Chapter 4

Parents

A winter’s afternoon in 2022.  Some snippets of conversations in our house.

‘It’s chilly; can you flick the heating on?’

‘Shall we eat out the freezer tonight?’

‘Have I got time to quickly jump in the shower?’

‘What’ve we got on ‘record’ to watch?’

‘Which car are you taking to the gym?’

Just a few of the many domestic questions bandied around modern UK households everyday; questions that would have been meaningless just two generations ago.  Pause for a moment and just think about it; the contrast between the living conditions our parents experienced growing up compared to those experienced by our children today is mind-blowing.

In the 1930s it was hard, but of course they didn’t realise it was hard.  By their standards it was just normal and, with the exception of gas for cooking and electricity for lighting, things were still pretty much the same in the house as they had been within ‘the family home’ one hundred years earlier.  Maybe they had a few more clothes, their shoes were more robust, and the extra room or two in the house meant at least they weren’t sleeping alongside their parents. 

Today in 2022, along with millions of our fellow householders, we’ve just walked into a cost of living crisis; it’s going to hit hard those struggling on the lower end of the income scale and even cause unwelcome ripples to threaten the spending budgets of the majority of us sitting more comfortably in the middle.  A huge hike in energy costs is prompting debate on how to save on heating bills and what other areas of expenditure might have to be trimmed to make ends meet.  We don’t have to look far for the solution; just ask those folks who grew up in the Thirties and Forties. They might be getting on a bit now but our parents and grandparents know all the answers. 

No central-heating or double-glazing? 

Simple.  Don’t walk round the house in a T-shirt and barefoot.  Put on some woollies and slippers, shut the doors, and stop the draughts with a sausage-dog.  Okay, the coal-fire in the lounge wasn’t great for the environment, so let’s make a concession and allow the gas-fire or wood-burner to be used in the evening.  If it’s so cold that there’s frost on the inside of the windows, just have an extra blanket and sleep in your dressing gown.  The other energy costs didn’t amount to much; the stove used to go on a few times during the day to boil the kettle, then again for the daily cooked meal and once a week for bath-night.  There weren’t dozens of appliances, toys and sensors merrily guzzling through the kilowatts;  TVs, computers and phones didn’t exist in our parents’ homes so turn ‘em off for a bit and make do with board games or play outside.  Write a letter, or talk to each other, rather than sending a text or WhatsApp.

Want a pee in the night? 

Well it was only downstairs, across the cold kitchen floor, quietly opening the back door to reach the outside loo.  Depended how desperate you were.

Want to go somewhere?  We didn’t have a car so catch the bus.  What about getting to school?  Walk.  Everyone else did.

Can’t decide what to wear? 

Lucky you.  And so on…..

Somehow they ‘manned-up’ and womanned-up?  They toughed it out through the winters, which, thanks to global warming, were both colder and drier than they are today.

A concern:

I’ve had look at the Met Office Records.  For Nottingham, the average temperature has risen by 1 degree (9%) from 11 degrees since I was born and 1.2 degrees since 1940.  Average rainfall is now 7% higher than 1960.  Wow!  Try and tell me we haven’t got a problem.

They also managed to deal with a much more limited range of entertainment options; they never experienced the dubious joys of a MacDonald’s or a ‘Chinese’, satisfied with whatever was concocted from the seasonal bargains down the market or off the allotment.

And there wasn’t much of a safety-net.  If ‘Dad’s lost his job’ or ‘your sister’s got a fever’ there was nowhere to go other than savings, family or friends.  The ‘dole’ might have been a temporary lifeline but the Welfare State and NHS were still a decade and one big war away.  Inheritance rarely helped; families were large and home ownership limited so the best that might be ‘passed on’ was a favourite chair or sideboard.

It was into this environment that Mum and Dad were born and where they spent their childhood and teenage years; it helped shape them, established their values, and influenced some of their future behaviour and thinking.  The Depression and the War were the back-drop to the challenges families had to deal with throughout this period.  In comparison, for the last two decades, whilst our kids have been growing up, we’ve also had a couple of ‘big issues’ to deal with; the 2008/10 Financial Crisis and the associated economic impact driven by ‘austerity policies’, and the Covid Pandemic.

