My Dark Places

I faced some internal demons last week, by paying a visit to Felling, where I was dragged up -:

About a fortnight ago, I heard second hand that a couple of people I’d known earlier in my life had died. One of them, Maureen Humbert (84), was a vague relation I’d never, ever got on with. The other death was of Sandy Chadwin (59); a bloke I’d been at University with but had subsequently lost touch with over the years. Somewhat bizarrely, one of the reasons Sandy cut off contact with me,  was because of my unequivocally negative attitude towards Felling; that scenic fishing village on the south bank of the Tyne where I puked my puke of a childhood until I escaped in 1983. Sandy, who was born and brought up in one of the biggest houses in Jesmond, seemed to subscribe to my ex-sister’s  overly sentimental staged attitude to the place. Then again, he didn’t have to live there and didn’t hang about with anyone who did.

Let’s be honest about things. I am, by nature and by experience, a miserable wreck of a human being. I’m not breaking any confidences or covering any new ground when I state that I have hated huge portions of my life; certainly, I have no happy memories of my childhood until the age of 14. Everything about my formative years was a misery; I was relentlessly physically and sexually abused by my parents. I lived in constant fear of violence being inflicted on me, which lasted until I was almost 22, as the last time my father beat me up was the day of my graduation. What a great memory to leave people I studied with who’ve never seen me since. I had such a toxic relationship and negative attitude to my mother that from the moment I went to University, I pretended that my real mother had died when I was very young and the swaggering, evil psychopath my father married was my stepmother. Indeed, as I only got on with her for about 3 years of her widowhood, after my ex-sister cut off all contact with her, until the onset of vascular dementia returned her behavioural patterns to the true nasty, evil psychopath that she was, I feel I was right to do that. Nobody ever wants to admit their mother used to abuse and belittle you. Then again, I do now. I embrace the fact I survived her attacks.

I no longer consider the question as to whether I am mentally ill or indeed what conditions I suffer from, as relevant to explaining my personality. I am just me; ian cusack. I am a product, as we all are, of my experiences, though almost all of mine are thoroughly unpleasant ones. In considering how I turned out to be the person I am, I see growing up in Felling, home of some of the most violent heterosexual men you could ever want to meet, as one of the major problems in my life. Getting over my childhood and adolescence is one obstacle that has resolutely remained unsurmountable. I hated Felling and still find it almost impossible to talk about the whole NE10 post code cogently and calmly, as it is a terrible trigger for my anxiety and depression. Flashbacks, both visual and auditory, make me want to be physically sick.  

I did move back there between 1988 and 1991, buying my first flat on Woodlands Terrace, only moving when my first wife Sara (mother of my son Ben) and I bought a lovely house in Spital Tongues, but that brief return is not something I am happy to admit. I regret it bitterly. However, the deaths of Maureen Humbert and Sandy Chadwin have caused me to take time and reflect on my life, my mortality and my legacy to-be. Having gone back to The North of Ireland in August to rediscover where I lived as a student, I knew I had to take a trip back to Felling and try to make sense, or contextualise, the source of all my sad dreaming. 

You see, when trying to make peace on our own terms with the dead, it isn’t just a case of regretting we weren’t able to call a truce before their passing. Sometimes it is the exact opposite of that; Friday 27^th October 2023, the day of my trip, would have been my mother’s 86^th birthday and if I’d gone to visit the grave she shares with my father in Blaydon Cemetery, I would have lain flowers for him and spat on her name, as that what she means to me. My main regret is that I didn’t tell her what an evil, malign influence she was on me and how I’m delighted she’s dead. I only wished it had happened much sooner so my dad could have enjoyed his last years, rather than waiting on her hand and foot, being given zero thanks in return. I’ve never mourned her passing and I never will.

I’m 60 next birthday and, at times, I worry that I’m not going to make it. I don’t think there is anything specifically wrong with me, but I have a bizarre sense that something foreign, something malign is growing within me. It may be anxiety, or it may be something more sinister, though every test I’ve had, for a boatload of possible cancers, has come back clean. I don’t want to die yet, as I’ve never been as happy in many aspects of my life than I am now, though these deaths have shaken me. Made me question my existence and my purpose. The simple fact is one never knows what is around the corner. This is part of the reason why I took myself off to hospital. The bus stop next to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Having stood in Eldon Square Bus Station for an aeon on Friday morning, the first bus that arrived was for Wrekenton, rather than Winlaton, which decided things for me. I wasn’t going to Blaydon to visit the dead. I was going to Felling to fight them.

