North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Jean

I could feel me eyes like straying.  Ye know I would be looking at somebody and thinking, ‘god if they look back, they’ll be thinking’

Rod:     I used to go to school

Andrea:  A lot of people do that.  If they know the particular area where their birth family’s from they will

Rod:     Look around and say

Angie:   I don’t know if you could help yourself.  It would be

Jean:     I went down to where – cause Tyne Lane was on what was known as the Denes          Estate and I went down there.  I mean there is nothing of it, there’s nothing at all.  It’s like the Shakespeare Street in South Shields, it’s just a gable end

Rod:     I don’t know Shakespeare Street at all in South Shields

Jean:     Like I say it’s more at Westoe and I went down.  I had to go down even though I knew there was nothing there

Rod:     It’s your roots dragging you back

Jean:     Yeah

Rod:     What it was, was you come up from Tyne Dock, from the Dock itself, used to go up the road, up the hill and ye turn left, there was a shrubbery on the corner, and you turn right and you went in Tyne Lane and it was terraced.  These joined terraces, four houses joined in to a block but they were all joined by these arches and that was it.  You had two houses upstairs and two – they were all flats.  Flats upstairs and flats downstairs and that was it.  We lived downstairs on the left hand side, number twenty two.  That was it.

Jean:     yeah but I had to go down and have a look because I thought, it’s just off the bus, just across the road from

Angie:   I would have done as well.

Jean:     And I did work at the Dene Hospital for a while as well so that was just

Rod:     It’s probably the old road.  Were the old road paths still there or completely flattened it?

Jean:     There are still roads there and like from I don’t know – there used to

Norman: the one from King Street, over the top cause it’s still got the old cobbles down

Jean:     Yes, all that’s

Norman: round near the Town Hall

Jean:     A lot of the road, we, like erm, Westoe there’s a big change round, but like the road, the roads, erm and that are the same

Rod:     A school called St Marys, why because I was protestant I don’t know.  Erm remember used to come by Tyne Dock wall for the bus there and I don’t know where St Mary’s was – not a long bus ride but it was in the Tyne Dock area, used to have to travel out to it.

Jean:     Got a St Marys up by like Simonside

Rod:     St Mary’s junior school or something it was.  It was an old building, old Victorian building but I can’t remember a lot of that

Jean:     There was a, I mean there used to be a school near, like where, near Tyne Lane was as well but can’t think what they called it been down for a

Rod:     just little snippets.  The two lads – one was Warren Jackson and other was Alan Ridley.  Warren lived upstairs round the corner from us when we were living at the bottom street.  They are the only names I can remember we were very good friends.  I know we used to play, like cigarette packets  we used to collect them, flatten them and flick them, when it was raining, to play this game where you hoy them on top of each other and  ….      cigarette packets.

Angie:   simple pleasures

Jean:     Well they were weren’t they?  Now it’s like

Rod:     Well there wasn’t any money was there?  Lets face it.

Jean:     Things that don’t go in the computer  or Play Station II and that now.  No it’s erm, it is, it’s a real essential.  I feel brilliant, I feel like

Rod:     I’m glad.   You’ll feel better

Jean:     I feel as if I’ve had a couple of Barcardis and coke. It’s a lovely feeling yeah.  And I just don’t feel like a stranger.

Rod:     No I don’t!

Angie:   He is very relaxed.  I know what Rod’s like when he’s not comfortable

Rod:     comfortable

Jean:     I don’t feel like a stranger at all

Angie:               very comfortable

Rod:     cos we’ve got so much in common.

Jean:     Yeah, maybes

Rod:     We’ve never shut up and you’ve just had to listen

Jean:     Well Norman’s used to that with me

[laugh]

Norman: no, it’s alright

Jean:     If I’m nervous I tend to rattle on

Rod:     Ye feel if nobody’s talking somebody’s got to say something so you get on with it and do it

Jean:     Cause I’ve been worried sick haven’t I?

Rod:     It’s been a good night all round because it’s a good conclusion

Andrea: Ooh it’s , excellent brilliant

Rod:     Even if there had of been problems within the family, I’d have still come and saw you and laid it on the line.

