Me and me mate Terry are playing with our alleys in the square near me Nanna's house and I've just won Terry's bongy. He wants a chance to win it back but he's got no chance coz im off in now...Nanna's been cooking some fadgies and i wanna mek sure i get one before the rest of the family nick em all!

After gorging meself on the still-warm fadgies and hot buttered pikelets, Nanna gets out the spanish and i set off out again. Terry's owl-fella made us a bogie this week and we wanna go down the pig alleys and test it out!
Pullin the bogie behind us, Terry gives us a tan on his bike, ignoring the fact he's got a huge bleb on his tyre that could go at any minute!

The afternoon was spent muckin about - firing carlins from Terry black widow gatty, throwin clemmy's, gozzin distance competitions and playin on the tarzy put up by the bigger lads as well as running the bogey down the hill a few times of course! It all came to an abrupt end when i fell in the beck...and ended up with a crackin keggy!

Back at me Nanna's...Grandad was in from The Roseberry...blaked! If i'm really lucky, ill get a rendition of 'My Way' at some point!

Just a normal weekend in Whinney Banks for a bairn like me, like!

I guess some people will wonder what the hell I'm on about...perhaps even given up half way through me little anecdote there! That's because I'm going back about 30 years...when most of the words I have used were commonplace in Teesside, or at least they were in my family! Alleys are now marbles and a bongey was a steel marble (essentially a ball bearing - the bigger the better!).

Fadgies were me Nanna's speciality - a stodgy triangular bread bun that bear no resemblance to the fluffy crap you buy in ASDA these days! Pikelets...well they are crumpets, but we certainly never called them that back then and 'Spanish' is now licorice!

A bogie (of course) was a cart made of a few bits of wood and some pram wheels and the pig alleys were the allotments on the edge of the estate. In them days people really did keep pigs, goats and chickens there! The alley in pig-alley meant alleyway which was what we called a small walkway I guess...usually between two houses but in this case the allotments had little walkways between them, hence pig-alleys! (it made sense at the time). Many a time we'd come back hacky (dirty) from a day down the pig-alleys! (I'm not doing too well explaining this am I?)

A tan was a lift on someones bike. Later in life the more common term was croggy, but as a bairn (child), it was a tan! The bleb, of course was a blister sticking through the tyre!

Carlins were dried peas, gatty was a catapult, gozzin was spitting (disgusting I know!) and a clemmy was a bit of mud or clay, a perfect size for throwing! Then there was Tarzy (a rope swing on a tree), keggy (a black eye) and finally of course me good old Grandad being blaked (drunk)!

I guess this is just a small selection of the words and phrases we used at the time, many have probably slipped my mind due to underuse! I do like to still use them occasionally, particularly to confuse my southern wife who wonders what the hell im talking about!

Good times!

Many thanks to Dirk Van Der Werff for the use of the photo. It was very hard to find a photo of fadgies online! Visit his web site at Dirk Van Der Werff. Image is ©Dirk Van Der Werff, do not re-use without permission.

• < Prev
• Next >