And so it was, I took the 57 to The Traveller’s Rest; a pub I’d only ever been in once, back in 1981. It’s still open, unlike the formerly neighbouring White Swan, which has been demolished and rebuilt as flats. There was a logic to me approaching Felling from the South; the place is built on a huge hill that is probably the Tyne’s floodplain, so walking down Windy Nook Bank is considerably less effort than coming up. The fact was, I wasn’t strictly in the historical territory of Felling, which used to be denoted by the Felling Urban District Council sign that stood opposite the entrance to the QE, and its adjoining training establishment (whose sign claimed it was the Gateshe Re Schoo o Sing) until April 1^st, 1974, when the town was absorbed into Gateshead. Strangely though, as kids we didn’t consider our concept of Felling as being the full geographical town, as we narrowed our parameters to the ward boundaries and school catchment areas. Hence, Windy Nook corner, or the adjoining top Bay Horse (still trading) when we got a bit older, was the end of the known world. It still seemed that way as The Black House (RIP and now a Tesco Express) at the junction of Coldwell Lane and Carr Hill Road with Windy Nook Road and Albion Street, still stood as the gateway to our known world. From there you could trace the back lane along to Robert Owen Gardens, Oxberry Gardens, Greenbourne Gardens, all accessible from the magnificently named Co-Operative Crescent, where the late fruiterer Steven Foster owned his bungalow. I used to collect pools coupons as my first ever job and his 8 from 10s were one of my regular collections. He died of a brain aneurysm in 1978, aged 59. The same age as I am now. His widow must be dead now, but their bungalow looks untouched.

Next we came to Nursery Lane, with Ruskin Road and Iona Road the southern and western boundaries of my childhood world. Arran Gardens is reasonably new; built on what used to be the allotments in between Carr Hill and Felling. Nursery Lane was the epicentre of my world until about the age of 11. I lived there, played there and just about went to school there at Falla Park Infants and Juniors. The only extension to my world before the 1974 World Cup was to Heatherwell Green, where my grandmother lived for the last 50 years of her life, where we played football from dawn to dusk for 9 months of the year and cricket for the other 3, or to dice with death amidst the building works involved in the subsequently long-demolished Poulsen-designed Balmoral Drive tower blocks and maisonette slums. They were pulled down in 1987. Barely a decade and a half they stood.

Heatherwell Green’s proud sporting pitch is now decimated by the need to provide parking spaces for residents. When my grandfather was alive (he died in 1967), he was the first person to park a vehicle overnight on that street. Having learned to drive in the Army during WW2, he secured a job back on Civvy Street delivering bread for Carricks’, with a large lorry to dispense the large loaves from. Scaffolding currently covers their house at number 2, but the houses look as sound and steadfast as ever, which isn’t bad considering they’ve been there almost 90 years. Hopper Road. Brettanby Road. Victoria Road. Falla Park Crescent, still bounding the school and leading on to the trio of damp, sandstone Tyneside terraces that predate the brick built council houses by at least a quarter of a century. Clarke Terrace. Woodlands Terrace, where someone emerges from a van with ladders on the top and knocks on the door of 21. He gets an answer and I put my phone away. No photo today. Hewitson Terrace, where Carole Connor’s house still displays her ballroom dancing obsession with tango and cha cha cha themed curtains and ornaments.

The rain has held off so far, but just as I brace Coldwell Park, where I endured years of parental torment, the rain starts to fall without respite. A biblical downpour. My pen fails. My notebook turns to mush. My fiery anger is unwillingly quenched and, with no choice but to head on at double pace, I turn back on myself to visit Rectory Road, Chilside Road, Belgrave Terrace, Werhale Green, Elldene Crescent, Monksfeld, Watermill Lane, The Drive, Crowhall Lane and back down to Felling Square. The Greyhound and The Jubilee are gone, but The Blue Bell and The Portland cling on. A junkie tries the door handle of an incongruous BMW, muttering as the security system foils him.  The Princess of Felling probably doesn’t realise the Library on Tarlton Crescent is now houses, with Godfrey Thompson Court and Felling Club soon to be demolished for more new developments.

The rain got heavier, and my task lost its purpose. My feet ached. I was soaked from head to toes. I could no longer take notes. My wish to cover the High Street and the section from the Park to Heworth Metro would have to wait for a better day. Not for the first time, Felling had defeated me. I left, not with feelings of anger, but of dejection and despair. Yet again, nobody listened to me and so, before I die, before whatever the malaise within me overtakes my senses, I will be forced to return.