love ya Pops' and 'Love ya Sis' and with a final drive home along Route 66 to the music of 'America the Beautiful'. Ours was the hard-nosed Geordie version. It rained, I wasn't feeling at all well and by the end of the second day I was almost climbing the walls of my room in agony. I was whisked off to Broadford Hospital where they took out my appendix and a few days later a somewhat subdued family limped home in two easy stages. It was the end of an era for us. Still, it was good to know that there is a little bit of Skye that is forever Shields.
Whenever I'm back in Shields I always try to have a quick look at Marsden. It seems smaller than I remember (I try not to look at the sadly diminished Marsden Rock as that's just too painful) and it is certainly quieter. It's a while since I was there on a picnic but not quite as far back as the 40s or 50s. In the 1970s on one of our visits to Shields we went there for a second-generation family picnic and I was determined to uphold the family tradition started by my mother nearly thirty years earlier and I went for a swim. At least that was the intention. I doubt if I lasted ten seconds before realising the North Sea was just as cold as ever and my two young daughters watched bemused as Dad came hurtling out of the water at the rate of knots, never to return. We are now into the next generation but there's absolutely no chance whatsoever of Grandad demonstrating how it should be done. Let them find out for themselves.

Copyright Michael Lawrenson - 2005