Eddy Joyce was born in 1935 and spent his formative years in Shotley Bridge, Durham.

In the centre of the village stood the fountain and a horse trough. I remember the bowls on the fountain having metal drinking beakers there attached by a chain. The water tasted awful, probably full of iron. I am told that the fountain was removed by the local council and mysteriously disappeared.

Shotley Bridge was also famous years ago for its spa waters. I recall a famous poet of the time was thought to have said, 'Those that drink of these spa waters shall never suffer of scurvy '. I can`t vouch for that, only to say that the taste was similar to that of the fountain.

The spa was the home of the local cricket team and also tennis courts. I remember one Saturday the Sunderland football team came to play in a friendly cricket march. Len Shackleton, then a top player, went in to bat.

Just then the heavens opened and the rain poured down. I got up from my seat and stepped back into the wood for shelter and sat on a bee-hive. Covered in stings I ran home and my mother got out the 'BLUE' bag to dab on the stings ----- that I'll never forget.

St. Mary's junior/senior school situated on Durham Road had two school yards, boys and girls. Why, I never understood, for we were more interested in football.

I recall the teaching staff: Sister Mary, the head mistress, Miss Jackson, Mrs Hughes, and Miss Hurson ----- I once put a drawing pin on her chair and was quite surprised when she sat down without any reaction. I learnt years later that she was wearing a corset. I got the cane for that also.

In the next class, the first senior one, we had a lovely teacher in Miss Edwards. She actually taught us how to dance. Mr. Callaghan was the next teacher, he was not very popular with us as he was very strict.

Talking in class meant that he was liable to throw the black-board duster, a wooden one, at the talker ----- he never missed. Last, but by no means least, was Miss Ember, short in height but a very nice lady. Her forte was French, nouns--verbs---adverbs, you name it, but I thought it a waste of time not knowing that a few years later that it would come in useful.

Leaving that school I next attended St. Aidan`s Grammar School in Sunderland. It meant getting up at 5.45 each morning to catch the first of three buses at 6.30, arriving at school at 8.45. Same back home at night, winter and summer.

I also travelled on Saturday, being goalkeeper for the school team. At practice on the school pitch there was a large pear tree behind one of the goals. The ball was either punched or kicked over the bar into the pear-tree. When the ball was at the other end of the field I would collect the fallen pears to share out.

We usually changed into our football strip in the class-room. I remember one day leaving home in a bit of a rush and grabbing my freshly washed football strip as I dashed out the door, only to find, with my trousers around my ankles, that I'd picked up my sister's knickers.

The entire school thought it very funny. No, I didn`t play that day.!!

On leaving school I began work as an apprentice fitter and turner at the Consett Iron Company. I was in my element: oil grease and hand tools. Mind you we also had to attend evening classes from 7 to 9.30p.m. three nights per week.

I often walked the three miles home afterwards. It was one snowy winter's night I arrived home very cold. My mother jokingly suggested that I borrow a pair of Dad's 'Long Johns'. I did the following night, and arrived home soaked in sweat ----- Never again .!!!

I met Rose-Marie, now my wife of 44 years, at the Co-op dance hall. Thursday night was learners' night. The band was a piano and a set of drums. The drummer always had a cigarette in his mouth, and as the smoke rose into his eyes he would slowly incline his head further and further back out of the path of the smoke, yet never missing a beat.

After a seven year courtship we married. Rose-Marie, now a teacher, taught at my old school and no doubt learnt of my earlier escapades.

I served four years in the Merchant Service with a Liverpool firm Elder Dempster Lines mainly on the West African run. After starting a family I left the sea and returned to the now Steel Works. That was 1961.

Ten years and five children later we decided to emigrate to here in West Australia. Thirty odd years here, but Shotley Bridge is always in my thoughts, there's no place like it.

I must admit that I have enjoyed doing this project. I read once that everyone that dies takes with them a piece of history that no-one else knows about. Being strictly a one finger key-board operator this has taken quite a while but I consider it worthwhile bringing back lots of memories.

It would take a volume of books for each of us to copy down all that we remember. These are just some of a very happy life with few regrets.

Eddy Joyce, Western Australia, 2002