Cultureshock

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Video transcript

I've heard people being asked about the soundtrack of their life. I don't have one of those but I have a road of my life, the A186. It has been there in some shape or form for centuries. There was probably a track alongside Hadrian's Wall as it ran from East to West or West to East if you will. It was a turnpike and one of the toll gates stood near where The Venerable Bede Church is now. Somewhere around this point the 'West Road' changes  to 'Westgate Road'  or vice versa, not many people see the difference. 

Where the A186 does an odd split just before the Big Lamp stands Westgate Road Baptist Church. My parents and my sisters were married here, not all at the same time. From about age three I attended Sunday school and church services here but left in 1970 with the excuse of having to study for a degree with the Open University. Just past the church was the Balmoral pub where I had my first drink of beer, legally, believe it or not, at age 18.       I used to walk part of A186's length from Brighton Grove up to Rutherford Grammar where I was sentenced to several year of wasting teachers' time. I would meet up with friends and we would shamble up the road some of us smoking Woodbines (shock horror!). I remember seeing a girl rushing out of the Fire Station at the corner of Dunholme Road down towards the bus stop near the Brighton Cinema. Blue uniform of Pendower Commercial School for Girls, satchel, hand on beret a mile of white slip hanging down under her school skirt, she was a very fast runner. Years later I met her whilst working in Fenham Library and even more years later we agreed to get married during a walk home from the Mill Inn, that's us ever the romantics...   We went to live on Grainger Park,a part of Elswick, South of the A186 in its Westgate Road guise and our house was just behind the Fire Station, Bardgetts the undertakers and the Westfield Social Club. Two of those were very noisy but we had no noise problems with the undertakers.

I became a member of the Westfield Club and spent many happy hours over pints of Federation Special playing darts badly and talking rubbish brilliantly. Most of our family's activities involved travelling on the A186 in one direction or the other. I walked to work along it when I was based in the Central Library or at Fenham my wife went shopping there, to Jimmy Quins, the butcher's, the bread shop,  Walkers the paper shop. My three daughters, all three born in the General Hospital crossed it on the way to school. The Plaza Cinema came and went and eventually turned into a pub but was beaten into submission by the locals and closed down. The Milvain Club became a Hindu Temple, Rutherford Grammar School became Westgate Community College but closed in 2008 when Excelsior Academy opened.

Further west over what was, until the boundary changes of 1974, the highest point in Newcastle at the reservoir, the road passes the 'Crem', scene of the last rite of passage for many friends and family members.

Sorry to end on a low note but even if it's your own life story you can't beat geography.