Chapter 17

Family 4 - The Eighties: Freedom Decade

The Eighties were the time when all members of the immediate family could start to reset and recover from the traumas of the previous decade. The older generation, my grandparents, no longer had to worry unduly about their grandchildren and could focus purely on keeping an eye on each other and making the most of their remaining years.  Dad and Mavis, representing our middle-tier, needed to build on their rather whirlwind relationship and, now largely free from financial responsibility for their children, could afford to expand their wings and enjoy themselves.  And as we, the younger generation, emerged out of the education pipeline into the wider adult-world we had enough time, money and opportunity to take advantage of our good fortune.

There was some sadness: by the middle of the decade all of our grand-parents were beginning to succumb to the creeping ailments of old-age. Dud was first to go, diagnosed with leukaemia in the Autumn of 1985 he accepted his condition with much the same ‘what will be will be’ attitude he’d exhibited most of his life and tried to put on a cheerful face throughout his ineffective treatment.  By the following February he’d worsened and passed quietly away; a kind, unambitious gentleman who, despite his difficult roots, had lived a life of quality.  Mim was also struggling, her Parkinson’s noticeably worsening, and the loss of Dud accelerated her drift into senility. She moved into a nursing home where the family regularly visited her over the next few years and she died there in 1991, aged 88. 

A social comment.  Dud and Mim had bought their council house in Edwalton village in 1983 when the Government introduced the ‘right to buy’ policy.  Valued at a market price of £24,000 they obtained it under the discount rules for just £8,000.  I don’t know what it was worth just four years later when Mim sold it to fund her care home costs.  Over the following four decades 1.8 million council houses were sold to their tenants and a report in The Independent suggests that almost 40% of these are now owned by private landlords who obviously charge the market rate rather than the reduced council social housing rate.  There has been little replacement building of new social homes; over the same period, of the 6 million total new homes that have been built only 1.05 million were by councils or housing associations.  Remember though that a significant number of these will, by now, also have been purchased by their tenants.  Now consider these figures alongside the 14 million increase in the UK population and it cannot be a surprise that there’s a housing crisis and house prices have escalated at such alarming rates.  At least the Thatcher Government coffers were bolstered by this sell-off of such a large chunk of our assets at bargain-basement prices and I’m sure they’ve spent the money on something more worthwhile……..like tax cuts.

Meanwhile Harry and Ethel, over at their little maisonette in Bramcote, were also nearing the end of the line. They’d not really had the energy to build any new friendship networks in the local Methodist community and, with Dad and Mavis flitting between Cairo and their new UK home in Staunton Harold, and all their grand-children living elsewhere in the country, it was probably not quite what they’d hoped for in their final years.  Inevitably they must have dwelt on Mum’s early death and how it had impacted their lives.  We all visited whenever possible but crosswords, puzzle-magazines, Coronation Street, the Daily Express (!), and Grandstand were the agenda for their day. Unfortunately Ethel was beginning to suffer badly from arthritis and worse, was losing her sight which was a terrible drawback for her. This visual isolation surely compounded her demise and eventually she reached a point where full-time care was necessary.  It was in Hyson Green Hospital where she died peacefully in May 1986, aged 87 and after nearly 61 years of marriage.

Harry battled on another year.  By this time, Dad and Mavis were permanently back in the UK and could keep an eye on him and, along with regular visits from a cleaner and the meals-on-wheels service, he was coping reasonably well.  Sadly, however all was not well on the inside and by the end of 1987 it was apparent that he had a problem; an examination revealed advanced prostate cancer and within six months he too had moved to a nursing home where he died in May 1988 aged 87.  The sportsman, the Methodist, the sometimes-stern-sometimes-fun grandfather with all his stories, his pipe, and his regular renditions of ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ hymn.  He and Ethel had been such a part of our lives that it was strange to realise they’d suddenly both gone within a year of each other.

There was however plenty of happier news to keep a balance for the family.  My step-brother John had wasted no time since taking up a solicitor appointment in Guernsey in 1979.  Not only did he quickly help establish an effective legal operation but had also managed to persuade one of the island’s most eligible girls Marguerite Le Mesurier (Mags) to marry him in 1981.  A good call because, as a local she was entitled to unrestricted access to the local housing market.  Within a year they’d had a daughter, Katie, and followed up in May 1984 with a son, Nicholas. I always remember his birthday because I received the call to tell me he’d been born just as I was heading out for a first date with Sue.  We visited them the following year and were exceedingly well hosted; they do enjoy their food and wine.

