Chapter  9

My Generation

The three of us were children of the sixties and seventies, growing from toddlers to teenagers over the two decades.  Quarrelling, teasing, laughing, crying, playing, holidaying; sometimes caring, sometimes hating, sometimes jealous, sometimes proud, sometimes protective. Usually just indifferent.  It was the way it was and it wasn’t going to change.  Mum, Dad, me, Jackie and Rick.  And out there, scattered across various parts of Nottingham, circling in a supportive orbit, were our grandparents and a whole bunch of uncles and aunts.

It was easy to understand who our grandparents were but it took me a few years to figure out the how the ‘uncle and aunt’ thing worked.  Apparently Joan and Roger, Dad’s siblings were ‘proper’ ones, even if they seemed younger than all the others; in fact Roger was only 12 years older than me.  The other relatives were actually ‘second’ uncles and aunts and their kids were our ‘second’ cousins.  A family tree would have been useful but, as youngsters, any ‘hierarchy of relatives’ we created was more aligned with how interesting their house was, whether we’d get trifle for tea, or if we liked playing with our cousins.

Just to add to the confusion, we had family friends and neighbours who we also called aunts and uncles, although any children they had were clearly friends rather than cousins.  That rather quaint custom now seems to have died out; our children, along with most of their generation, now casually call our friends by their Christian names with no need to supplement it with any mildly respectful title.

Through a mixture of other chapters I’ve attempted to paint a picture of what life was like for the family throughout this period.  Here, in this chapter about family life, the focus is more on summarising the factual details of what was actually happening; the key moments that marked both the path our parents were taking towards middle-age and the milestones along the journey that we, their children, were moving along towards young adulthood.

So let’s flash back to 29th March 1959. 

After a trouble-free pregnancy everything was on target for a home birth but no-one had told me. I was two weeks late before I even started to stir and even then I wasn’t too keen, so after a battle of several hours, Mum and I were despatched in an ambulance to the maternity hospital in Peel Street.  Clearly the doctors didn’t want to prolong things any longer and I was yanked out with forceps, the clamp of one side missing my eye by a millimetre and leaving me with a small mark, I prefer to describe it as a scar, that took years to fade.

I arrived home to a hero’s welcome a couple of days later and within a few weeks had watched Forest win the FA Cup on a 9” TV from my cot in the lounge at Redhill and had been christened Peter Nigel (can’t say I’m a big fan of my second name and never got round to asking Mum and Dad why they chose it).  I was assigned three godparents, two of whom, just to keep it simple, were called Joan, and Ted was the other.  Apparently, Grandma Mabel was still sulking about the ‘Roger’s fees’ issue so she and Dud were conspicuous by their absence but luckily I proved too much of an attraction.  Within a month she’d calmed down and, with a bit of careful diplomacy from Aunt Florrie, normal relations were resumed.

Apparently, we went to Great Yarmouth for my first holiday; the only time I shared a full week’s holiday with accompanying grandparents.  Talk about making a fuss but no doubt Mum and Dad felt they needed a breather and a bit of help.  In fact, Dad was so keen for a break he jumped at the chance for a four week trip to the USA to be briefed on the reactor technology they were sharing with the American nuclear engineers.  It must have been a great experience for a young guy who had never been abroad before and who’d grown up in the austere pre-and-post-war Britain.  America was the land of big cars, big highways, big ideas and big confidence.  Managing to fit in trips to NYC and Niagara Falls, he must have felt bit sheepish relating his experiences to Mum on his return but countered it with the news of a promotion and a few more pounds in the monthly pocket.

They obviously enjoyed having a child in the family and by January 1961 they’d added another.  Jackie’s arrival was a smooth affair at home and didn’t rock the boat too much.  In fact, many of their local friends were in the same situation so baby-sitting rotas and dinner-parties with the ‘children asleep in the other room’ were the order of the day socially.  I also don’t recall being asked if I wanted a brother but woke up in September 1962 to find that one had appeared during the night.  Neither Mum nor Rick had experienced anything complicated and so were now a family of five.

Elsewhere within the wider family changes were afoot.