Some hard facts:

• Unemployment: Topped out at 15% in 1933 but averaged over 10% for most of the decade.

                                     Topped out at 8% in 2011 but averaged over 5% for the period 2008-15.

• War:  450,000 UK citizens died over the course of the six years of WWII which was 1% of the population.

• Pandemic: 154,000 UK citizens have so far died which is 0.2% of the population.

Observations:

Things were at least twice as tough.  And it’s the same generation, the same individuals, who’ve taken the biggest proportionate share.  Twenty to thirty-somethings bore the brunt of the war casualties and six decades later it’s the same people cohort, now in their eighties and nineties, who are suffering most from Covid.

Similarly, it’s been the lower social-classes who have been most impacted by economic slumps, war, and the pandemic so some things haven’t changed much.

From my fortunate perspective, it’s clear that our family has, over recent decades, eased into the more comfortable, less vulnerable, middle-class, able to weather some of the economic storms and avoid our children ever having to feel the cold breath of austerity or wonder at the frost patterns on the inside of the window panes. This is largely due to the foundation that my grandparents first created and my parents were then able to build on.

And how did they do that?  It’s time to look back at the first three decades of Mum and Dad’s lives.  What were they up to?  What drove them?  What brought them together?

It’s frustrating and a real shame but I just don’t know enough about Mum’s childhood.  She died when I was 17, before I was particularly interested in, and able to relate to her experiences, and I never got round to talking to Harry and Ethel about what she was like as a girl growing up.  Some stories stick in my mind but they only paint a patchy picture.  What is apparent is that her parents had made a small step up in society.  Whether it was through hard work and talent, good fortune or ‘who they knew’, both Harry and Ethel’s fathers had risen in their workplaces to the level of superintendents and supervisors.  Combined with the families’ prominence in the local Methodist and sporting scene, they had enough money in the bank and goodwill in the community to be able to get a mortgage on a semi-detached house on the Mansfield Road when they married in 1925.

Unusually, considering the large family size of the previous generations, when she was born in 1928, Mum was a destined to be a single child.  She’d often tell us when we were arguing, that we shouldn’t be horrible to each other and just be glad we’d got a brother or sister as she’d been quite lonely in her early years.  With their staunch Methodist background it was probably hard for her to find too much fun and the regime of church and Sunday school would have been an ever-present influence.  Four decades later, when I first started to properly get to know my grandparents, I could sense that they would have been strict parents; even though they’d mellowed over the years, they still had an air about them that ensured you stayed on your best behaviour.

I don’t think Mum’s parents actively tried to get rid of her but the story goes that Harry let go of her pram once in Arnold Park and it trundled down the slope into the boating pool.  Fortunately, she was pulled out in time, survived any further mishaps and was delighted when Arthur, Ethel’s brother, and Doris, who lived next door, had two daughters Joan and Maureen (Mo).  Having her younger cousins to play with and confide in during her teenage years no doubt helped.  Occasionally, she’d also meet her other cousins, Jean and the twins Mary and Sheila, who lived with Ethel’s elder brother, Horace and his wife, Edith, in nearby Leicester and the wider family would take an annual holiday to an east coast resort, usually Skegness or Mablethorpe, providing another opportunity for the cousins to spend time together.

There isn’t much to go on with regard to her school days.  Harry and Ethel decided that she should go to Brincliffe Secondary School for Girls rather than the mixed school in Arnold, meaning she had to catch a couple of buses each way rather than walk there and back with local friends.  Here she spent the next five years, which broadly coincided with War; a time of gas-masks, air-raid drills, worry, excitement, and rationing. No doubt some of her friends had fathers and brothers serving abroad but in that respect the family was fortunate.  Harry, working in the coal industry, didn’t get the call-up and spent the War as an air raid warden.  In my naivety, I didn’t quite appreciate the importance of protecting key industries and associated the ARP wardens with the killjoy image portrayed by Hodges, the character in ‘Dad’s Army’ who used to call Captain Mainwaring, ‘Napoleon’.  Nottingham suffered relatively lightly from bombing raids and I don’t think Mum and her cousins spent too many nights shivering in the Anderson Shelter in their garden.