Meanwhile things were not quite so rosy for my step-sister Mary.  In 1979 she’d married ‘Fonso, a Spanish guy she’d met in Edinburgh who was working in the restaurant trade, and two years later they decided to move to Calella, a resort 30km north of Barcelona.  ‘Fonso found work in the tourist trade and Mary set about trying to learn the language, quickly reaching a proficient enough level to be able to ‘teach’ Spanish kids English at a local business school.  By 1982, she was also pregnant, choosing to return to the UK for the birth, staying at The Old School House (TOSH) where Mavis could lend a hand during the few key weeks. Mark arrived during a freezing cold-snap in February and no doubt Mary was happy to get back to Spain for some warmth. Three years later their daughter, Laura, was born, and on this occasion, Mavis headed to Spain to assist.  It was as well she did because ‘Fonso was failing to live up to his responsibilities as a father and he and Mary had separated.  It was a hard time for Mary, trying to earn a living whilst attempting to bring up two infants in a foreign country and Dad and Mavis and John all needed to help her financially.

By the middle of the decade, the family’s Egyptian adventure had drawn to a close and Dad and Mavis had exchanged their busy lives in Cairo for an equally busy one in Staunton Harold.  Overall it had been a both a challenging and rewarding time.  As usual they’d made many friends and the financial rewards and cultural experiences more than offset the frustrations presented by the fickle ways of Middle-Eastern business and the sometimes laborious machinations and interference of the Rolls-Royce Head Office.  The return to the UK also proved to be another crossroads for Dad; he was disappointed to find there wasn’t anything that inspired him on offer at Rolls Royce, Derby and he didn’t want to work elsewhere.  He could have opted for a low-key role and cruised to his pension but he didn’t really do ’just ticking over’ and opted to take a small redundancy package.  The plan that came together after a few months of mulling over the options was to set up as a business consultant for small local organisations in the Midlands and he began establishing himself in his usual methodical way.  Business grants, enterprise allowances, a college course at Trent Business School, networking by joining the local Rotary and jumping with both feet into the new, exciting world of PCs and spreadsheets which was beginning to revolutionise the planning and reporting power for smaller organisations.  He was up and running after six months and over the next five years kept himself busy with a mixture of small assignments, consultancy projects and associate directorships.  It wasn’t easy; chasing new business and the wasted effort, a consequence of leads that resulted in dead-ends, was frustrating, but he turned over enough of an income to fund both their home improvements and travels over the period.

They really did max-out on their holiday opportunities, beginning with a memorable six-week trip to Australia, visiting his siblings and their families on their home ground for the first time.  Needless to say, they were well-hosted and it must have been great for them all to be together for the first time in over twenty years.  En route they’d called in on Bangkok, where Dad’s uncle Roland, having retired from his work for UNESCO a decade earlier, was living with Somchit, his Thai partner.   Italy, Canada, India, Nepal all featured as they made a determined effort to ‘spend their kids’ inheritance’ and these trips were supplemented at regular intervals by breaks in Spain and Guernsey to catch up with John, Mags, Mary and their children.

At least they managed to be at home for a couple of other significant events.

Remember we last heard of Jackie, studying for her A-Levels and effectively acting as a joint housekeeper with Rick whilst Dad was in Egypt.  Needless to say, she’d passed with excellent grades and had headed off to Sheffield University to study English. Graduating in 1982 with a 2:1, she spent time ‘au-pairing’ with a horsey family in Tuscany before returning to eventually find a job in London with Channel 4, compiling articles for their Teletext services on forthcoming drama, music programmes (Remember ‘The Tube?’) and so on.  This was more up her street and gave her the chance to rub shoulders with some of the well known artists of the time. Somewhere in her record collection is a signed copy of UB40’s ‘Food for Thought’ which she came away with following a hotel room interview.