Just as we were getting to know our Aunty Joan she ran out on us, flying off in 1963 to Canada where a migratory flock of young nurses were heading at the time.  Some godmother!  She must have felt a bit guilty because, for the next five years, we received a steady stream of postcards, letters and gifts from the various parts of North America she managed to reach on her travels.  Whilst based in Vancouver she nevertheless managed to visit both the frozen arctic north and the dusty deserts and stunning beaches of California and Mexico. Sombreros, model totem poles, Mexican puppets, wooden carvings, and wonderfully warm, colourfully decorated, genuine Inuit children parkas all turned up in the post over those few years.  At primary school I even won a ‘Topic’ badge based on a ‘Canada’ project that was illustrated with cut-out pictures from magazines she helpfully sent over. 

Sadly she had to briefly return at short notice.  Mabel was killed in August 1965; knocked over by an uninsured, unaccompanied, unlicensed, driver whilst she was crossing the Derby Road on her way to have Sunday lunch with us.  Poor Dad was confronted by the aftermath when he drove down to check why she was late and then had to deal with all the consequences. Visiting the mortuary; telling Dud who was in hospital recovering from a hernia operation; getting hold of Roger who was away on BB camp and Joan on shift in an operating theatre in Vancouver, all the uncles, aunts and cousins and finally us, her grandchildren.  It must have been a very, very difficult afternoon.  The inquest verdict was accidental death, there being no conclusive witnesses or firm evidence, and the driver, amazingly, wasn’t prosecuted.

She and Dud had recently moved from their larger council house, which they could no longer justify, to a new, smaller one in the adjacent village of Edwalton.  It was in a quiet setting on the adjacent to the village green with a large garden and it was here that Dud and the teenage Roger would have to rebuild their lives.  I would never really remember much about Mabel; clearly an intelligent, ambitious, energetic woman from a humble background who had brought up the family through difficult times though not without causing some upset along the way with some of her entrenched viewpoints.

A month earlier we ourselves had moved from Ranmore Close, around the corner to a bigger house at Number 89 Balmoral Drive and, whilst we were away on holiday at a farm near Paignton in Devon, we’d had a gas boiler and central-heating installed.  (Check out the ‘Anchorage’ chapter for some of memories of Number 89).  It wasn’t long before the house had been extended, ensuring I acquired a bedroom to myself.

Mum and Dad were good at maintaining the family ties; it seemed like every weekend we’d be off visiting a different set of uncles, aunts and cousins, or there’d be some boring christening we had to sit through dressed up in our Sunday best.  Hardly surprisingly it was Ted and Joan (my other godparents) who we saw most of; it was better if they came to us because I preferred Mum’s trifle and sponge cake and I could be in control of whatever games we children were expected to amuse ourselves with.  My cousins were okay so we could put up with being asked to rub along with them for a few hours every now and then.  David, who I shared a sci-fi interest with, and who is now in charge of observatories in Arizona; Graham, who was into football and ended up marrying a Norwegian girl and now lives in Bergen; Kathy, a quiet little girl who became a nurse and, with her husband, have been devoted in keeping an eye on her ageing parents and ailing Aunt Mo.

The best relative who visited us  was definitely Roger; being 12 years older than me it was like having a cool big brother and he was always up for keeping us entertained.  Indoor games in the winter; football or cricket in the garden or park whenever it was dry.  Occasionally he’d take me to the ‘swimming baths’.  Barely out of the learner pool myself, it was awesome to see him dive off the top board and his leopard skin trunks really were something else.  Whenever we turned up at the City Ground, standing in our usual spot on the Bridgford End terraces, I always liked it best when he showed up; he knew the words to the songs  chanted at the Trent End and often helped explain the surrounding banter from people in the crowd.  Trouble was, by the end of the decade he’d become more interested in Jill, a local Bridgford girl.  Can’t say I blamed him; I seem to remember my ten-year-old self being smitten by her looks and bubbly, trendy, personality.  

They married in 1969 and Roger, recently graduated from Trent Poly’ with an engineering degree, was working for a company in Loughborough, 15 miles down the road from their Bridgford home.