Jean:     which I would respect

Rod:     but I can’t foresee any problems apart from them that don’t need to know but the immediate family, I’m telling you about George and that, if you felt a will to meet them or something like that I’d certainly put if forward for ye

Jean:     I would like to, if you think that there would be accepted

Andie:  With Win especially

Rod:     I would think so.  You’ll meet our Winnie, I don’t think there’s any problems there.  Er, I’m almost 100% sure she doesn’t know.  Our George certainly doesn’t know.

Jean:     No, no cos he’s like

Angie:   George being younger there wouldn’t be any reason for him to know

Jean:     That’s it, exactly.

Rod:     That’s the only two probably its; as I say our Colin, I never see him from year to the next, no problem there.  Is there anymore??   [laugh]

Angie:   I should hope not!

Jean:     I appreciate you letting me go to Grace er

Rod:     No, it’s your right as well.  I mean, yeah it’s Preston.  We’ll.  Go home, have a word tonight, sort it our, give us a ring and we’ll make a mutual time and we’ll come and meet you and we’ll take you to Preston and we’ll have a look through together, something like that

Jean:     Yeal that’ll be good

Rod:     I think it’ll be nostalgic for me as well, so might be problems there.

Angie:   Oo are you going to become emotional at this time of life?

Rod      No!

Angie:   You’ve never been emotional in your life!

Jean:     Oh, what’s come over him?  Very, very rare

Rod:     I am emotional but hold very well

Angie:   God!

Rod:     Yes I am!!

Jean:     Oh I don’t.  I’m really surprised at, I do, I think it’s because

Rod:     go on slag me off

Angie:   He hedges his bets so much!!  When he proposed to me, he didn’t propose as such, it was erm, ‘so do you think you’ll ever get married again then?  So if anybody asked you

Rod:     Hang on, hang on!!!  This lady’s night not ‘This is Your Life’

Angie:   This was on the steps of a pub in Tynemouth, it was snowing, there was queue building up behind us and this guy turns, ‘for god’s sake tell him you’ll marry him so we can all get a drink’

Rod:     It was a taxi driver actually

Jean:     ugh, ugh, we’ve got several things.  I used to tease Norman, cause like there’s like cause there’s five years difference but like at the time, used to say, ‘far too

Rod:     Oh, we’ve done some mad things

Jean:     Good friends but er ye know, like later on and that ye know I mean erm, we’ve got a great life with Norman and that, couldn’t have anybody more

Rod:     We’ve become best friends and ye fall out and ye fall in, like best friends do

Jean:     Oh yeah we have our erm

Norman: Chased her for about a year ye know.   Are you going to go out with us?  you’ve got  - too young for us

Rod:     I met Angie at a disco, fancied her like hell, a never ask her out that night, so she went out with me best friend, went out with him for three months

Jean:     Norman used to come like over to our home, he used to like, I mean, decorate because that’s his actual trade is a painter and decorator, but I mean he’s like er a long distance like lorry driver and that, but Jack of all trades aren’t ye pet?

Norman: Hell of a long distance

Rod:     Yerve had to

Jean:     heavy goods driver, erm but erm we’ve like I say friends, good friends, good with the family and that as well but like that it was just like, ‘awe no in that respect, you’re too young go away’

Rod:     Didn’t notice each other at that time

Jean:     Wore down in the end didn’t I?  It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, in me life.  He’s had some things to put up with me, like everybody else in like our walk of life erm, especially when I’ve had too much for to drink

Rod:     Often say, if I won the lottery I’d buy her a house down the road

Norman:  I’d not, I’d buy her the one that we live in!

Rod:     and get a better one for yourself!

