'When my sister and I talk of our childhood'.

PEOPLE do like to reminisce, and none so more so than Tom Seaman, of Linthorpe, and his sister Doreen.

He writes: Each time I visit Doreen at her home in the Corpus Christi end of Spencerfield Crescent we talk about the people we knew as kids in the 1950s and the field across from her house which is now Greenway Court.

That is where all the kids from our end of the crescent played - cricket, football, you name it - and had a huge bonfire every November, when everybody contributed with old rubbish and furniture.

Beresford Buildings is still there, with shops and Jobcentre, but it was totally different when we knew it.

People lived in flats above the shops. A school friend of mine, Alan Wilkinson, lived in one. I wonder where he is now.

As for the shops - Dicky Park's fish shop was on the Greenway end; next, on the front, was the Co-op store; Alec Newcombe's paper shop was next and the Co-op butcher third; next was Hills Bakery (they also had a shop over at Longlands).

Can anyone remember the striped canopy over the window of Maypole Stores, which was next to Hills? If you wanted fruit and veg. McMahons was right next door. The first shop on the front was another butcher, Singletons, a family-run business. I recall going there with a bowl and a tea towel to get some ducks and pease pudding for my dad's tea.

I still have a lot more memories to tell. Another time.