Just in case there is anybody out there who doesn’t know that I was going to Australia for three weeks to stay with my old friend Caroline, you do now.

I wanted to bring something for Caroline from Cockfield but could not think what. After ages I had a Eureka moment, The Cockfield Mug of course, I know she reads the blog avidly so thought that it would be perfect, but, how to get one? I made a deal with Nigel that if he would allow me to prise one away from him I would write a blog about Caroline and her amazing life out here in Australia, so here goes, but first a little history.

For villagers who are born and bred and of a certain age this will be a memory jogger but for those who are not a little background information.

Caroline is the youngest child of Maureen (Stirk) and Les Cutting and lived in Cockfield until she was 20. As far as I can remember she and her family lived in three different houses in the village, firstly behind ‘The Welcome Pub’, (where later on Ken and Avril Cox lived and then in The Queens Head for a while, finally moving into Stirk’s shop, the family business.

Caroline has an older brother and sister, John (who in his younger days was a bit of a lad and I know could write some extremely interesting blogs about the things he has got up to over the years, some of us will remember the bag of soup under the arm in restaurants antic, but that’s another story entirely) and a sister Lesley who left the village way back in the 70’s to live in Romaldkirk with her new partner Jimmy Aird. Jimmy and Lesley owned and managed TT Leathers in Barnard Castle and employed quite a few people from Cockfield at the time. Lesley was the designer and together they lived quite a glamorous life.

Back to Caroline - she attended Cockfield C of E school, (which it was in those days) and then went on to Barnard Castle Grammar School, which is of course now Teesdale Comprehensive School and was quite a sporty pupil, (pupils didn’t become students until many years later) being a regular member of the school netball team. This is where she met Julie Nelson from Barnard Castle who became her lifelong friend.

She left school like the rest of us at that time at 16, higher education was something that was not really considered, maybe a year at Bishop Tech if you couldn’t get a suitable job but University was out of the question, we had to go to work and so Caroline went to Glaxo like most of the youngsters at that time. I can remember her in her blue overall, with a different colour around the neck, which was for whatever department you were working in and I think she got to wear a matching turban. Very chic!!!!

During the late 1970’s there was a group of us that were all friends, who were, Kathleen Teasdale (Gamble), who works in the Co-op, Jill Walton (Heaviside), Vera and John’s youngest daughter who lived in the paper shop, Julie Nelson as mentioned above who lived in Barnard Castle, her mother had a hairdresser’s shop in Newgate, Caroline and me. These were extremely happy times for us and we lived a few years as carefree teenagers before reality caught up, getting up to mischief as you do, underage drinking (yes we did it), going to the various bbq’s around the area, Cotherstone, Morton Tinmouth, Skeeby and others. Does anyone remember The Playboys? Who were the band at many bbq’s.

I could write forever but think I will leave it there for the first one, which will have jogged some memories and informed others. My next blog will be about Caroline’s early life out here and finally where she is at in her life at present That’s all for now folks it’s Melbourne Cup day and we are off out for lunch at a very posh hotel.