No school reports have survived but her School Certificate, issued in 1945, just a month or two after VE Day brought the war in Europe to a close, shows a healthy proportion of credits and she was awarded a prize at their annual awards ceremony that year.  And she left her mark on the sports field being school champ’ at sprinting, regularly running for the school at the city schools’ championships, and was in the top few in the school at tennis and swimming.

There was no discussion about staying on at school when she reached 16, despite her academic performance warranting at least some consideration of her options.  College and careers just weren’t on the agenda for most girls and her parents would have been delighted when she found a job as a trainee typist with the City Treasury based at their offices at Shire Hall, High Pavement in the centre of the town.  She’d catch the bus into the city each day and throughout the immediate post-war period perfected her short-hand and typing skills, becoming an established and popular member of the typing pool.  And because there was already a ‘Margaret’ in the office she quickly became ‘Peggy’ to everyone other than her immediate family.

Into the office one day walked a 17 year-old boy with some typing that need doing for the Salaries Department, where he was temporarily working before starting an engineering apprenticeship.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he was teased by the girl typists but clearly not enough to prevent him making further visits and whatever he quipped in response on those early visits was enough to ignite a spark of interest in Mum.

Who was this lad, four years her junior and less than a year out of school?

The ‘catalyst’ for the marriage of Dud and Mabel, was born 17th December 1932, four months after their wedding.  Christened Donald Michael (he would be always known as Michael or more usually Mick) it was a tough time for the family living in a small rundown grimy terrace in The Meadows.  Dud lost his job on the buses and they moved briefly to London to seek work and stay with his brother Norman, but that didn’t work out and before long they were back in Nottingham again, staying in crowded and meagre housing in the St Ann’s Well district and scraping a living wherever they could.

After three difficult years they eventually had some better luck when Dud managed to get a job as a conductor with Nottingham Corporation Transport, which, being a local authority, offered a far more secure position.  Life for the little family brightened further when in late 1936 they managed to move to 3 Highfield Grove, a council house in the expanding, leafy small town of West Bridgford which, situated just over the Trent a few miles to south-east of the city, had a growing reputation as a desirable suburb with good schools and local services.  Four year-old Dad wouldn’t have appreciated it at the time, but Musters Road Infants School and its redoubtable head teacher, Miss Shatford, ensured that, despite the large class sizes and limited facilities, he and his later siblings would get an excellent start to their education.

Two years later they made another step, jumping at the opportunity to move to Exchange Road, next-door to family friends, Charlie and Doris Nightingale and their daughter Beryl.  It was a small semi-detached built only 10 years earlier with tiny walled area at the front, rather than a door opening directly onto the pavement, and a little garden and outside lavatory at the rear.  With three rooms upstairs and three downstairs it must have felt like a palace, especially to Mabel with her humble artisan roots.  And to celebrate, they managed their first family holiday in August 1939 when they stayed in a boarding house in Bridlington. They returned late on the Saturday 2nd September and the following day Neville Chamberlain told the nation that war had been declared on Germany.

So the next five years of Dad’s life played out against the same background as many other youngsters in the country; similar in fact to Mum but with a couple of notable differences.  Firstly his sister Joan, my godmother, was born in 1940, and secondly his dad, along with three of his uncles and Charlie Nightingale, the neighbour who was as good as a real uncle, all volunteered to fight and were despatched over the next year or two to ‘do their bit.’  Consequently his mum and aunts had to balance work and running the home; no wonder they turned to each other for mutual support and no wonder the cousins, including Beryl, the girl-next-door, became so close.  It all became rather real for them when Charlie was despatched to France and returned a few months later, haggard and exhausted from Dunkirk.  Soon afterwards, Charlie and Uncles Bern and Jim were on their way to North Africa and, in 1942, Dud was heading to India with the RAF.  Can you imagine it?  No news for weeks, the occasional letter, the rumours, the risk of bombing raids, the defeats of the early campaigns, the daily casualty figures, the dread of receiving an official visitor.  In fact it’s easy to understand where the phrase ‘no news is good news’ came from.  And all this on top of rationing, blackouts, and travel restrictions. 

