I was driving round Ashington one evening looking for the Miner’s Institute where the folk club was held. Most of the streets looked the same – rather dismal brick terraced houses with little apparent life. Then I came across one street that was different but couldn’t at first think what it was made it so. Stopping for a moment, hoping this might be where the club was, I suddenly realised what made it unlike the others was all the people there were wandering about. I’ve no idea if there was an event going on (there were no signs of it) of if the people here were especially good neighbours. However, it set me thinking how, when I was young, such a scene wouldn’t have seemed unusual. It was like a Lowery painting, I thought, and he only painted what he saw.

There are two main reasons people, especially children, don’t spend time out on the street these days – one is they’re stuck behind TVs and computers so much and the other is they’re afraid of the supposed dangers. Also, most of us go everywhere by car, even local shops or friend’s houses. When I was young my friends and I spent most of our time outdoors playing, and if we wanted to go anywhere we walked or went by bike. I was never accompanied to school, even as young as five, and no constraints were ever put on us going anywhere. Occasionally my mother might ask me, as the eldest, to keep an eye on the two youngest (there were four children in our family) but I generally avoided this responsibility and ran off to be with older kids.

I wrote this song as a nostalgia trip but I hope it rings true for many older people. Kids now have some fantastic gear; mobile phones, video games, computers and unlimited entertainment on many different platforms, but they often don’t have the freedom we had years ago. Also, our unsophisticated and innocent play now seems much richer than the adult-orientated influences children are exposed to from such a young age.

 

WESTON GREEN  

1.         The house where I grew up in was old, ramshackle and mean,

But it echoed to the laughter of the kids from Weston Green.

On bicycles and box carts, we couldn’t wait to get outside,

Exploring all the neighbourhood and the Wild West countryside.

 

C.        Far, far away – far, far away.

Far, far away in Weston Green.

Far, far away as in a dream

 

2.         No computers and no TVs, just an ancient radio,

Or we made our own entertainment – what else did we know?

As soon as school was over not much stopped us being free,

Returning tired and grubby to jam sandwiches for tea.

 

3.         Now I hear the kids a-talking of amazing games they play,

Way out across the Universe – just a click away.

Fighting all the bad guys – and even World War Three,

On a flat screen for a playground – now that’s their reality.

 

4.         Down a street the other day in an ordinary town,

I had to stop and wonder and forget the weary frown.

As in a Lowry painting there were children everywhere,

But soon the gloom descended back into the cold night air.

 

* Weston Green was the name of the common (fields and woodland) opposite our house in Thames Ditton where I lived from about 1953 to 1965.