1970 - Newcastle - Djr

1970 - Newcastle - Mum, Djr, Dad

My parents had moved out of their flat in Holly Avenue, Jesmond, and into a massive old house in Heaton. Dad was running a small accountancy business from a huge room on the ground floor.

1972 - Newcastle - Djr

I used to sit in the pram with the freshly baked bread whilst mum went off to other shops; she'd come back to find I'd torn through the crust and munched away all the insides.

1972 - Newcastle - Djr, Mum

2nd Birthday

1972 - Newcastle - Djr, Mum

This is the porch at the front of the house; at some point between now and 1979 I became friends with an older boy, who used to come around after dark, and he and I would sit in this porch eating chips and drinking shandy. We became friends when I saw a strange-scruffy looking boy, sitting on the wall of a ruined house at the top of the street, about to throw a large lump of rubble on top of the older-boy and his dog...I shouted out a warning.

This photograph was taken by my cousin, Kenn-Ole Moen, who was living with us at the time, studying art at Newcastle Art College.

1973 - Newcastle - Djr, Kenn-Ole

I guess Kenn was in his late teens or early twenties and probably just wanted to sleep without having a 3 year old cousin lying on his head.

1973 - Newcastle -Mum, Djr

This is the crematorium where my English grandfather had his ashes scattered.

1973 - Newcastle -Dad, Djr

It's crazy when I think that 33 years later (2006), I'll be standing beside the same bench watching this man's ashes being scattered in the very same place.

1973 - Newcastle - Mum, Djr

3rd Birthday. This is when Mum started to change. She was placed under a lot of pressure... and I know that all she wanted to do was go "home", go back to Norway...but she couldn't... I was there in her life, she was stuck here, trapped...and I was the reason.

1973 - Fauske - Arctic - View from family cottage on Fjord

This is the place my parents nearly drowned when a storm came out of nowhere and hammered thier boat, nearly smashing it on rocks and dragging it out to sea.

1973 - Fauske - Arctic - Dad, Djr

Dad took me out on the Fjord one day, fishing; I had this funky little rod my Grandfather had given me. Managed to catch this fish - memory: almost being pulled out of the boat by it.

1975 - Fauske - Arctic - Djr, Grandad

Apparently Grandad wasn't very fond of children, but was very fond of an afternoon snooze. Everyone in the family was amazed that he tolerated me...particularly when I would do this whilst squealing "wake-up! wake-up!"

1975 - Newcastle - Djr

I can vividly recall hours and hours of playing with this "action garage". I loved it.

1975 - Newcastle - Djr

Fisher Price days. I remember spending many mornings in this bed, before shcool, sitting between mum and dad with a small cup of tea (5 sugars) and making up stories and speaking them into dad's work dictaphone.

1975 - Heaton - Newcastle- Shaun, Djr

I spent the first 9 years of my life in this house. It was not until I was in late twenties that mother revealed the macabre history of the place. My parents moved in before I was born, and only weeks after the previous owner had died. She had been a respectable lady... except, well, she used to look after old people. So nobody asked questions when some of them died. Old people die. The house was huge. Lots of rooms. Dark passageways. I have strong memories of one room in that house which always had a presence about it. Once, when I tried moving into it as my bedroom, I suffered weeks of shocking nightmares (a dandelion seed floating down an eerie street, all alone, suddenly I am one sphere surrounded by a billion other spheres, a great curtain is drawn open to reveal a monstrous figure...a god? Lying 'awake' yet seeing things coming closer towards me. Waking up screaming to see a big black cat sitting on a table staring at me; a later search found no cat and no open windows.) My mother told me that after the previous owner died, the authorities found locks on the outside of the doors to the rooms where she'd been "looking after" old people. Makes you wonder.

Shaun was the son of Lesley, or Sexy Lesley as my Dad always called her.

1975 - Oslo, Norway - Oystein, Djr

I love the "grazed knees" on this shot.

1975 - Caroline, Djr, Ian Elder

My 5th birthday. Caroline lived a couple doors down the road, with her older sisters Lyndsey and Denise.

Ian lived a few streets away; I remember he was an amazing artist... and he had this really cool game where you shot at a robotic spider with an infra-red gun...it you were acurate enough the spider's eyes would flicker red and then the spider would "die".

1976 - x,x, Djr, Lee Bouch, Lyndsey.

My 6th birthday.

1976 - Dad, Djr and 1st Dog (Debbie)

My dad's business was doing very well. He'd moved into the top floor of a modern office building in Heaton, had a small crew of auditors working for him. They used to sit at desks with these hand-cranked adding machines, huge trails of thin paper spiralling out from fat reels filled with the black and red inked audit trail of their calculations.

I can remember spending time there...photocopying my Beano and Dandy magazines, which was a waste of company resources, and did annoy my dad, but I was transfixed by the process. I remember the ink was thick and black and often leave sticky residue on any sheets of paper that came into contact with it before it had dried properly.

There was another company sharing the office floor, seperated by metal partition walls and frosted glass windows. The receptionist of that company liked me and used to let me sit under her desk.