It’s hardly surprising it fostered a ‘spirit’ and forged bonds between everyone; something those that lived through it have benefited from for the rest of their lives.  We’ve had nothing similar, although the Pandemic gave a taster on a much smaller scale for a couple of months: remember what is was like not being able to get loo-rolls or go out for a meal, or wondering who might ‘catch it?’   At least we could talk on Zoom and WhatsApp.  Hardly comparable to what they experienced and any residual community spirit from ‘Lockdown’ doesn’t appear to have been sustained particularly well now that restrictions have eased.

So Dad spent his war years surrounded by women.  The house was occupied not just by his mum and baby sister, but also, for extended stays, by ailing Grandma Charlotte and a trickle of visitors, refugees, or relatives or friends of people stationed in the area, who the local authority were paying Mabel to accommodate in the spare room.  Even next door it was just Doris and young Beryl.  It must have been a relief when he had completed his chores and baby-sitting duties to get out into the car-free roads to meet his mates and swop cigarette cards or play a bit of street-cricket or football.  Alternative entertainment, if that’s the right word, came at the local church where, for seven years, he was a choirboy.  He credited his lifelong taste for classical music to the enthusiasm and knowledge passed on by the choirmaster, an elderly eccentric formerly in charge of the choir at Southwell Cathedral.  Another outlet was the Boys’ Brigade, a youth organisation that tried to blend together the best bits of Church, Army and Scouts to keep teenage boys out of mischief.  Dud and his Uncle John had been volunteer-helpers so there was already a family link and he joined the junior section when he was nine.

Literally across the road from home was the South County Junior so he had no excuse for being late.  Despite being a ‘top’ pupil as evidenced by his school reports, prize-day cups and being placed a ‘year-ahead’, he failed to pass the entrance exam to get a scholarship to the fee-paying Grammar.  Over-confidence or some form of mild discrimination in the selection process?  The Junior School Headmaster persuaded him, and probably more importantly Mabel, to ‘do another year’ and try again rather than go straight to the local boys secondary.  This was undoubtedly a life-enhancing intervention and he duly passed the scholarship in 1944.

Meanwhile the men were facing different challenges.  Dud had sailed for India in a converted merchant troopship, dodging U-boats on the long haul around the Cape of Good Hope.  Here he would spend the next three years, partly based in Quetta on the NW Frontier, more recently known for being the gateway through which Al-Qaeda flowed back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The fear was that if Russia fell to Hitler, the land-route route to India would be open and the Axis troops could pour through.  Later in the War, as this threat subsided, he moved to Bombay where the RAF were protecting sea-routes to the Pacific and supplying air-drops to the troops fighting in Burma. Meanwhile Uncles Jim, Bern and Charlie were either being pursued by, or pursuing, Rommel across the desert as the campaign ebbed and flowed.  Jim was fortunate, by virtue of a temporary posting elsewhere, to avoid an action that formed part of the defensive battle to save Tobruk.  Fighting to hold a strategic pass outside the city, his Company, part of the Sherwood Foresters, was virtually wiped out.  Not only did they fight in Africa, Bern (8th Army 7th Armoured ‘Desert Rats’) and Charlie (Royal Artillery) were part of the push up through Italy and the advance across northern Europe and into Berlin.  Charlie was even awarded the Military Medal for what seemed like crazy, almost suicidal ‘determination and coolness in the face of heavy enemy opposition’ to secure a key objective.

To be honest, it seems a miracle that the wider family suffered no casualties throughout the five long years. Those fighting overseas avoided injury and returned with no obvious psychological damage and almost everyone on the Home Front avoided having their number on a bomb, doodlebug or V2.  They didn’t escape completely scot-free; Dud’s brother, Norman, had found the stress of the London bombing too much and moved to the relative safety of Nottingham and Mabel’s brother, Tom, had been injured during the raids on Liverpool and taken a while to recover.