Jean:     We’ve had some good laughs as well, ye know,

Rod:     We’ve been the same, we’ve had some hard times

Jean:     Ah yeah

Rod:     At one stage, erm, 1986 or 1987 we hadn’t been married very long, bought the house and we were both in very good paid jobs.  I worked at Provident Finance, Angie was working for Twinings, as a night shift supervisor so about then, even then we had about four hundred quid a week coming in to the house and we both lost our jobs within six weeks of each other.  That, was, we flew very close to the wind

Angie:   It was frightening

Jean:     That’s like one of my, been my worst nightmare.  We used, cause the house what we had in Fellgate which was just over way from wuw, lived there twenty three year and done like, as ye do ye house and that, like Norman used to go on about buying it, and I wouldn’t.   I used to think and as long as I can pay me rent, if anything happens and erm ye know the way I was but at the same time, though I loved it, it wasn’t the type of house I would buy because for me they were never like solid built

Norman:           cardboard city man,

Jean:     But then we got the, what happened we got a chance of an exchange, and which we did, over to where we both grew up and that, solid brick, ye know, and of course with being council tenants for a long time, we also got a good discount.  So we got, there was anybody would even me self, I would have been stupid if I had of ye know, said, ‘oh no’ ye know but erm we’ve had a lot of work and that to do to it.  It’s just solid built, we love it, we’ve ye know big back garden and things but it’s like getting thing done

Rod:     Ours is not bad, it’s just we have a communal back path because we’re at the end of the terrace, two houses at the back have access and two at that side.  So you have all the kids down, all the rubbish accumulates down that side so you get all the rubbish.  You’re the only one who does the main path.  We haven’t any kids but we get crisp packets, ye know the whole works.  I mean the neighbours are pretty good, no problem but we get it all and some time ye think, ‘oh god should move’.

Angie:   Penny does come and sweep the path

Jean:     Oh yeah, we’ve got like er, they’re trying to make, like er, a bit of a park in the back where we live out back, ye know, but it didn’t work because there was a lot of er

Rod:     accumulation of drinkers

Jean:     yeah, people, like

Norman: It’s not drinkers, and smokers it’s mainly young bairns, fourteen come fifiteen,

Jean:     When the darker nights come, ye know, younger, like the ones who have, Doreen and Billy were chasing like some with bottles and drink and that but the gardens were being made smaller, where ours is still huge, now they’re asking the Council for their gardens back to stop.  Because what they have done is they have put back gates into people’s gardens as well so what you had a back way where we’ve blocked them.  Now people have blocked them up because, ye know.  I mean it’s a good, it’s a quiet street where we live.  It’s a good little street.

Norman:  at the moment it isn’t when all the kids come up

Jean:     Yeah, when they are playing out and that

Rod:     Yeah, we get the passing bodies, right on the main road the Quadrant which, fifteen years ago people were dying to get in to and you couldn’t get in to the Quadrant, but now it’s a thoroughfare, a lot of the nutters coming through and that.  It’s no good

Jean:     They’ve built a Metro station because we’ve got the new line that goes through to Sunderland, South Hilton now.  They built that and thank goodness we’re not in view of it because it’s a monstrosity.  We are lucky, ye know how ye can go round and ye can see how people have sold their property through it cause that’s inviting, well, not so much now

Andrea:  Last time I got lost

Jean:     Not so much now.  I call it Twin Peaks.  It’s like two towers, ye know designers

Andrea:  It’s quite high isn’t it?

Jean:     It is yeah.  It is.  Err and there was a lot of trouble when they were building it, young uns were accumulating where the buildings were and there’s like a walk through tunnel whats been there

Rod:     A subway

Norman:       a bridge what used to be old farm land, there’s two.  There’s one at the end of Calf Close, near the Greyhound 

Jean:     But the traffic can go through that

Norman:  but the traffic cannot go through this one where we are

Rod:     They had a similar one here, Smith’s Park.  You probably read about it.  It was one of the worst Metro stations in the whole system.  It was terrible.  It was the top end of the Ridges to start with, had this subway tunnel, which was the old railway tunnel.  It was only a footpath which the kids used to stand on Smiths - people wouldn’t get off at the station it was that bad and eventually they had to demolish it and build it up again and get police on

Jean:     Well security people were round this one isn’t it.  There somebody there, plus they have got the CTV in, within the lift because that’s what we were saying, well won’t last long but they have.  Up to now they’ve erm, they have but er cause we thought like the land search would have been told about it in the land search but we weren’t but I mean they have said it had just come up with these things.