1976 - Newcastle -Mum, Debbie

This is the conservatory that linked the back of the house to the garage / coal bunker. It was filled with tomato plants, and I can remember picking them off and eating them with a sprinkling of salt...I still love that taste now.

1976 - Newcastle -Djr

My first day of school. I've got quite good memories of this time; I can remember collecting bubble-gum cards with sports cars on; can remember making a christmas calendar with macaroni glued onto a dairylea cheese lid and sprayed gold; I can remember meeting Richy L, and him being caught stealing pencils...

It's around now that I decided I was going to become an astronaut.

1977 - Newcastle -Caroline, Djr

My 7th birthday. I've started wearing glasses.

1977 - Newcastle

Denise, Janet, x, x

x, Gary Powers, Djr, Lyndsey, Caroline

Gary is wearing a Bionic Man t-shirt.

The big fat lump in the background, Janet, became a malign force in my life... she and her older friends would "capture and torment" me in some quite gruesome ways...

I went through several sessions of therapy in late 2004, and all of this came out...I was shocked to discover how much damage those events had done to me. Quite a powerful experience.

1977 - Lincoln - Dad

I took this photograph with my first camera. I've got fantastic memories of this trip to Lincoln, mum and dad together, and all of us having a good time. There was some kind of magical river pagent, with colourfully lit barges floating down at night. And I remember standing beside the cathedral at night, marvelling at it all lit up and aglow with amber light.

This is the year STAR WARS came out. I had just turned 7, or was just about to.

Dad and I stood in a queue for four hours, outside the Odean Cinema on Northumberland Street. This is when the cinema was still one huge cinema, before it was carved up into smaller seperate screens. There was an advertisement for Hamlet cigars, with the usual music, but it had shiny robots on an assembly line... and then Star Wars happened. It totally rocked my world. When the film finished Dad just sat there. The people filed out as new people started filing in. I looked at Dad, Dad looked at me and smiled. Then the lights went down and we stayed there and watched the film again. Coming home that night, I remember mum wasn't there... but Dad and I sat up late, talking about the film and about the world of science fiction. I don't think I can remember ever being so close to my Dad as I was then...or rather, I don't think I can remember ever having such an open and intimate conversation with him...certainly not until I was well into my 20's.

1977 - Lincoln - Car Show

I loved my new camera and I was fascinated by these fantastic cars from the past. Not a bad shot for a 7 year old.

1977 - Lincoln - First Girl I ever fancied.

I remember she was staying in the same place as us, and she invited me to her party... I remember running after her across some kind of parkland, gentle green slopes.

1978 - Newcastle - Denise, Caroline, Lyndsey

The three sisters. Rothbury Terrace, Heaton. I remember having to stay with them sometimes, whilst mum "went away". There were other times when I had to stay with Mike & Marion, or other places whilst mum was not around.

If you look where the dog (Debbie) is, that is where my best friend "Gary Powers" climbed up one time to retrieve a ball...suddenly he just vanished. Dropped out of sight. He had actually fallen through the corrugated roofing. I ran through the house, down the conservatory and into the garage to find him sprawled on his chest across the top of an old boiler that had thankfully stopped his fall.

1978 - Newcastle - Gary Powers

This is Gary on my Raleigh Striker... a bike I absolutely adored when I first got it. Dig that back pedal brake... you could built up massive speed then back-pedal and skid for ages.

1978 - Newcastle - Corner Shop

This is the Corner Shop where I would spend my pocket money on sweets; it was run by a guy called Colin.

24 years later, in 2002, I popped round and found the shop was still there; to my amazement, Colin was still working behind the counter...I stood there for a moment, staring at him...he frowned, looking back at me, and slowly recognition spread across his face and he said "David?"

I was floored. I hadn't seen him since I was 8 years old.

1978 - Portugal - Djr

This represents a fantastic time for me. Mum, Dad and I flew to Portugal for a summer holiday. I've got dozens of memories of the hotel (re-arranging furniture into a space-ship), of the swimming pool, of the crazy-golf... of going into the town with Dad and walking into a sardine factory and being given samples to try...

...but mainly the hotel; it was like a huge adventure playground, especially the nightclub downstairs in the basement.

1978 - Portugal - Djr

Not a good look. I remember spending the whole night on the dancefloor. I loved it. It's around now that I get into Gary Numan and Tubeway Army; a guy lived across the street from my parents house who worked in a record shop and he brought me Replicas album, and later the Pleasure Principle (that might have been 1979). I was totally hooked on the eerie lyrics and alien sounds.

1978 - Portugal - Mum

It's almost unbelievable to think this woman is my mum. The size of her is beyond belief... I later learned that this weight gain was a result of the drugs the GP was feeding her for depression... GP? Sorry, I didn't mean to speak to politely... I meant to say whore-in-a-lamb-coat-for-the-pharmaceutical industry. Those drugs did nothing for my mum or her depression.

1979 - Portugal - Djr

We loved it so much we all went back again a year later. This was the year I made friends with Nelson, who worked on the door of the hotel. He used to write to me back in Newcastle but eventually we lost touch. This was his motorbike.