The return of the men must have been strange. After three or four years away there were relationships to rebuild.  Joan, for example, hadn’t been old enough to know her dad and now, aged five, she had to get used to being told what to do by a stranger.  These days we’d be talking about counselling and mental health; back then they just had to do the best they could and try and find ways to make things work.  Fortunately Dud was able to return his job on the buses and Mabel retained some of the domestic work she had picked up during the War so, whilst finances were tight, they were never on the breadline.  They certainly weren’t flush and poor Dad had to surrender most of his earnings to his Mum when he finally packed in the Choir and took on a paper round.  Family holidays were a very rare event; they just couldn’t afford it and so Dad’s excursions beyond the local environs were largely limited to Boys Brigade (BB) camps on the Isle of Wight.

At the same time, he started at the Grammar school, a co-ed environment where the masters wore gowns, a house-system operated, there were science labs, playing-fields, a gymnasium and indoor toilets.  It also aspired to high academic standards and encouraged Dad to successfully strive to make the best of his abilities.  It wasn’t all study; he was playing cricket for the school, acting in school plays, playing a drum in the orchestra, going to parties and dances and continuing to be immersed in BB activities.  And football and cricket were back on the post-war agenda too, so regular visits to watch Forest at the nearby City Ground or summer days spent as a junior member at Trent Bridge filled any remaining time.  He’d also palled-up with Ted Mills who became his best mate and a decade later would marry Mum’s cousin, Joan, my other Godmother.

By 1948, Dad had acquired a proper bike, a Raleigh of course, with dropped handle-bars and three gears, the result of careful hoarding of the left-over proceeds from two paper rounds and a Saturday morning job with the local greengrocer.  This opened up his boundaries and, over the next few summers, he and a few friends would go on a number of cycle tours, staying in Youth Hostels along the way.

He’d also acquired a brother.  Roger was born during the infamously harsh winter of 1947.  I don’t suppose Dad had much to do with looking after the baby but Mabel and Dud, now in their forties, probably called regularly on the seven year-old Joan for help. The expanding family was also reason enough for Mabel to push successfully for a move to a bigger house; Dud could claim extra points on the ‘allocation’ system for his war service and had been promoted to Traffic Inspector on the buses which all helped.

In late 1948 they moved to nearby 8 Covert Road, a terraced, four-bedroomed council house with a front and rear garden, an inside bathroom and toilet, and a hot water boiler.  It might still be a council house but there was little stigma associated with such housing in those days; the housing shortage (where have we heard that before?) meant that they were sought after by professional and trades people alike.  It was comfortable and in a respectable new neighbourhood in respectable West Bridgford.  Exactly what Mabel had been aspiring too from her humble background.

Mabel might have been aspirational but neither she nor Dud were enlightened.  It was never in doubt that Dad would leave school when he was sixteen and get a job to help support the family and pay his way.  The entreaties of his Head Master fell on deaf ears when he told them, without Dad’s knowledge, that their son could undoubtedly get into university and have all his fees paid by the local authority.  It was fateful decision in more ways than one.

And so, with a cluster of distinctions and merits on his School Cert, he walked out of the school gates and into a junior trainee accountant position at the County Treasury that Mabel had spotted advertised in the Evening Post.  Six weeks in and he decided accountancy was too boring, announcing to both his parents and employer that he would be leaving as soon as he found a new job.  Fair play; I’m not sure I’d have risked it, or been prepared to contact my old Senior Master for advice.  The upshot was that he would aim for a nationally-sought-after engineering apprenticeship with the Ministry of Supply provided he passed the necessary exam and interview.

Here’s an interesting fact: the interview was in Leeds and Dud and Mabel couldn’t (wouldn’t?) afford to give him the bus fare.  He didn’t have enough himself as most of his £2-10s weekly salary was going into Mabel’s house-keeping purse.  If Aunt Florrie hadn’t kindly gifted him the necessary 10/- , he might never have made it.  As it was, it must have been a long day, travelling on four different buses each way and being grilled by a panel of six interviewers.  He was accepted, would start the following September and be based at the Royal Ordnance Factory in Nottingham which meant he would be killing time in the County Treasurers office for a few more months.

