I grew up in the sixties in the North East of England. ‘Swinging’ it was not.

In fact there were no swings of any sort on the Ellen Wilkinson Estate. Not one. There were several sets of swings on the adjacent estates, but none on the Ellen Wilkinson. Being taken to the swings was a major event - so major that it never really happened. Swings are something you have to get familiar with when you are very young, otherwise by the time you are ‘old enough to go on the swings’ it’s hard to get the hang of it. I never did.

The Ellen Wilkinson Estate wasn’t a bad place to grow up and, being the sixties, there were a lot of children doing exactly that - some quicker than others. The Estate had been built in the early 1950s to a public housing template repeated throughout the land, family housing of two to five bedroom semis. The architects who designed these places did their work in the Ministry of Housing. They probably lived somewhere like Penge or Putney. They were well rewarded for their work. I would have liked to have met them. I really would. What were they thinking?

But to my Dad this represented a giant leap forward. He had been born into a world at war and a home in extreme poverty and married with the world at war once again. He was 37 by the time he and his wife got a home of their own. Dad was a lovely man.

In my memory the sixties were cold, grey and largely miserable. England may have won the World Cup on a warm sunny day in London but on the Ellen Wilkinson Estate it rained. I think it seemed so grey because most people still had coal fires. Many, like my Dad, worked in the mining industry where the great perk was free coal, there was no central heating and, as council houses were definitely not for sale, there was little reason even for those who could afford it to invest in it.

But it wasn’t the worst of places. Home was dry and there was food on the table, my parents were kind to me. Dad didn’t drink, smoke, gamble or otherwise waste money so, even though his wage was never great, we never went short. There were certainly rules at home, but they were never beaten into me.

But God was it dull.

There were five shops on the Estate. A newsagent, run by Mr Cook, who never smiled much, The Post Office, run by two deeply unpleasant old women who made Mr Cook look like a Blue Peter presenter, a greengrocer, an off-licence/corner shop and, of course, the Co-op - the old sort of store where you went in with a list and asked the man behind the counter for whatever you needed. When the Co-op went self-service my mother said it was the beginning of the end. Oddly she was right.