How to handle available time is one of the biggest problems we face every day.

Days, weeks, months, years, the established calendar slots rarely seem to fit what we want to do or would like to do. Sometimes 24 hours can feel like a lifetime. More often a week, month or year seems to have gone by so quickly there is nothing to show for it. Perhaps the years that seem longest are the years of change or transition when a geographic, career, or other significant move raises all sorts of difficulties that have to be sorted out. My last year at school, my final year at university, both at the time had felt as if they would never end.

I now saw that what would be the last year of my Westminster Press traineeship was likely to be another draining experience where a lot of organisational strands had to be pulled together in a situation where overall objectives were far from clear. Fortunately, I have rarely asked myself how many such years may lie ahead. Too often I am a short-term person. In any crisis situation, I think “at least I’ll have to go to bed sometime”.

In the aftermath of Stephen’s death I tried to reinforce my contact with Florence and John by letter and telephone. As aspects of my work as a journalist became frustrating, and my social life showed no sign of producing a longer-term relationship, I began to think of looking for a job at home in Ireland, now that I had some training and experience to offer.

The successful job application that would bring me back to Ireland from the North of England was made from York, not South Shields. To my great surprise, I was asked by the Westminster Press to move again at the end of my second year, to the newsroom of the Yorkshire Evening Press where, I was told, I would be expected to take a particular interest in coverage of the newly opened University of York.

Because the distance between South Shields and York was a good deal longer than that between Blyth and South Shields, it took a lot more time to find what looked like suitable digs for my scheduled starting date. On the other hand, my decision to live as a lodger, rather than as the tenant of a bedsitter or flat, meant I had no furniture to look after and, once I had found a new address, could put everything into my car and drive straight to it.

My year in Blyth had been a rapid learning experience and I had felt the warmth among the people for which small mining communities were famous. In addition to the particular pressures of evening paper work, I had found South Shields a more difficult town in which to find my place. It was bigger and busier, the newspaper seemed less important and people seemed less friendly. My twelve months experience of York would lead me from time to time to ask the question, “Is England a country that gets less friendly as you move South?”.

Two separate but related incidents may have been determinants in my decision to distance myself from news reporting and to seek to return home.

Both happened in the summer months when the North Sea gets warm enough for bathing and South Shields acquires the air of a holiday resort. Westoe beach and the Marsden grotto and its adjoining cliff walks look more like adventure playgrounds than exposed sites for hardy walkers.

One evening, I was just leaving the office when the chief reporter suggested I drive along the cliffs on the way to Erskine Road to see what was happening. The day’s last round of police and ambulance calls had brought reports of a lifeboat launching and some kind of rescue in progress. It did not sound very serious. As I was in any case the reporter on overnight duty, if there was anything in the story, would I be sure to send some copy to the Northern Echo?

Sure enough, as I neared the grotto I saw some signs of activity along the cliff so I parked the car and headed across to see what was happening. At the entrance to the lift down to the café I met a police officer who I knew, obviously preparing to leave the scene. I asked what had happened and was told that two boys out looking for seagull eggs had got trapped on a ledge by the tide. When they were spotted the lifeboat had been called out. Before the lifeboat could reach the scene, the water had dropped sufficiently for two policemen to reach the boys along the beach and to escort them to safety. I got the names of the two boys who had apparently come up in the lift and gone home.

Satisfied that I had the information I needed I headed on for my evening meal with the Svedens before going back to the office to redo the routine calls and to write up the cliff incident, telephoning a shorter report to the Echo for possible use in the following day’s paper.

All hell broke loose in the newsroom the next morning. The main front page story in the Newcastle Journal, complete with a picture of the cliffs, was of the dangerous rescue of the two boys by two South Shields constables, “police heroes”. The Chief Reporter and the Editor both wanted to know how I could have missed such a great local story.

As far as I was concerned there was no such story to miss. I could see that Clive, the Journal’s hyperactive local reporter, had written-up the incident in a big way, but I had been there, had talked to people on the spot, and the facts were that no lives had been in danger and there had been no risk involved for either the lifeboat or the police. Neither Chief Reporter nor Editor would accept any version of the incident meriting less than the day’s front page and giving due credit to the efforts of the police. When the Chief Reporter telephoned the local police superintendent he naturally found him delighted with the Journal’s coverage of the story. He would be glad to give the Gazette any additional information they would like and to arrange for the two officers concerned to be available for photographs.

Reluctant and still protesting, I was sent down to the police station with a photographer to see the superintendent and to come back with the real story. I did as I was told and that evening’s Gazette confirmed the Journal’s morning report. My confidence in the objectivity of the press had, however, received a shaking.

A month later, when Florence was visiting South Shields for a week – Mrs Sveden had kindly offered to make the spare room available and she and Florence had immediately become friends – a reporter making the calls in the newsroom said that the lifeboat had just rescued someone from 13 Erskine Road. “Isn’t that where you live?” she asked me. “Yes, sure,” but such a report seemed impossible and ridiculous.

The Sveden’s telephone was engaged. “I’ll find out what’s happening and ring you”, I told my colleagues as I ran from the newsroom.

In the kitchen at Erskine Road I found Florence and Mrs Sveden sitting drinking tea but looking rather sheepish. Apparently they had gone down to the beach to bathe and when they were in the water realised that because of the tide or current they could not get back to the beach. I knew Florence was no swimmer but that she floated on her back with great confidence. I had often smiled at the way she could lie in the water flapping her hands and splashing with her feet, usually carefully protected in white rubber beach shoes. Mrs Sveden, apparently, swam in a similar fashion and the pair decided their only option was to stay floating, to keep close to each other, and to try to attract attention without panicking. Someone on the beach saw the situation, and called the lifeboat. The two women were picked up quickly, both highly embarrassed by the fuss and unaware of the real danger in which they had found themselves.

I telephoned the office to report what had happened and to ask that the rescued pair be saved the further embarrassment of being named in the story. I was still in the kitchen listening to all the details of the afternoon’s excitement when there was a ring at the front door. Who should it be but Clive, following up the lifeboat report on behalf of the Journal. Invited to join in the tea-drinking in the kitchen, he agreed, “as a friend”, that he would not report the incident in headline terms.

Responsible journalism is vital to the health of any society. If the vocation of responsible journalists seemed difficult in a relatively calm backwater of the press world, as exemplified in Britain’s North East in the 1960s, how much more difficult must it be in the front lines of battle, be they politics or war?

Read more: 1964 – Dublin Job Applications