And, sometime during the early part of 1950, no doubt looking for something to do, he volunteered to take some documents from the Salaries Department up the stairs and along the corridor to the Typing Pool.  They were a ‘lively group’ (his words) and probably a breath of fresh air in comparison to his colleagues in the accounts office.  One of the girls caught his eye.

It seems to me, looking back, that throughout his school days he had been part of a wide circle of local friends and had, by virtue of wartime circumstances, a tolerant family and supportive teachers, been able to grow in confidence and discover and test his inherent abilities and social skills.  Contrast this with Mum who had lived in more comfortable circumstances but with a stricter upbringing, far fewer freedoms, less family exposure to the sharp end of the War, a smaller group of friends and had been channelled by parents and school along a traditional path followed by most lower-middle-class girls of the time.

Whatever the chemistry equation was that linked them together it was sufficient to overcome a few notable differences.

I can imagine Harry and Ethel raising their eyebrows: ‘Four years younger?  Father works on the buses?  Council house?  Church of England?  Giving up a secure job to do an apprenticeship??’

Similarly Mabel: ‘You’re too young to be going serious, let alone with a 21 year-old woman.  You’ve nothing to offer to someone with her background.  You can’t be off gallivanting all the time, you can’t afford it!   And anyway, you still need to help with your brother and sister.’

Whatever family and friends thought it didn’t matter.  By the time Dad started his engineering apprenticeship in September 1950 they were an item.

The first year at the ROF went well; he enjoyed the practical stuff and did well in the exams but then only taking home half the pay he would have been earning at the Treasury must have niggled. Fortunately though he’d had his eyes opened by a conversation with a fellow apprentice who had alerted Dad to a limited opportunity for the keenest students, one that usually only applied to those joining at 18 having completed their sixth-form.  Apparently, if management agreed, it was possible to go for a higher level qualification which, if he passed would be a gateway to a university engineering degree course sponsored by the Ministry.  His new bosses supported his request and suddenly the exams, scheduled for September 1951, became his new focus.

Well, not quite.  Despite parental concerns, the relationship with Mum was growing stronger; whether it was parties, walking and cycling trips, or family events, they were apparently inseparable.  Mum was even prepared to wile away Saturday afternoons watching Dad’s rather average performances for the ROF Toolroom cricket team and put up with his commitment to his officer role in the BB.  After a couple of years, it also seemed like Harry and Ethel had accepted the romance was there to stay and had invited Dad to accompany the family on their annual holiday to the East Coast or Bournemouth, and a three day excursion to London that took in the 1951 Festival of Britain.  It probably helped his cause that, because he was working at the ROF, he was exempt from National Service and wasn’t ‘sent away’ for a year to fight ‘commies’ in Korea or insurgents in Malaya or Kenya.   Another factor that no doubt influenced his gradual acceptance into the Anthony and Pinder clans was when his mate Ted Mills started going out with Mum’s cousin, Joan, who lived next door.  Ted fell into the ‘suitable’ category as a potential husband; training as an accountant, and an accomplished musician with respectable parents.  The Redhill parents must have concluded that Dad was at least aligning himself with the right sort of people.

He passed the initial exams at the ROF and, with the sponsorship of the Ministry behind him, was accepted onto a Mechanical Engineering Degree course at Nottingham University.  All he then had to do was pass his final Intermediate exams in the summer of 1953.  These were a bit like super-hard A-levels on four subjects followed by a day in London to take practicals which clashed with that year’s holiday in Cromer.  It must have been stressful; interrupting the holiday to travel there and back on the train and a couple of critical experiments to conduct that could determine his future.  No wonder Mum went along for moral support.

He passed, comfortably in the end, describing years later, this performance as his best ever academic achievement.

So, he became the first in the family, including all the cousins, to go to university.  Exceptional.  Especially back in the fifties and especially via the apprentice route he’d followed.  I’m not sure Mabel and Dud quite got their heads around this achievement, needing to balance being, presumably, proud parents with their inherent incomprehension that he’d be 25 at least before he would start a proper job and worried that they’d lose his potential income when the apprenticeship finished.

