A Chill Wind Off The Tyne - John Orton

A Chill Wind off the Tynefirst takes you back to the early 1900s in the Tyneside town of South Shields (Sooth Sheels to the locals). Amin and Ali, Yemeni seamen, arrive on the quayside and feel the bite of the north-east wind. The influx of the Arabs has begun. Their story is one of many that takes you from bare foot street urchins, fish and vegetable hawkers, young lads working in the shipyards and pits, to the years of the great depression after the Great War: the pit lockouts of 1921 and 1926; the race riots of 1919 and 1930 when Arab and white sailors fought in the streets. Seen through the eyes of characters who some readers may have met in the Five Stone Steps (the memoirs of Station Sergeant Thomas ‘Jock’ Gordon), the tales of life and love, of boozas, and pitch and toss schools, of bare knuckle fights in the back lanes, of tripe,brawn and cow heel pie (‘well, when you were hungry you’d eat owt’), recreate the lives of ordinary working folk, when people survived hardship by sticking together. Old photos are used as illustrations so that you can see ‘auld Sooth Sheels’ for yourselves.