Rod:     they just pull the wool over your eyes don’t they?

Jean:     Well, like I say, fortunately, cause there’s a few people have sold their houses.  One man had built an extension on and everything, he’s got his house up for sale but they more or less face er

Rod:     If people see that they are going to think put the price down.  You’re never get your money back

Jean:     That’s like what they were saying, er, some were saying it’s a good thing because people like work in to town or anything.  It is a good thing in that respect, so they were on about like the value of the properties going up and things like that but other people because of the relation of it what’s it going to be and that but got to admit it’s handy like.

Andrea:  It is if you are in walking distance not if you are looking at it

Rod:     I wouldn’t like to be any closer.  I used to use Smith’s Park when I worked in the town.  I’d walk down and it’d take about ten minutes, I’d not like being on the doorstep, no way.

Jean:     No, no, we were lucky like. At first it was going to be built at this end, then it was going to be built, seeming they built it, a lot of people put er a thing in about it, they didn’t want it because its right there, were we’ve got pensioners bungalows as well, and I mean they were frightened weren’t they?  So there was a big thing in the paper but it made no difference.  The planning and everything had gone ahead.

Rod:     It goes through.  I mean we go to a little place Stallen, where we have the boat, and it had a great market, it was combined with an old auction and erm a car boot, all on the same Tuesday.  Tesco bought the ground, wipe the whole lot off overnight.  So all the village, like the village needs a Tesco, ye know it’s going to close a lot of little shops, shut all the markets and auctions down.  So it’s really killed it.

Jean:     Jarrow it’s self, they built a Morrisons.  I mean Jarrow shopping centre was going down hill.  P & O took over it and rates and everything just shot up through the sky.  But the built a Morrisons.  Yes, I mean we shop there but it’s literally killed the shopping centre.  Ye know they thought they would get a lot of business but

Angie:   It’s a difficult situation

Jean:     People going there, ye know for the smaller shops but er

Angie:   People have a right to have access to cheaper food rather than like the corner shop or specialist shops but those specialist shops can’t compete.  Ye know ye can’t have two coexisting and somebody is going to lose out somewhere along the line.

Jean:     The shops that are up for to let and that, round there now.  It’s a shame cause it used to be, we had like we had furniture shops, ye know like, well Smiths and Hardys, we had Lindsay, we had the Co-op which had also a furnishing side to it well, the Co-ops been in Jarrow for years.  It’s gone it’s shut.  Erm like different little shoe shops.  We have

Rod:     All getting old now, we’re reminiscing

Jean:     Yea, there’s just nothing there

Rod:     Now, North Shields in the fifties, and beginning of the sixties was a brilliant shopping centre.  It was alive, erm, it was so narrow Saville Street you couldn’t get two buses passed, one had to stop and had to go passed but Christmas time it had a fantastic feel.  The atmosphere.  Everything, right from Prudhoe Street right to the way along to Saville Street West, it was just shops, straight up and down and then they renovated the whole town centre and just killed it.  It’s like a ghost town now.

Jean:     That’s what

Rod:     Don’t like North Shields now

Jean:     Jarrow, used to have that atmosphere and I think ‘what a shame to take it away.’  Cause people have to travel now for to get er things.

Rod:     Course in those days there was a ship yard which was a main money earner.  Everybody on the banks er.  Ye had the iron industry as well and the coal which was the main thing in this area and when they died off that was it.

Jean:     Well,  I worked for a while erm in Vickers but in er over in Hebburn, it had been shut down as a ship yard,  there was just the galvanising left erm, I was there, used to be in the wages department erm and from that then like Hawthorn Leslies, all them, and I mean, I can remember, the place when it was time for the men to go home was just like a big black swarm.