One person who definitely was happy was Mum; it meant they had a path to follow, the prospect of a professional career for Dad, and a timetable that, they agreed, should enable them to get married as soon as he graduated in the summer of 1956.  She would be 27 and must have felt that a six-year courtship was long enough.

Their parents had to face facts: it was going to happen.  The two sets of parents were wary of each other and on the occasions they got together they never really gelled.  Dad believed it was a case of ‘mild snobbery meeting mild inverse snobbery’.  Being reminded of Harry’s sporting pedigree, Ethel’s Women’s Guild credentials and their rather dour Methodist demeanour didn’t sit well with the more down-to-earth attitudes and experiences of Dud and Mabel.  Mum deciding to become confirmed in the Church of England also sent ripples across both households, especially after Dad had tried, and concluded Methodism wasn’t for him.  Everyone else thought they were a great match, especially his siblings Joan and Roger, her cousins including Joan and Mo, along with the rest of their friends.  So in the year that Elizabeth II was being crowned, Everest was being climbed, and just before Dad celebrated his ‘21st’, they got officially engaged.

For three years, Mum was the main source for any saving, social and holiday expenditure.  Dad, whilst still receiving an income from the remaining two years of his apprenticeship, which continued to run in parallel with his studies, rather like a dual track sandwich course, made little contribution.  Fortunately he won a scholarship to fund his studies for the final year but the cessation of his apprenticeship salary squeezed his income further and no doubt caused grumbling at home.  At least Dud had been promoted to Divisional Inspector which presumably meant a small salary rise and Mabel was supplementing her cleaner-role with lunch time work as a dinner-lady at a local school.

The lack of funds at least ensured he was fit; with no motorbike, like some of his new university friends, and reluctant to pay the bus fare, he’d cycle the six miles each way to the campus every day.  And there wasn’t much time for living it up as a student; a full-on engineering degree meant days were filled with lectures and practicals and he still had to keep on top of the apprenticeship. On the upside, he wasn’t going to be wiling away time and money in the union bar or local hostelries; any spare time needed to be focused on ensuring Mum didn’t feel too neglected.  He palled-up with a small group of other engineering undergraduates and, over the three years, this little gang formed strong bonds and their respective girlfriends got to know each other through the occasional party or annual Engineers Ball.  Dad stayed in regular touch with Alan, Eric, and Derek over subsequent years as they each followed their own career paths around the world and, only recently, they held a 60-year reunion at Bywell.  And during this period my parents seemed to have entertained themselves, on the cheap to try and stash some money away.  They’d occasionally go to the theatre or a concert, but more often it would be ‘the flicks’ or the Valley Road tennis courts where Mum would usually give Dad the run-around.  Surprising to me, considering how they later dropped any hint of devoutness, was that they were keen churchgoers and regularly attended the Anglican Church in Arnold.

It was a time when American music was beginning to threaten the established order:   Blues and Rock’ n ’Roll were starting to compete for air-time on the radio but it wasn’t Dad and Mum’s thing.  They missed out on the coffee-bar and juke-box culture so were never found jiving to ‘Rock Around The Clock’, Elvis or Cliff or smooching to Fats Domino’s ‘Blueberry Hill’.  They were from the ‘easy-listening’ class bought up on Sinatra, Andy Williams, Billy Cotton and Shirley Bassey or whatever else they would pick up from the BBC Light Programme.

1956 must have been a real whirlwind.

To start with there was a thesis to research and produce; it contained 25,000 words and numerous charts and tables.  Luckily Mum, who had spent time at evening class improving her typing and shorthand to world class levels, did a great job producing the final document. She, too, undoubtedly took the lead on the wedding organisation, leaving Dad to focus on the small matter of his Finals.  His revision couldn’t have been helped by the return, due to ill-health, of Grandfather Hugh from his self-imposed exile; he took up permanent residence with the family until he died the following year. Happily this enabled something of reconciliation with great-grandmother Susan and an acceptance back into the family fold by his children.  By this time Joan, now aged 16, had left school and started a nursing course and Roger had reached the age of nine.