In Sheffield she’d been introduced to the university basketball scene by our friend John Craven and, as a consequence of hanging out with them, she had started going out with Nick Budd.  Four years older, he’d just graduated and started working for British Steel in HR management.  In 1985 they were married in a ceremony at the beautiful church on the Staunton Harold Estate, with a marquee squeezed onto the lawn at TOSH.  It was also memorable as the last time that Dud, Mim and Harry were able to attend a big family event; sadly Ethel wasn’t well enough.  By this time they’d also moved to Alwalton, a small village near Peterborough where Nick was working for an aerospace company and Jackie had picked up her ideal job as a journalist for ‘Pony’ magazine.  Not only that, after years of begging and borrowing for the chance to ride horses, she was finally able to afford to have her own.  It was the start of their journey towards a rural way of life.

Rick too had been moving around.  After his sixth-form at Atlantic College he’d spent time in Spain, immersing himself in the country and culture and mastering the language, before heading to York University to study Economics.  He made the most of Dad and Mavis being in Egypt and spent time out there during his summer breaks, seeing more of the country than either Jackie or me had managed. And with the friends he’d made at Atlantic College by then spread across Europe, he was never short of somewhere on the continent to visit.  In 1985 he too finished with a 2:1 so once again my 2:2 had been upstaged and he started working for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Manchester.  A useful grounding but it wasn’t where he wanted to be and after a year or two he took the chance of a secondment to the Treasury and headed to London.  By the end of the decade, he’d decided to grab some experience in the commercial world and took up an appointment with Price Waterhouse, the international firm of auditors and consultants.  Initially based in the City he was soon posted, or, knowing Rick, he’d elected to transfer, to their Brussels office to gain some international experience.

And me?  Well most of my time, my thoughts, and the backdrop to my experiences during the eighties, are chronicled in other chapters so a quick summary will suffice here.  Scooped up by TI (Tube Investments) during the milk-round I followed a graduate development programme that had eventually led me to the factory at Yate, near Bristol, where unknowingly, unbelievably I would spend all my 37 working years.  Naomi followed me to Bristol but split a year later to follow her own path in London.  Part of my ‘get-over-it’ cure was to jack in my job and travel so I headed east and spent time in India, Nepal and Thailand before arriving in Australia.  As usual the families were brilliant hosts, even lining me up with a job for a few months that allowed me to earn the cash to travel home via New Zealand, Tahiti and the USA.  After ten months away I arrived back in Bristol, was lucky to re-employed at the factory and even luckier that Sue, the girl in the canoe club that I’d fancied before setting off, was still both interested and available.  For the next few years we enjoyed a carefree period of adventure sports and foreign holidays and found ourselves part of a large circle of friends that guaranteed a fun social time.  I bought my first house, an early 1900s terrace in Upper Eastville, in 1986 and sold it two years later when Sue and I bought 16 Hurstwood Road, still our home, in January 1988 and in May the same year we were married.  Almost without having to try too hard, I’d also found myself getting along well at work and each time my eyes wandered towards possibly more attractive alternatives, I was persuaded to stay by small but noticeable increments in responsibilities and reward.

It had been a frenetic, formative decade for everyone.  We’d entered the Eighties to the sounds of Talking Heads, Joe Jackson and Two-Tone and exited with Simply Red, U2 and Simple Minds.  We’d spent the entire decade under Maggie’s unsympathetic rule, fortunate that we’d floated just above the winner-loser divide and avoided the struggle to swim against the flow of her ruthless monetarist doctrine. We’d noted in passing the Ethiopian famine and Live Aid, the changing tide in South Africa and the dismantling of the Wall in Berlin.  Against a background of travel, work opportunities, house moves and new relationships, the family had bidden farewell to the older generation whilst simultaneously saying ‘hello’ to a new set of faces; ones that would become an embedded part of the next incarnation, of what by then was becoming an extended clan, as we headed into the Nineties.

Things were about to change and the reason could be summed up in one word.  Children.

‘What’s the chance of that?’  - An odd coincidence.

So one day in 1990, Uncle and Aunt, Roger and Jill, are strolling down their local high street in Baulkham Hills, a district of Sydney casually glancing in the shop windows.  Imagine their surprise to see a framed photo of Jackie and Nick walking down the aisle of the church in Staunton Harold on their wedding day.  Now it’s not unusual for a picture framing shop to mount a photo in a frame as an example but just how amazing is it that the picture used was of the wedding of their niece, five years previously and half a world away?

The detective work that followed revealed that the frame importer, based in Bondi, Sydney, had been supplied by a Hong Kong firm who had cut out the picture from an old copy of ‘Bridal’ magazine that had done a feature on Jackie’s dress.

Serendipity or what?