Cultureshock

You need Adobe Flash installed to watch this movie.
Get Adobe Flash

Video transcript

At 5 o'clock on Sunday morning my Dad put my sister and me on the bus to London. Called to the hospital to see my Mum, the two of us were left to make the perilous voyage to the play-off final together.

Excitement and nerves rose combined as countryside whizzed by and we replaced Durham for Wembley.

As we travelled further and further from our home town, the familial coach- load of fans, their chanting and the smell of pies took me back to our first football match the previous season, struggling to shoot penalties in the sand at Roker beach before walking up to the Park to loose 2 - 0 to Leeds.

(Later my Mum would reign victorious as Middlesborough beat us at home in our new stadium, where we had been forced to start the season discarded from the Premiership).

Not so far up the coast and my family and I enjoy a walk along the beach at Marsden Rock, as yet still free from notions of cancer.

Still further North and the five of us cycle to the Winding for a cup of tea or can of iron brew. Although the caravan was small and damp we enjoyed years there, going up any weekend or school holiday we could. Every waking moment was spent on the beach, or as close to it as possible, walking, reading, swimming, playing.

Now, ten years later, we walk along the beach at Blackhall Rocks, me still wrapped up in my Sunderland scarf.

There are ups and downs in any season.

There are only four of us.

There are really five.