Aunty Joan, meanwhile, had failed in her mission to find a surgeon, airline pilot, Mountie or lumberjack to marry and travelled on to Australia in 1966 where she took up residence in Sydney.  This really was another big step for someone from the council houses of Nottingham; rather than stay at home in familiar surroundings she had the courage to ‘get out there’ and see what the world had to offer.  It was a great time to be doing this and her chatty, outgoing approach fitted in well with the new exciting scene of the ‘sixties’, especially in Australia which was the place to be with its surf beaches, wide open spaces, great weather and young population.  She loved the music of the era, was a massive Neil Diamond fan and embraced the culture, both new (new culture - Australia ?) and ancient indigenous, and its rather limited history. The gifts and letters continued to arrive in the post; boomerangs, stuffed koalas, and, in pride of place, a book on surfing.  In 1968 she married Ken Kaehne, a designer from Adelaide, and the birth of their first child, my cousin Duncan, in 1972, finally put a stop to her wanderings.  Their daughter, Avril, was born three years later.

Things were changing for Dud too. The second wedding in 1969 (that was two wasted Saturdays in the same summer, made worse by the need to ‘look smart’ in my school uniform) saw him marrying Mim (Millicent) Ward, a friend whom the family had known for years and who had been helping him out with the house since Mabel had died.  A widow for twenty years, she was good for Dud.  Dad, Mum and Roger accepted her as part of the family but we never warmed to her children and grandchildren. There was nothing particularly wrong with them; we just didn’t gel or have other things in common and I think they probably felt likewise.  One of a number of positives was that Mim persuaded Dud to get a TV and a phone; he’d not felt the need until then which must have been tough for Roger. 

Seventies Family

By the end of the Sixties, family life had developed something of a routine.  We were doing well enough at school and were fully occupied during the weekday evenings with cubs, brownies or swimming club.  Weekends would be filled with cub football, riding lessons, watching Saturday morning cartoons or Saturday evening family shows, dire Sunday school and inevitable visits to relatives. (See Weekends Chapter).  We’d head for Cornwall for a fortnight in the summer, usually sharing the holiday with family friends, the Machins, who had lived next door to us in Ranmore Close.

Dad had moved on at work, transferring after ten years in the nuclear programme to a different path in industrial engineering, becoming part of RR’s internal consulting team.  He seemed to be held in high regard and it must have been exciting for Mum when she was able to travel with Dad on a visit to Canada where he was attending various Institute of Mechanical Engineers global conferences as a representative of RR.  They had to find her air fare but the rest of the two week programme was covered and they were well entertained by their hosts.  For a girl who’d also never been abroad, it was a great experience and included time in Montreal, Quebec and Toronto;  I can still remember the enthusiastic way she’d tell us about the fancy hotels, the big cars and Niagara Falls.  We had been placed in the custody of Harry and Ethel, who by then were in their late sixties, and they must have been exhausted by the time our parents flew home. 

Harry had retired the previous year, having changed jobs ten years earlier as the coal industry started to shrink, finishing his career as a sales rep with the Nottingham Oddfellows Building Society where his social contacts in the area were no doubt helpful in drumming up savings and mortgage business.  Dud too had handed in his cap and badge after twenty years of work on the buses, having eventually made it to District Inspector.  I wonder just how many times he had climbed up and down the narrow, winding steps of the green double-deckers of Nottingham City Transport; it would have helped with his cardio-vascular system but not enough to offset the damage being done by his steady consumption of John Player Specials.

Barely had we entered the new decade when we were hit by a crisis.  The ‘Holiday’ chapter records the details and my memories of Dad’s stroke, which struck whilst we were down on the beach on our annual visit to Cornwall.  Such a scary event caused major ripples to our lives for a few months; initially we were scared he wasn’t going to make it but once it was clear he was recovering well, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and did the best they could in the circumstances.  It was the first time I’d witnessed the rallying round that family and friends can turn on in an instant when the need arises.  I wish I’d thanked them at the time because, now that I fully appreciate the support they gave, I’ve missed the opportunity with most of them. He was in hospital for six weeks and had recovered the use of his speech, left arm and leg, so by the autumn he was back at work and we were nearly back to normal.  Lucky chap - after such a major  trauma aged 37 there might not have been too many takers for a bet that suggested he’d add on another 50 years. 

