BOB Owen, of Almondbury, turned 70 this month and he has been living in Huddersfield for almost half his life.

He's a quiet-spoken retired academic who still wears his North-East accent with pride.

But he has just published an autobiography focused mainly on his early life, Two Rooms And A View, that makes his native South Shields just over 100 miles up the road seem like a totally different world.

It certainly was a different world that he was born into in April 1935. He was a surprise baby who came along 16 years after his sister Addie and life was tough as his father deserted his mother Mabel for another woman.

These were the years that saw economic depression slip into war. The North-East was badly affected, as witness the 1936 Jarrow hunger march to London.

They must have been especially tough for Bob and his mother Mabel who found themselves renting a dingy two-room upstairs flat in cobbled Reed Street for 7s 6d a week (37p).

No running water, tap, sink, toilet and coalhouse shared with two other families and Bob built up his muscles carrying the clean water up the stairs and the slops down in a pail, while outside a torrent of workers passed on the way to or from the shipyard.

It sounds uncannily close to the caricatures that comedians like to present of past hardships but half a bread bun immersed in pork fat really was a treat for Bob, who remembers long hours spent waiting in court for the maintenance that his father should have paid his mother.

Come the war, and a child of six was left wondering and unable to understand why people dropped bombs on each other but at least there was a new game hunting for shrapnel and craters after air raids - and he was evacuated to Cumberland.

The book title is a tribute to his mother's stubborn insistence on seeing the good side. Yes, they had only two rooms but look at that view!

And some of that optimism must have rubbed off - as when the young Bob started "investing" the 6d (5p) for his school lunch on a horse via a bookie's runner!

Things stated to improve when Bob met his wife Angela when he was 19. They've been married for almost 45 years.

It took years of night classes and home study to get where he is today. He moved around the country. Finally, he got a day-release course over two years to study for a teacher's certificate at Huddersfield College of Education (Technical).

Bob is a passionate supporter of this unique institution and first moved to Huddersfield to become a principal lecturer there in 1972.

He tells a lovely story of his wife Angela becoming a student there without letting anyone know of their family links - until the day she forget her purse and had to borrow money from him in the middle of the refectory!

Later still when the 1974 election was called Harold Wilson, then leader of the Opposition, called the college asking for secretarial assistance while he stayed at the George Hotel.

Angela was chosen, got a letter of thanks for her work and a handsome gratuity which she turned into her "Harold Wilson" coat.

Three years later the college became part of the Polytechnic and in 1978 he was appointed head of business and management at Dewsbury and Batley Technical and Art College (renamed Dewsbury College from 1987) and later became an associate principal.

Bob and his wife have lived in Almondbury since 1972 and their sons, Michael and David, were educated at Almondbury schools and Loughborough University.

Only the last few pages of the book refer briefly to his later life. But the book is self-published and printed by Yorkshire Arts Circus at Glasshoughton. The book's front cover is by Brian Hatton, of Beaconsfield Galleries, Huddersfield from two old photographs.

* Copies of the book (£14.95) from the author on 01484-533041, or from Ottakar's bookshop in Huddersfield.