Cultureshock

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Video transcript

The sight of the brass fender and fire irons sent me back through sixty years when our summer holidays were spent visiting my Durham Nana and Granda at West Herrington village. The cluster of cottages, tiny church and rambling farm buildings nestling beneath Herrington hill were known locally as the ‘stackyard’. We arrived there every summer, transported from Lancashire to Sunderland station by a fire eating, smoke belching dragon who tooted and screamed announcing our important arrival. We were met by our Durham Nana, small and rounded, wearing a long brown coat. She seemed to be to be just as fearsome as the dragon who carried us there.

We went on the bus called ‘Shop at Binns’ to my mother’s childhood home. The tiny cottage garden was bright with asters and marigolds tended by our Granda. A glass vase of sweet peas and gypsophila always stood beside the hallowed black telephone on the hall table. My Nana would cook us kippers, balanced on two pokers over the fire on the black kitchen range. We would sit on each end of the fender watching as the kippers sizzled and curled, our noses enjoying the glorious aroma.

My mother’s family all lived at the stackyard where aunts and uncles, cousins all enfolded us in a sense of kinship and belonging. I slept in the back bedroom in a huge feather bed climbing out and looking out of the window at night, and once saw lightening strike Penshaw monument. Our ancestors looked down on us from the mantelpiece.

We had wonderful outings to Marsden or Roker beach preceded by much tooing and frowing from one house to another by all of us cousins eager for our adventure. We were chased out of the way and told to wait at the corner end while the pies, sandwiches, towels and homemade swimming costumes were packed in baskets and bags. The journey to Roker over, we would almost die of excitement when we splashed and screamed, fought and played in the icy sea. Whilst our mothers and Nana sat knitting on deck chairs exchanging a year of news. I would beg tuppence to visit the monkey tent to feed the exotic little creature with peapods snatched by a much too human hand. We dined like kings and queens on our sandy pie and sandwiches and a long awaited ice cream cone.

The fairground at Seaburn was too expensive but as the sun went down and the tide retreated, we happily climbed the cat and dog steps to catch the tram to Sunderland and the bus to the stackyard. Five cousins trailed home carrying bats and balls, spades and pails, shells and seaweed. Sand irritated out rock stubbed toes, shoulders burned with too much sun but we were, for our holiday, the richest children in the world.