We rolled on into our teenage years, increasingly occupied with the academic and sporting challenges of secondary school.  Did I mention my sister didn’t join me, and later Rick, at the Bramcote Comprehensive?  She won a scholarship to Nottingham Girls’ High School and caught the bus into town every day whilst Dad moved on again into a new role within internal audit at Rolls. As other activities filled our weekends, we saw rather less of our relatives but the weekly Wednesday afternoon appearance of Harry and Ethel was still set in stone.  They would drive round from Redhill for tea, have good chat with their daughter, manage a fleeting glimpse of their grandchildren, before we became stuck into our homework, swim training or other activity, wait for their son-in-law to get home to say ‘Hello’, and then ‘once the traffic had died down’ would wend their increasingly nervous way home.  It was still great to see them but we children didn’t really give them the time they deserved.

It wasn’t a massive surprise when Rog and Jill announced they were emigrating to Australia with their one year-old son, Andrew, our cousin.  Tempted ‘Down Under’ by the TPI (Ten Pound Immigrant) programme and Joan’s description of the opportunities and lifestyle on offer, it was big step for them both to leave family, friends and the familiarity of West Bridgford.  There was clearly much heart-searching before they finally decided, not least because they realised they’d be relying on their remaining siblings; Jill’s sister Judy and Dad, to ensure the wellbeing of both sets of parents.  Roger recently mentioned how guilty they have always felt but that, every time he mentioned this, Mum and Dad would encouragingly always tell him they fully supported the move.  I wasn’t so impressed.  By the time they shipped out in 1973 I was 14 and enjoyed the ‘bridge’ to the adult world that Rog and Jill provided; they weren’t like our parents, they ‘sort of’ liked our music and humour, talked our language, and were always good fun.  Funnily enough, 50 years on it’s still the same; they could easily spend an evening over a few beers with our current gang of friends.  It wasn’t easy for them settling in; a different way of life and homesickness caused some difficulties but they toughed it out, had a daughter Donna, and slowly, increasingly happily, adapted to their environment. They lived for a few years in Melbourne before settling into a family home of their own in the Western Suburbs of Sydney.

As we moved into the second half of the decade, all seemed to be going well; we were doing fine at school and in our various hobbies; the grandparents were ageing gracefully; Dad was settled in his job, and Mum, who had just started driving, was keen to start looking for a part-time work challenge, now we were all at secondary school.   Sadly, she never got the chance; diagnosed in the late summer of 1975, she died the following February (see ‘Always’ Chapter).   I was 16, not mature enough to have had any of the conversations I wish we’d been able to have.  I’d pay a fortune just to be able to chat with her now.

Inevitably, it rocked the family unit.  Harry and Ethel’s religious faith was sorely tested and they suddenly became old before our eyes, the stuffing knocked out of them.  Deciding they could benefit both us and themselves by living closer, they sold the big house in Redhill and moved to Bramcote, into a maisonette a mile away from Balmoral Drive.  They did their best for a couple of years, helping with transport and occasional meals but increasingly it was us having to ‘keep an eye’ on them as their mobility and mental alertness dwindled.

Dud and Mim couldn’t really help much; neither drove and they too were suddenly starting to show the symptoms of deteriorating health.  Dud, always a heavy smoker, was starting to notice his breathing become harder and energy level dropping as invisibly, in his lungs, a cancer was getting a grip.  Mim too had issues, her shaking hands the early signs of Parkinson's.  At least Dad had some assistance in keeping an eye on the pair of them; Mim’s son and his wife lived nearby.

How Dad coped I will never know.  Friends and neighbours mucked in a bit; the wider family of relatives offered support, but of course Roger and Joan were powerless.  At least the hurly-burley of our active lives and the ‘escape’ provided by his work must have kept his mind occupied.

