ootside toilets....first home and all that..ha

Tegan, forgot to say I watched the Michael Portillo programme from Berwick to Ashington. Those terrace houses have been done up since Ken and his family lived there. Rosamond Street, I think it was.
One of his grandads worked down the pit at Ashington, and the other at Woodhorn. One of his grandads had a pit prop fall on his back and fracture his spine.
Woodhorn is an interesting place. It has all the Northumberland records, not just the coalmining, but BMD,etc., as well as the Pitman Painters exhibition.
The Bowes railway was actually built to take coal off the trains. The mine owners like John Bowes and William Hutt did not like paying the taxes to send coal down to London, as all the railway companies had extra charges. So they built ships, one called the John Bowes, to send coal direct from Jarrow to London.
I knew two sisters who lived in Berwick. One of them claimed to be a Scot, and the other was English, just to wind each other up, I think.

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The government wishes to privatise the line that was on the Portillo programme. If you wish to try and stop them, please sign this petition before Friday.

I actually welled up when they showed Ashington. It's probably one of the best museums I've ever been to and the paintings were mind blowing. We also went to Rock where the large house is that the painters used to go to [well, one of them anyway]. I'd already been to Ashington a few years prior to that just to see the houses [I've got a thing about places like that]. And, of course, for such a small place it has thrown up some amazing people. Will definately sign the petition. I've got some copies of the paintings floating round my house; I love the one with the whippet [she looks just like mine]. And the tea room there is lovely as well. Last year we went to the old promenade part of Berwick. I love hunting out places like that. Seaton Sluice and Seaton Delaval were our discoveries the previous year, along with the pithead where that awful accident happened near Seaton Delaval. What I don't understand about Michael Portillo is that he seems to love and respect so many of the things that his party destroyed .

Yes Jendurham Woodhorn is a wonderful museum and I never tire of it. My DH and I are frequent visitors there. My dad and both grandads were pitmen athough my dad got out of it quite young, they worked in both Harton and Westoe collieries, both long gone.

gillybob my dad worked in Westoe pit, There's a housing estate there now

Yes, I know it hebrideanlady

Tegan, we went to Seaton Delaval Hall over 40 years ago when they used to do Medieval Banquets, before it fell into disrepair and was bought by the National Trust. I like the bat cameras in the stairwell.

My youngest son was born at home in a hurry, but I had a bed reserved in a maternity home in Seaton Sluice, so the ambulance men took us there so we could be checked over. Then they would not let me home for a week. It's a lovely name, isn't it, Seaton Sluice? I'm pleased my son was not born there.

The pictures of the Ashington Terraces on the Portillo programme show the front gardens looking all neat and tidy, but they should have the rows of washing hanging up in them, like in the old days. Ken and his family of five lived in an upstairs flat, having to go and collect water from the tap in the street. But when I met him, they'd moved to Broomhill, near Amble, and his dad had built his own bungalow, where his mother still lives, on her own, at 91 years old. She has sold off half the garden as it was getting too much for her.

I remember the pit house my grandparents lived in many years ago. A long line of terraces with really long front gardens and back yards. All the fronts were immaculate and most had vegetable patches and greenhouses.My grandad had an old tin bath with a couple ducks flapping about in it. He was wonderfully self sufficient in fruit and vegetables too and won many prizes in the local leek club.

My grandparents lived in one of these pit houses in Boldon Colliery but no long garden at the front (front door opened onto the pavement ).However there was a long garden at the back with the toilet at the end. I couldn't believe it as I had always been used to an inside one except at school where they were in an outside block. The house was always lovely and warm though due to the free coal that miners received.

I know those houses well Gorki . My grandad always said he was "off down the yard" meaning he was going to the toilet. Positive luxury with their own outside toilet, in the flat I lived in as a child we shared ours with other families, gross.

We've certainly come a long way. As students we had to share bathrooms and toilets but today a considerable number of students have their own en-suites.

Gillibob said:
Imagine having to go to the staff room to ask for loo paper Joan the shame of it and what if you didn't mean to have a poo and you did? what then? shock.

Ha Ha! Well, there were dock leaves growing just outside the lav, so you snuck out with your knickers not quite pulled up, and grabbed a couple.....

The yard around the school was completely unsurfaced - the playground was just dirt, gravel and a giant tree; the path down to the lavs was gravel with weeds growing right up to the cubicles.

That reminds me - my friend at Grammar School, Hazel, lived with her parents in a railway cottage. The had outside lavs too, surrounded by plain earth, and the most beautiful tomatoes grew at the back, where the night soil men did their collections.

Today I was in a little cafe in Bradford. I asked to use the toilet and was given a key to the outside shed. It brought back all the memories...the semi darkness, the freezing seat, the damp toilet roll and the fear that a huge spider might leap at me from behind the cistern

Yes I had a similar experience round the corner here, in quite a nice cafe/restaurant - down the outside stairs to the ty bach (Cymraeg for "little house" - a euphemism for outside toilet) .

When I was teaching in Mexico I had to remember to take the loo paper in with me because in public toilets it used to hang outside. You can imagine the number of times I sat down and remembered I hadn't taken any paper in with me. Old habits die hard !

Here in Australia memories of outside 'dunnies' are quite recent ie the 80s, as sewage came late to many areas. There are jokes about redbacks on the toilet seat - redbacks are a poisonous kind of spider, a bit like the black widow. When visiting a friend with an outside dunny I always felt safe, because he had trained his dog to escort you to the dunny, inspect it for wildlife, then wait outside to escort you back.

Oh I know all about "that" too Joan my grandad grew the most amazing (prize winning) leeks. No prizes for guessing what he used as a fertiliser. and to think I used to eat my grandmas broth ...... (Heaving emoticon)

My favourite uncle was a gardener on a big estate. They lived in a damp old estate cottage with mains water and gas but no electric or main drainage. But they were happy people and we loved going to stay with them. Their privy was outside down the garden and going was a real adventure, especially in the dark. With torch or candle you approached fearfully. Shadows and monsters loomed! Creepy crawlies and slithery things lurked in the shadows. Enormous slugs also lay in wait. It was far easier to use the 'gozunder' beneath the bed but in the morning you were required to carry it downstairs and empty it. Awful. And those were the good old days!