Rod:     Yeah, same as Smiths Docks

Jean:     Yeah right from over here used to see it from ye know just the big black, it was a

Rod:     Hundred, thousands

Jean:     It was the heart of erm

Rod:     It went right round the clock.  I mean.  Shakespeare Street is straight along here above the Ferry, that’s a little street above, it’s still there but it’s different houses altogether and ye had the all night river …. and corkers, that’s what you grew up with.  All the flashing and that

Jean:     No but no the atmosphere and everything totally different now.  It’s all rush and

Angie:   I don’t think there is so much atmosphere now people are more insular.  They don’t have the openness, the friendships or the closeness

Rod:    We don’t depend on each other so much now.  Independence, that’s what you’ve  got.  You are earning your own money, you have your own car, your own job, ye get your own goals.  You don’t rely on anybody

Angie:   Not necessarily a good thing

Rod:     No, not saying it is

Andrea:  You’ve two wage earners.  Not like the woman at home

Rod:     but even if you were working like in an office or something you have a lot of colleagues, you have very few friends.  Your friendship with them ceases as you go out of the door at night.

Jean:     Well I worked at  Douglas House, for the eighties and you are right with what you say there.  Erm, plenty colleagues, not friends.  Computers and ye know, you have your ten minute break off your computer and you have a bit chat with this one and that’s it but when you come away for to go for ye bus

Rod:     Very few would you tell your true feelings

Jean:     That’s why like where I work it is, because it is just a well a big bungalow and United Response believe in not like having your big status where you have like forty-odd people for to look after, like we’ve got the staff and which             on properties is good but er you are still held in that, it’s still like a small community, ye know.  It’s sad, it’s sad I think cause the openness isn’t there now

Rod:     Plus, the companies won’t put the money in to the staff as such now unless there is a great return for them.  When I first started work, I mean I left school, I was the only one in my year who wouldn’t take exams and I got relegated to the rough lad class.  Anyway, I left school, last Christmas leaving ever, 1959 and at the time there was a company up here a textillion it was called Dukes and Markus then, it was a dressfirm, made ladies dresses for Marks & Spencer, a big company and they decided, Carl Rawlson was the manager then, decided it would be a good idea to introduce lads to the rag trade.  So they canvassed all the schools in the area, took us all up, of course the selling factor was the four hundred women, so, ‘right, we’re alright here, it’ll be great’.  So I actually my first job I was a skilled sewing machinist.

Jean:     Right,

Rod:     I was very lucky I was nine months I was on the machines.  Even now I still sew stuff and that er.  But anyway, I fell in with the time and motion man then doing a work-study and I used to play badminton with him.  So him, him and I really got on well.  So I got the next perk which was the first ever conveyor belt in to take work round to people and I was put in charge of this.  It was so bloody boring I lasted four months and again he promoted me again.  I couldn’t.  This guy couldn’t do enough for me, I don’t know why.  At seventeen he made me a supervisor of the ‘felling team’, the felling team is the one that turns a blind hem on a dress, so you can’t see the.  There were the sixteen hardest women in the bloody factory.  I used to go behind the boxes and cry my heart out cause these girls wouldn’t do what I wanted.  Seventeen ye know chatting to a woman of forty, having to do a job.

Jean:     It’s ridiculous.  My first job was in Jarrow, store officers at the Co-op, right, and me first big job within there was to tell all these woman in Jarrow who’d come for their dividend that it was cancelled.  I’ve never been so frightened in all me life.  Thought I was going to be murdered and all sorts.   We had these slips, with like dividend in a big black cross through it, saying cancelled.  It was eee terrible.

Angie:   Plus, and in those days you probably lived in the area where you worked so that was really scary

Rod:     So ye knew everyone who came into ye shop

Jean:     Yeah ye know, they got no dividend,  which I mean people look forward to

Rod:     Like a bonus that

Jean:     Was horrendous

Rod:     It was saved for special times of the year

Jean:     Horrific it was.  I was there three weeks

Rod:     Then though I think companies, I mean at Dukes and Markuses did, I mean the wages weren’t terribly good, but the social side was brilliant.  We had a staff dance at Christmas time and everything was laid on, the booze and everything was free and then twice a year we’d have a staff outing.  Take four hundred and eighty people to Blackpool.  Used to hire a train ye know and stuff like this.

