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This Whitley Bay Town Centre stuff won't perhaps be as exciting as some pages, I mean what did kids get up to in shops. Buy sweets. Loiter. Get asked to leave. What else can you do.
Here's what......making rude words by rubbing letters off the chalky white writing on fruit and veg shop windows (the only one which I recall, so probably the only one, was shortening 'tomatoes' to 'toes' which was crap but we all thought it was hilarious). Pinching fridge boxes from the back yards of electrical shops for sliding down the grassy slopes onto the Prom. Smelly food fights with stuff found in the bins behind Liptons or the VG.
Park View
From Marine Avenue traffic lights to St Paul's church.
There were many bike and toy shops on this stretch and I spent many an hour in Jack Percy's (very nice old man he was, his drawers bulging with soldiers), with the most bike-tastic window display in all of Christendom — piles of stickers and Union Jack handlebar flags, parping horns and Pifco lamps, chequered tape, handlebar mirrors, handlegrips... There was nothing better on a Saturday (after Bagpuss and Swap Shop) than spending pocket money on something for the bike, then rushing back to the shed to fix it on and ride around the streets to show off. Punctures and worn brake blocks and stuff were always put right by the wheezey Mr Allsop who had a bike repair shop on the corner opposite; he'd come slithering out from the back and take your bike away in a manner that made you think you might never see it again.
Sort of related to the cycling theme, there was a ladies' boutique called Penny Farthing which was named after — get this — an actual penny farthing which leant on the wall outside (good job it wasn't a purple Chopper).
Once every town worth its silt had a department store and Whitley Bay had Ryles, right on the corner where Park View goes round the bend. I can remember first being in there in the late '60s. It was considered a rather classy, swanky establishment back then, two floors of leather goods and boxes of tartan hankies sold by salmon faces doused in Tweed. Silk headscarves, that sort of thing, and silver clothes brushes for sweeping the dandruff from the shoulders of velvet jackets. Posh Hedley Youngs, which I sort of remember, boasted an upstairs café with leaded windows and waitresses in black and white uniforms, fell from grace to become Thoms (now £stretcher).
Of the only other shops I could ever be tooled with were MacFarlanes just for that lovely rich woollen pong from the rolls of new carpet, DJ Records with its trendier upstairs bit of picture sleeves and coloured vinyl, Wilsons Sports (no relation), a china shop on the corner where my Aunty Ella worked (though she wasn't really an aunty...they never are), and Tom S. Ford (who morphed Dr Who-style into Jack Percy). That's all I can be arsed to recall. There are a lot of stores that still remain from three decades ago, but mention that lot and it starts amounting to free advertising.
The Bus Station
Off with its head to make space for the current shopping mall. The old Bus Station was not unlike a little microcosmic town in itself; it had a few shops attached (Carricks/Crawfords, Blades where my sister Julie worked, and a tobacconists), its own nightclub (The Sands — I was too young to be allowed in then so that's all it gets), and the steamiest, smokiest poohole of a waiting room, always full on rainy days with dripping wet folks with their shopping bags, stuffing down "meat" squares and cheese 'n' onion crisps.
Fancying a quick widdle before the red United for West Monkseaton pulled in, the public 'Gentlemen's Cloakroom' could only be accessed by crossing the furious feathers-flying pigeon-squish of buses tearing round the station. Then, having made it safely inside, you were smacked in the gob by the odour of Life Guard and a 2p charge for the sort of trap in which you might catch Peter Wyngarde standing with a lorry driver. And only two or three dangling damp sheets of slidey Izal left over to make yourself presentable, as the hockling sounds and trouser-trumpets from adjoining cubicles echoed around the once-white tiles and urinals.
The Post Office
A lovely old building with a lovely old wood-panelled interior. It went. There was a bustling rush in the goods yard around the back, with the red Morris Minor 'Post Office' and the yellow 'Post Office Telephones' vans. Morris Minors were insisted upon en masse because of that 'farting' noise they made when changing gear. No pics of the Post Office itself but here is a good one of various vehicles that were used at the time. Well this takes me back. (Vans then all had almost facial expressions.) There was a yard at the bottom of Norham Road also (with the heavy wooden gates) where the P.O. vans would slip into their pyjamas and go to sleep.
Whitley Road
From St Paul's church to who gives a knacker.
"It's all at the Co-Op...NOW!" Well not for much longer — it's moving to where Liptons was, (opposite to where the Bus Station was, etc). Co-Ops were always in nice 'Quakery' buildings. But — ha! — there was another Liptons along Whitley Road with a restaurant above (it's all boarded up now).
There was nowt worse than having a mam and three older sisters when forced to go along when they were shopping for clothes. I'll not stir up any more childhood bitterness towards girls' fashions of the time, so for Topaz and Book's Fashions you can add your own memories. I'm off...
T&G Allans not only had a classic toy department on the first floor (near the spiral staircase) where we bought catapults and jokey things like horns with a suction pad to stick on your forehead and snappy gum, but also a very hip 'in-the-groove' record department in the basement. T&G Allans deserves a plug for having still lost none of it's charm and comfort-zoneness to this day.
Woolworths with its own Winfield brand and a "pick 'n' mix" at which some kids (not me, coming from a nice family) would stuff the sleeves of their parkas in the pockets, then hide their hands inside and through the buttons pinch the sweets from the front of the display. Once in 1974 my mate's mum parked her pale green Cortina Mk. I outside Woolies and went in to get us some crisps (Tudor Hot Dog 'n' Mustard they were) and cans of pop to shut us up, only to return to find us bouncing up and down on the seats, laughing and tooting the horn and the windscreen wipers on. Guess who got their legs slapped.
My granda told me back then of a bloke who lived in Embleton or somewhere up the Coast who would actually cycle down to Whitley Bay just to get his fish and chips from the Arcade, the world's bestest ever chippy (though we would often gather empty pop bottles from the late-summer-afternoon Links and with the return money from the shop opposite the Berkeley Tavern we'd each have enough to buy hamburger and chips from Torres, but only cos it was the closest). And it just had to be dandelion and burdock for a big fish-and-licoricey belch afterwards.
And this is where it gets boring (if not already) as all I can remember about the rest of Whitley Road was a shop opposite the clinic that sold skateboard things, a brill model shop further down (still there) and Viking Safety (also still there), the latter of which only gets a mention because of a tenuous family link, and the snippet of history somewhere up there on the right.
The Pillage People
Way back when the east coast
was under constant siege from
red-bearded raiders from across
the North Sea, Viking Safety
was formed to reassure the
Whitley townsfolk that any threat
of rape or pillage from those
hordes of fiery Norsemen would
be met with displeasure.
It worked such a treat to bring
about an almost overwhelming
sense of serenity, that Viking
Safety remains to this very
day only to supply welding
gauntlets and charcoal sticks
for warming the pockets of the
little less fearsome Cullercoats
fishermen.
