By Jake Rusby
As someone who has spent 45 years living with ADHD, Martin Caygill has never found it easy to settle down.
His diagnosis eight years ago answered so many questions for him – finally he understood his struggles at school as a boy, and his difficulty focusing on tasks.
It also pointed to why he had never found a place he felt happy to call home: growing up in a small mining town near Peterlee, Co Durham, where he spent the first three decades of his life, Martin’s feet always felt like they were itching.
Moves to Newcastle and Durham materialised, the latter where Martin, who lives with his beautiful black cockapoo, Winston, ended up spending weeks on end isolated as lockdown after lockdown hit the UK.
It was shortly after one such period of enforced isolation, in 2022, that he stumbled upon North Shields, a place that, despite only being born a half-hour’s drive away from, he’d never visited.
And as he speaks to me confidently, smiling, in his Fish Quay flat surrounded by history books and with Winston on his lap, his contentment in his choice is plain to see.
He says: “During and after Covid, I just felt so disconnected. I decided to up-sticks and settle somewhere else, somewhere by the sea where I could find a sense of belonging.
“When I found North Shields I knew that was where I had to be. I had visited Tynemouth and Whitley Bay but I didn’t even know the Fish Quay existed!
“There is a real sense of community in North Shields and so much going on: I can walk out of my flat and within minutes be at the beach on the Fish Quay; there are cafes, restaurants, pubs, and everyone is so friendly.
“I have always struggled to make friends – I consider myself an introvert. When I was young I could barely look at people.
“As soon as I moved into my flat, just above the Fish Quay, I started wandering around meeting people: at the fish markets, in the pub, on the beach with the dog. I now have a good few people in my life I met that way, and whom I consider good friends.
“It has completely changed my life. For the first time I feel I have become part of something bigger than myself. I finally feel like I have found my home.”