Angie:  I mean now places pull their workforce from such a wide area it makes socialising quite difficult.  I mean we, the company that I work for we’ve got people who live Ryton, Westerhope, South Shields, Sunderland.  I mean

Andrea:  Yeah

Angie:   Organising a night out is a major problem.

Rod:     It’s getting back again that’s the

Jean:     For you make like everybody

Andrea:  To make it fair for everybody, cause everybody gets taxis

Jean;    It’s like Norman, like the firm he works for, Durham County Wheels, they usually have to go through to Durham, don’t yeus?

Rod:     a Head Office ‘do’

Norman:  It’s not a Head Office, it’s just like a pub where every one meets.  The majority of blokes live like at Coxhoe but it’s Coxhoe, but the majority of the workers live in, round that area so they have the do there.  Says well what about coming down to Shields?

Rod:     Make it’s sort of semi half way

Norman: I said, like Chester-le-Street way.  I mean it’s not half and half

Jean:     It’s just like I mean, eee

Norman:  It’s a palaver man

Rod:     Ye get disheartened and that and it’s and all ye do when you go there all you do is talk about bloody work all the time.  That’s all you have in common.  I mean I still see people now, when I first worked at Dukes & Markcuss, I still see lads and girls and we have a lot in common cause I was friends with them.  Lads that are on the buses now.  Mel Beevery, goes past ours, toots the horn.  I know his family

Angie:   Would walk home with them or got the bus home.  Where as now once you are out you don’t talk to anybody

Rod:     Cause you have got your own car or the Metro

Jean:     That’s cause like one of the things I say, with our staff and what we’ve got, like I do, because like er, ye like this Carol ye know, Carol phone up if she has been off duty or anything like that er, Yvonne things we and we do do things together outside of work and I do find; plus I think it is with us looking after lads and lasses as well, you do get close to them

Angie:   I think specialist job like that

Jean:     We have got to have meetings where the involvements there about them and they are included in on the meetings

Rod:     It’s about a better life isn’t it?

Jean:     Yeah, it’s the whole, ye know the whole thing about it

Rod:     their input and that

Jean:     Yeah but ere, so yes I love it but, offices, well I mean we ran the Prince of Wales like I used to do it on a relief thing erm and both Norman and I ran it.  It’s near where we lived and I was a bar-maiding for quite a lot of years because it used to fit in for like babysitting.

Rod:     Oh we have done a lot of that work?

Jean:     and erm, we ran that but even that type of work now when I look back I think, god, cause we were, they wanted weu to take it on as, ye know, as a full, a full thing and we didn’t did we did we Norman? And I am really pleased we didn’t because now when I look at

Norman:  It was a hard life for leaving it

Rod:     Then OK you might have had a social life there with your locals coming in and that and a bit of respect

Angie:   In those days, a barmaid was a barmaid for years and years, now it’s all students ye know, it very transient

Jean:     The lifestyle of ye pubs now, they’ve took all that away

Rod:     It’s all the young uns now.

Jean:       opened     it’s different again.  They’ve opened where we used to have a lounge, ye bar and maybes a bit music room or a games room, now it’s all like

Rod:     they are changing back again now.  The Cannon near us they are changing it all back again to separate rooms.  Cause, different people want different things from their pub.

Andrea:  My locals separate.

Jean:     Well, like we used to often go in the Prince didn’t we but, cause I mean yes we used to work there so we went and we used to keep away cause when ye’re the boss and ye think crikey me and so and so come and say, ‘beer’s off’, but we used to often, well when they changed it they just changed the whole atmosphere and style

Rod:     Well everything changed and then again because you have an outside influx.  Tynemouth village, where we used to drink, well still drink but that’s changed so much. Then you used to know everybody.  I mean, fourteen pubs, we knew body because they were all the same circle all the time.  Went to the same parties and everything ye know but now they are coming from Wallsend, coming from Whitley Bay

Angie:   Now there is a hardcore of older people like us

Rod:     Yes, sad old people swapping stories.   ‘Do you remember when?’  ‘remember when they used to have a snug?’ 

Angie:  Think it was with most people

Rod:     Used to bring your bottle and get you beer from the cask

Angie:   We’re not that old Rod.