And the three of us?  We just bottled it up and got on with things as best we could, relying more on keeping busy and our friendship networks.  We muddled through the next six months, helped by Barbara, a cleaner, and learning quickly some rudimentary skills in the kitchen, on which aisle were the essential items for the weekly shop in the new Sainsbury’s in Beeston, and how the washing machine worked.  For the summer holidays, straight after I’d finished a slightly disappointing National Swimming Championships, we headed for Cornwall in a borrowed caravan.  It was inevitably a bit subdued but we followed up with a week near Lynmouth with the Machins in an old house on the cliff top and their company helped raise spirits. 

Eventually we found a routine, the initial anguish morphing into a constant ache.  Fortunately there was enough on our plates to stop us sinking.  As well as looking after ourselves there was school, exams and university applications to deal with.  In addition, after six months of going out with Alison Kirk, she had dumped me so, after a respectable few weeks to ‘get over it,’ I was ready to ‘get back out there’ and join in with the all the social activities of the sixth form gang (See Sixth Form Chapter).  Swimming commitments were easing but balanced by extra time on the cricket pitch, watching Forest’s encouraging push for promotion, or going to gigs.

Less than two years later the family had divided as we all split up, moving harmoniously onto the next steps in our lives.  And yet, at the same time, the family was maturing and reforming, incorporating some new and different relationships and linkages.  Nothing serious, it was just that we suddenly found ourselves heading in different directions, reuniting only for holidays or big family events.  I was in my fresher year at Birmingham when Dad was offered the chance to work for RR in Egypt, playing a senior role in a joint venture to make helicopter engines. This new challenge, combined with the ex-pat salary and generous assistance for travel and schooling for UK-based family members, was something we all agreed he should go for.  I was okay, I’d essentially left home anyway and was resident in Birmingham at university, but Jackie and Rick would need to look after themselves for another eighteen months before heading for university and a suitable sixth-form college respectively. 

Would it be allowed these days?  A seventeen-year old girl and her sixteen-year old brother living alone in the house for several months at a time without seeing a parent?   Okay, so Barbara, the cleaner, popped in regularly and a few neighbours kept an eye out but that was about it.  I couldn’t provide much assistance during term-time, uncontactable by phone and a two-hour bus ride away, and Dad, although reachable when necessary by telex using the company hotline, wasn’t easy to communicate with.  The phone line rarely worked and was bugged anyway so our usual method for exchanging information was by letters, sent back and forth in the company weekly courier bag and then forwarded on via the Derby office. He’d probably be accused of child neglect these days but we didn’t see it that way, and although both schools were aware of the situation they made no formal negative comment.  Harry and Ethel couldn’t get their heads around it; we tried to explain why we all thought it was good idea but they struggled to buy in, probably subconsciously concerned about who would help them if they too had a health crisis or domestic problem.  This was actually a fair point and, of course, also applied to Dud and Mim, but it couldn’t be a show-stopper.  If anything went seriously wrong, he’d come home until it was resolved.

Off he went, quickly finding himself immersed in the complexities and intrigues involved in doing business and making things happen in that part of the world.  There were a few fellow managers from RR Derby in the team and they became good friends, working hard, relaxing at the sports club and sharing accommodation in Cairo.  He returned home for August and we had a fortnight together at a B&B at Mawgan Porth in Cornwall; a third trip without Mum, but we were able to enjoy the holiday and it was a good chance for Dad to get his breath back after a hectic six months.  It was also an opportunity to confirm the plan for the coming year.  Jack had to pass her A-levels and find a place at a university and with Rick completing his final GSCE year, his choice of sixth-form college needed to be resolved.  Not an easy thing to do from a distance but between them the wheels were put in motion for him to take up a sponsored place at Atlantic College, a highly regarded international school on the south Wales coast near Llantwit Major.  He just had to pass the interview and get outstanding grades in his exams.  Oh, and don’t forget, they both needed to continue looking after themselves for another year; this was made a bit easier when Jack started driving, so shopping, for example, was less of an expedition.  Meanwhile, all I had to do was enjoy my second year at university, coming home occasionally to catch up with friends or link up with Naomi, and live off Chinese takeaways or whatever was in the cupboard or fridge.  I’d like to think I pulled my weight a bit more during the holidays but wouldn’t bet on it.

