There was The Big Hill which we had to walk up to get to the church where my dad worked, and in the winter when it snowed (and boy, did it snow!) The Big Hill was fantastic for sledging down and building giant snowmen – I still have a very over-exposed photo of me and my dad standing next to a snowman that towered above the pair of us (dad was six foot one back then).
There was The School Field – right next door to our house – every evening me and the boys (my fellow ten and eleven year-olds) would play football or cricket for as many hours as daylight, our parents or the school caretaker allowed.
There was the soft toy section in the church hall which made a fantastic makeshift wrestling arena – great fun for kids with lots of energy and a constant need to prove themselves in combat. There was the library where I’d work my way through Hardy Boys books in bundles of six.
There was the paper shop where on some mornings I would run three seperate paper rounds and still have time for a half hour nap before school (the day of my first paper round I woke up two hours too early and ended up watching some odd film about a count, revenge, mistaken identity and lots of swashbuckling until it was time to go).
There were the mornings we had to go and wake up Bob, proprietor of the aforementioned cornershop so he could let us in and we could deliver his papers.
There was our fantastic back garden. A world of adventure for me, my siblings and many of the local kids.
There were the water fights that involved all the kids in the street on the hot summer days. These centred mostly on our house, front garden and back, the hosepipe and pressurised plant spray used almost as much as jugs of water, water-bombs and water-pistols. Anything that could be used to make somebody else wetter than you was put to great effect.
There was the pile of old car tires in the back garden that made great towers/things to hide in/things to roll about/clamber over.
There was a vegetable patch where I remember we grew rhubarb, and had at least one attempt at growing potatoes, but the spuds got the blight which meant we had to leave the ground unspudded for three years just to get the disease out, there were beans and peas and sweet-peas (inedible, but pretty flowers) on bamboo frames. There was our garden-pond which we used to populate with frogs which we hunted in The Beck (a tiny stream which ran the other side of the fence at the bottom of The School Field all the way along to the bottom of the Big Hill.)
There was the Scout troop which taught me all sorts of things.
There were the Scout camps, the fire building, the rope tying, the death slides, the sharp knives, the singing of many songs, some of them not fit for publication which the leaders squashed as soon as they heard them.
There was the walking in the countryside, by the lakes, in the hills.
There are a lot of good memories of Shildon.
There are almost enough to convince me that it wasn’t a shitty place to live.