At least any worries about finding a job had been resolved.  He was tempted by Rolls-Royce in Derby to join the department working on nuclear propulsion units for submarines.  And at £750 a year it offered the comfortable financial start they had craved.  He just had to obtain a good Honours Degree.  With the wedding planned for the Saturday immediately after his Finals, the pressure of exams probably took his mind off any growing marital nerves.

Finally, after six years together, they were married on 9th June 1956 at St Mary’s in Arnold.  Mum had chosen Joan, and her cousins Mo and Judith as bridesmaids, whilst Dad’s university mate, Alan Taylor, was his Best Man.  The sun shone and all went well; if Mabel still harboured any doubts, she was hiding them under a wide-brimmed hat. The reception for about 70 guests was held at Mapperley Tea Rooms and, by early evening, they were on the train to Bristol, staying overnight at the station hotel by Temple Meads, before continuing onto Woolacombe the next day where they spent a week on honeymoon.

Needless to say Dad secured a 2:1 Honours degree, thanks, in no small part, to the encouragement and support Mum had provided.  She accompanied Dad to the graduation ceremony, and, perhaps surprisingly, so did Mabel, who continued to live up to her contradictory persona.  A proud, ambitious, outspoken mother who couldn’t quite bring herself to shed the principles and minor prejudices she had lived with throughout her life.

The first phase of their married life nearly had disastrous consequences for me.  With Dad based at RR in Derby, they rented a flat in the suburb of Kedleston whilst looking for place to buy.  Mum applied for a role at RR and, thanks to her experience and increasing confidence, was catapulted straight into the role of secretary to the Chief Engineer of the Rocket Section.  This brave new world was far removed from the predictable days at the County Treasury but she soon settled in, quickly gaining an appreciation of a technical world she’d never encountered before.

They made an offer for a new house being built on an estate just outside the city and put down a deposit.  Just think about it: if this had gone through, I might have been born in Derby and ended up as a Rams supporter.  The very thought sends shudders down my spine.  Thank God, the build was delayed and, on one of their frequent bus trips back to Nottingham to visit family or friends, they noticed the growing housing estate at Bramcote Hills, five miles to the west of the city.  They retrieved their deposit from the Derby builder and slapped it straight down on 6 Ranmore Close, Bramcote Hills.

It didn’t take them long to settle in: Dud put up shelves and curtain rails; Florrie made the curtains; Dad sorted out the garden and Mum turned it into a home.  And after six months of catching the bus, or grabbing a lift from another Rolls employee who lived nearby, they acquired a car.  It wasn’t far to the tennis courts in the village and the fledgling community association helped foster social contacts.  Quickly they formed friendships with their neighbours, a number of whom were young professionals and academics all in the same boat.  Some of these friends have remained close to the family throughout our lives, occasionally playing a role at some key family moments.

Everything was rosy, apart from a spat with Mabel, who had unrealistic expectations of how much they could and should contribute to Roger’s school fees, and went into a self-imposed huff for several months. They went walking in Derbyshire, holidayed in The Lakes and could afford to go to the theatre and concert hall more regularly.  The job was working out well for Dad, immersed in the complexities of safely operating small nuclear reactors, and Mum was enjoying her work with ‘The Rocketeers.’  Remember that Sputnik, successfully bleeping away in earth orbit in 1957, had effectively kicked off the space race and heightened Cold War tensions so the Rolls-Royce rocket engines that could launch ICBM’s and future satellites were deemed ‘top priority.’

Mum, however, had another ‘Top Priority’ and, late in 1958, needed to hand in her notice. 

I was on the way!

Meanwhile….

The aliens on Beta Ariedes, routinely scanning the stars and systems of the Milky Way, had noted atomic explosions and a first launch into space taking place on a small planet circling around an unremarkable star on one of the outer arms of the galaxy.  This triggered an alert and two junior researchers were tasked with monitoring the behaviours of the main life-form on the planet.  Their random sampling protocol suggested they should take an extended look at the inhabitants of Number 6 Ranmore Close.