The end of our third year without Mum;  the three of us thought we knew the Plan for the following twelve months as we all gathered together for Christmas 1978. Wrong. We hadn’t anticipated the ‘Mavis’ factor.

New Relations

Let’s go back a decade.

When we first moved to Balmoral drive in 1965, our next door neighbours were Freddie and Mavis Fewkes and their two teenagers, John and Mary.  We got along well with them before they moved to Edinburgh and the adults remained in touch; we even stayed for a night with them in1973 en route to the Highlands for our holiday that year, although by that time, Mavis was a widow, Freddie having died of a heart attack the previous year.  After Mum died and Dad headed to Cairo, Mavis, an avid writer, wrote him a newsy letter about life in Edinburgh and they started corresponding.

On impulse Dad, whilst home during August, invited her to Nottingham for a couple of days ‘to catch up with her old Nottingham haunts and friends’ and we thought no more of it.  It was something of a surprise when Dad mentioned he’d been offered the opportunity to visit Edinburgh over the New Year.  Jackie and I had other plans but Rick accompanied him on the long drive north and they spent a few days there with Mavis, and had the chance to meet John and Mary before needing to return for Dad to catch his flight back to Cairo.  The weather meanwhile had deteriorated; snow, ice and blizzards meant the drive back was too risky so, leaving the hire car outside the office they caught the last train out of Edinburgh.  It was an epic trip, with several delays and diversions and I had to hang around, freezing at Beeston station for hours waiting to pick them up.  I can remember it now; snow on the roads and the car doors wouldn’t close properly as the locks were frozen. Now the interesting part, which really started tongues wagging, was the fact that Mavis had travelled back to Nottingham with them.  ‘Why?  What was going on?’  I speculated with Jack, Rick, girlfriend Naomi and Sally, our other teenage confidant from next-door-but-one.  We didn’t have to wait long for the answer.

In his book, Dad relates that it had been an impulsive decision to ask Mavis to marry him; how else can you describe such a step after just a few days in each other’s company and several months of letter exchange?  It must have also been an impulsive response on Mavis’s part to accept the proposal.  Any concerns she harboured about the fact she was nine years older, would be abandoning her comfortable surroundings in Scotland for the ex-pat life in Egypt, and would be inheriting three independently-minded teenage children, must have been hastily rationalised.

It was a surprise to me.  I certainly hadn’t envisaged a re-marriage quite so soon; it was one of those things I thought maybe happen, probably ought to happen, at some point in the future, but three years?  We obviously gave it our thumbs up; what else could you do when ambushed with news that clearly seemed to have made them both happy.  Any doubts or questions would be shared amongst ourselves over the following days and weeks.  A step-mother? Albeit one who declared she had no intention of ‘interfering with our lives’, who would never try to ‘replace Peggy your mum’ and just wanted to ‘share her time with your Dad and help make him happy.’  And a step-brother and step-sister who we hadn’t seen for years.  What would they be like?

I think amongst ourselves we accepted that we just had to support it and cross-fingers that, what appeared to be a rather hasty decision, would work out okay; they were adults after all so they should know how they felt and what they were doing.  Having gained our approval, they picked a date just six months away in June and then left us to our thoughts, Dad flying back to Cairo and Mavis returning to Edinburgh to give John and Mary the news they were soon to have some new relations.  It must have been difficult for Harry and Ethel who were inevitably struggling more than most to come to terms with the loss of their daughter but they put on a brave face in public although behind the scenes they shared some disquiet with me whenever I called in.

For the next six months I stayed well out of it, enjoying the stress-free life in Birmingham and far more interested in seeing as much as possible of girlfriend Naomi, but it was a considerable feat of organisation, performed mainly by telex and letter as Dad had only had a handful of tax-free days he could spend back in the UK and Mavis was 500 miles away in Scotland.  Choose a ring, book the church, arrange the buffet, hand in notice, sell a house in Edinburgh, sell or store the contents, invite guests, plan a honeymoon, keep the RR business going in Egypt after the Saudis got upset about the Camp David Israeli-Egypt peace accord and threatened to withdraw the funding etc, etc.  And against this backdrop, Jackie and Rick went out to Egypt for Easter on a previously committed trip and would also be right in the middle of their exams at the time of the wedding.  In contrast, I’d spent Easter watching Forest take on FC Cologne in a thrilling European Cup quarter-final, backpacked with friends in the Lakes, done just enough to maintain my adequate standards in my exams, and given barely a thought to my pending duties as Best Man.