Jean:   Like if we go out now we go like we try to have a time like with wu brother-in-law erm like  sister in law, Clare and Robert.  We try to go somewhere don’t we, like for a change, like for a total change.  We sometimes go up to Warkworth to a pub called the Heritage

Rod      Someone’s got to drive that’s the problem

Jean:     Erm but we stay there.

Norman:  We stop overnight there

Rod:     Used to go to The Sun, The Sun Inn, there, used to go there

Jean:     Oh, yeah

Rod:     When I worked for the Ministry of Agriculture that was, like you’re saying a meeting point for all the MAFF men that were working in the fisheries in the area, used to all go there, have a bit conflab and have a good drink

Jean:     Yeah, we tend to stay like overnight cos that way er,

Angie:   That way everybody can relax and have a good time

Rod:     Look at that night I worked for Provi. and we won the, they give all the top area offices, erm twenty four hour freebie and they took over all the Grovenor Hotel in Newcastle and they brought seven hundred people from all over the country from twelve o’clock Saturday til twelve o’clock Sunday with their partners and everything paid for.  That was your bed, your hotel, your drink

Angie:   You’d be surprised

Rod:     And the gambling, gave you three hundred pounds worth of chips for prizes and then they had a cabaret act on as well, buckshee.  I mean it was set in a big round table, sixteen to a table and say, ‘who’s round is it now?’  ‘Fourteen lagers, three bloody marys,’ ye know.  They said, ‘oh the bars closing at three o’clock’ so everybody bounded up like mad and there is all this beer all over the place.  And then somebody had this bright idea, no close the bar, the bar is staying open, ‘oh drink up lads what do you want next?’  Unbelievable that.  Mind just as well we went at lunch time and we were waiting for our office to come in and one of the lads was working late and he come and says, ‘haven’t had time to get any lunch or anything’, said go and get a beef sandwich.  So he goes to the counter, the receptionist and he said, ‘can I have a beef sandwich please and a cup of coffee?’ ‘Yeah course ye can. That’ll be eighteen pounds seventy’.  I says, ‘don’t worry it’s all paid by the company’.  Just two slices of bread with beef in and a cup of coffee, eighteen pound thirty, so what it cost them I cannot wonder, for the whole event.

Jean:     For all them people.

Rod:     Must have been nigh on twelve hundred people there. Unbelievable, couldn’t believe ye could get that many people in,  

Jean:     that to me, that was like what your firms used to be like

Rod:     We earned a lot of money for the companies

Jean:     Showed appreciation and that, where now it’s just, y know, work till ye drop, and then crawl

Angie: Yeah

Jean:     to do it

Rod:     Before this area was developed it was all the Ridges, don’t know if you have any history, do you?  I used to be the bad debt collector for my company in the Ridges because I lived in the area when I was young and I knew a lot of people.  Christ, some challenges

Jean:     Oh, I bet you did

Rod:     I mean these were stage 5 arrears, that hadn’t paid for over a year and you had to go and get money out of them, ye know.  And you get the records, like one customer of mine, he had an office in Byker but he started in North Shields and he give everybody, so he never turned down anybody for a loan.    So these families used to get money after money, after money not a penny would he       five thousand quids worth of  debt and they are paying two bob a fortnight or something!!  Used to get loads of tea and bickies but never any bloody money.  ‘I knew your mother’, oh my god here we go.

Jean:     When you think about it that’s what it’s all about though wasn’t it?

Rod:     Debt

Jean:     If you didn’t debt, either you were lying

Rod:     You were lying definitely if you didn’t’ have debt.  Used to get them coming up, get paid on a Thursday, come on a Sunday, ‘want to buy a quarter of tea?’

 

[Caretaker comes in to say the building is shutting up]

 

Angie:   Before we all depart, I had this really silly idea, I brought the camera because I thought Jean might like a memory of the first time she met her brother.

Jean:     Eeee

Andrea:  That was a good idea.  I was thinking about it as well

Angie:   no cause

Rod:     We have all got cameras

Angie:   No I was thinking