Cultureshock

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Video transcript

During the 1950s, whilst still at school, I looked forward to the summer holidays when with my mam and two brothers we would go over the water, as we called it, it meant crossing the Wearmouth bridge and into town. Then we would go into the big shops - Joplings, Blacketts, Kennedys and the Sunderland Co-op. From there we went to the open market held on a bomb site in Union Street. And on our way home we went into Bedford Street to the tattie engine, which sold little bags of hot potatoes with tiny bags of salt, which we ate as we walked home. I did not know then but one day I would marry Jim, the grandson of the hot tattie man. I never met the grandad as part of the family, he died suddenly in 1951. He had worked for 56 years in Bedford Street. My father-in-law kept it going until 1954 when he had to give it up because of the increase in the volume of traffic and it was classed as too dangerous to the public.