As far as I can remember, the weekend went well; we met John and Mary and some of the Fewkes’s side relatives and everyone seemed pleasant enough.  In the end there were over 70 people squeezed into No 89 for the post-wedding party and it was quite late in the day before Dad and Mavis escaped to Heathrow and we ushered all the other guests home. It would be a couple of months before we saw the newly-weds again and for me, a couple of years before I next encountered John or Mary. (More on my step-siblings later).

What to make of Mavis, the new step-mother, whom I’d barely met?  I decided to reserve judgment until I could see her in action over a couple of weeks in August when we’d all be out there, rounding off a long summer holiday.  In fairness, she did pretty well.  Not only did she have a new, hot, sometimes frustrating, sometimes challenging, often rewarding, culture and environment to adapt to, she also had a new relationship to cement with a guy she hadn’t spent much time with and who had his own work pressures to deal with.  Additionally, he was the only person she knew when she was thrust into the hurly-burly of Cairo and the social ex-pat whirlwind.  One thing you can say about Mavis is that, whatever the new circumstances, she would jump in with both feet, enthusiastically muscling her way into acceptance by an energetic mix of volunteering, involvement and interest in whatever was going on. Dad would suggest a social or cultural link and Mavis would follow up on it, reinforcing and developing it further. It worked well, forming a blueprint they would follow in subsequent moves in the years ahead, and they quickly established a wider group of friends.

Barely had they sorted themselves out in the apartment when we all descended on them.  Rick had flown out independently but Jackie and I, along with Naomi and Sally, had inter-railed across Europe to Athens and then flown to Cairo from there.  So Mavis now faced the prospect of catering for five extra mouths for nearly three weeks but in an effort to avoid a melt-down we took it turns to cook and do the shopping in 35 degree heat.  At least when not in the kitchen we could drink beer, gin and tonics, or Sprite, on the balcony watching the chaotic Cairo streets below.  

Luckily to prevent her blowing a fuse (which did happen occasionally) they’d laid on a whole series of mini-trips and days out.  We drove across the Western Desert to El Alamein (on the wartime trail of Uncles Bern and Jim), staying on the Mediterranean coast at beautiful Sidi Ab El Rahman, across the Sinai to the fledgling resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh to snorkel in the Gulf of Aqaba, and back and forth across Cairo visiting pyramids, souks, sports clubs, mosques and museums. They were brilliant hosts and in fairness, despite a few minor disagreements, Mavis had made a decent start to her relationship with her step children.

The decade finally closed with our branch of the Sheath family spread far and wide.  The hub remained in Nottingham where both sets of ageing grandparents resided and No 89 was still the nest we returned to for a rendezvous from time to time.  But in the space of ten years, as we left our childhood behind, we’d all ventured elsewhere.  Cairo, Sydney, Sheffield, Birmingham, Llantwit Major.  Who’d have predicted that just five years earlier?

We arrived as infants to the sounds of the Beatles and the Monkees with Mum singing along to Herman’s Hermits and Manfred Man and left as young adults fancying Debbie Harry, Stevie Nicks or Simon Le Bonn and challenging the established order and injustices of the society we lived in to the beat of the Clash, Two-Tone and UB40.  In fact we were glad to have survived this far:  Aldermaston marches, Cuban Missiles and the Cold War manoeuvring had all painted an ominous picture of a future that could terminate instantly in nuclear Armageddon. It wasn’t a much healthier outlook a decade later as cruise missiles arrived at Greenham Common, although this time at least we had the governments ‘Protect and Survive’ booklet to fall back on.  But it wasn’t all gloom and doom; amazingly Forest had managed to win the Cup, the First Division and the European Cup during my first twenty years (watch ‘I Believe in Miracles’ on Netflix to appreciate just how unlikely this was).  Four decades later, I’m still waiting for our next trophy.