From Scotland to England

So my parents were in Scotland for a time. I am not exactly sure how long, probably a couple of years at the most, enough time for my sister to go to school and make friends. My uncle had met my (soon to become) Auntie in Middlesborough If I recall, they met at a dance. So my Uncle eventually moved to the North east to find work, my dad followed suit and so we all moved in to the desperate town of Newton Aycliffe.

I am guessing the year would have been 1970 or '71. My dad got a job in a place called UNDERGROUND MINING MACHINERY or UMM as we called it. It was Ill fated because of the miners strikes and pit closures that affected so many other businesses around the region, my dads work place would eventually become a victim of this.
They lived at 16 Wright Close, not far from the town centre. My family like so many other people were quite poor. I think in those days people had a little bit more respect for each other & there was more of an understanding between people as well as small communities, or maybe I am looking back with rose tinted spectacles. 

I remember my mother telling me that they had very little and my dad & my uncle had to strap a settee to the roof of a car to get it to the house and two more times with the chairs and other furniture, otherwise you carried it or threw it on the bus with you, hard times by all.

Finally we reach me. I was born on September 26th 1972 in Greenbank hospital, Darlington. The hospital is no longer there I am afraid to say. I believe my mother went on the bus to the hospital in labour pains, again I am grasping at what I remember being told. 

 There are stories that I turned blue through a lack of oxygen and was in intensive care for a little while, and they feared I may have brain damage, so you can imagine the jokes from that alone from those who know me today.
I have always struggled wondering what I am in terms of ethnicity, my parents are both Scottish so all my DNA is Scottish, yet I was born in England, so you say I am English. This is never easy growing up in a household where they don't warm to the English very much at times, and sometimes I felt more Scottish than English, strange.

My early memories of living in this house or street was playing on 'space hoppers' if you ever remember them or heard of your parents talking about them. They were huge inflatable rubber balloons that you sat on, and they were shaped like rabbits, and the rabbits 'ears' acted as handles you could say. I remember an episode when I was three or four years old and I asked my mam if she wanted anything from the shops in the town centre. I also told her I was going to get beer, she didn't believe any of it of course and just humoured me, but of course I wandered up the town with a penny to try and get some beer. Luckily I was spotted by a neighbour of my mams who brought me back safe and sound thank goodness. I like to think this is the moment where I learned that I enjoyed wandering & going places, something I still do today, I am usually wandering somewhere or other, and usually without much point.