Chapter 21

Anchorage – The Family Home

Today, 25th November 2020, is a big day.  Dad has just completed the sale of Bywell and is no longer a home owner.  He’s cut the final link with the property chain that stretches back six decades and completed the final step in his move to being a permanent part of Jack and Nick’s residence a few miles up the road at Trem Hafren.

It’s the first day in the whole of my 61 years of life that I no longer have a family home.

Of course I’ve still got a home: the house shared with Sue and the boys since 1988.  But that’s different - it’s our home.

For me, the ‘family home’ is where your parents lived. It may well have been reincarnated and relocated a few times over the years, but it will always have been a constant thread.  It’s where you grew up; it’s the one you shared with brothers and sisters; it’s the one your friends came to play or hang out at; it’s the one your grandparents came to tea at, and it’s the one where the wider family gathered for birthdays and Christmas. 

Later, it’s the one you returned to ‘get your bearings again' after various turning points in life: a new job beckoned, a relationship had broken, a return from long backpacking trip, a health crisis, and so on.  It’s always been there, part refuge, part re-set, part rendezvous.

Finally, it’s the one where the grandchildren got together with their cousins; where we adults discussed what we’d all been up to, usually accompanied by a meal and glass of wine and, as the years rolled by, where we started to background-monitor the inevitable change in the health and vitality of our parents.

It’s where you never had to pay for board and lodgings; where the standard menus have been subconsciously imprinted in your brain and where you knew intuitively where everything was kept.  It’s where you could call-in for free advice and the occasional help. It’s where you knew the neighbours and the neighbourhood: the sweet shop, the sports shop, the pub, the supermarket.  Most importantly, you usually had 'your room’ - your own personal hideaway where all your ‘stuff’ was kept, where you could retreat to, play with your Meccano or Lego, read when supposed to be asleep, listen to your music, do your homework, sulk if necessary, discuss boys’ stuff with your mate, attempt a nervous move on a girlfriend ….

As children, we took it all for granted, couldn’t imagine anything or anywhere else and were completely oblivious to our good fortune in growing up with a secure roof over our heads and food on the table.  By the time we came along, our parents had made their way up a rung or two of the socio-economic ladder and the family was easing its way into a comfortably middle-class environment.  My parents were aspirational.  After their marriage in 1956 they moved into a rented flat in Kedleston on the north-west side of Derby, an easy commute to the Rolls-Royce offices where they were both working. Mum was employed as a PA within the Rocket Division and Dad had just started in the Nuclear Division with a focus on the Ministry project to use nuclear reactors as the propulsion system for the new generation of submarines.  Alarmingly they paid a deposit to buy a house that was being built on a new estate in Quarndon, near Derby and were hoping to move in by the summer of 1957.  The consequences for my life if this had happened are too awful to contemplate: I might have been a Derby County fan, would have no Test Match ground within easy range and would never have met all those people who now mean so much to me.

Luckily, whilst travelling back to Nottingham on the Trent bus, they noticed the housing estate springing up at Bramcote Hills on the western edge of the City and with even more luck, they were able to retrieve the original deposit and buy a new detached three-bedroom house on Ranmore Close.  The £2,700 asking price was around 2 1/2 times their salaries and today it would cost £65,000 if only price inflation was taken into account.  But the world of supply and demand has seen the actual price being paid for property in Ranmore Close rocket: our house was sold in 2018 for £395,000 - okay is not strictly like-for-like as an extension has added an extra bedroom, but this is 13 times the inflation-adjusted combined salary my parents would have been earning.  Please explain why our various governments have allowed this to happen?  Could it be that the asset growth that all we lucky home-owners have seen has blinded us to the need to give a similar opportunity to buy an affordable homes to the current generation?  The system is broken.

6 Ranmore Close

So Ranmore Close was our home for the first six years of my life.  By the time I arrived in 1959, the road had been surfaced, Dad had laid the garden, and friends and family had all contributed to the furnishings.  And after nearly two years of commuting to work, doing the shopping or visiting the relatives by using the buses, they splashed out on a car.  Paying £50 (£1300 today) for a 1938 Morris 10, they had clearly joined the steadily increasing ranks of the upwardly mobile.  I can’t remember this car but I’m disappointed that my parents failed to recognise that my squealing from the back seat was actually a protest that my carrycot hadn’t been safely secured.  I also can’t honestly remember two other significant events.  Both Jackie and Rick were born at home so I suppose I just noted the unusual flurries of activity and, in due course, the extra squeeze around the table.

I’ve scoured the data archives for memories of No. 6 Ranmore and, as you might expect, it’s all rather patchy, but let’s recall a few that I’ve carried with me over the years.

We had no central heating so we existed in a winter world of eiderdowns, hot water bottles and Jack Frost on the windows. These wonderful patterns that could be touched and scraped with your fingers are long-gone from the experience of our kids, lost in the same way as seeing your breath in the air of your bedroom in the morning.  At least open-fires still have a place in many homes, even though now they’re as much a decorative feature as a back-up heat source.  The coal bunker, the coal lorry, the fire guard, the ashes and the ritual of preparing and lighting the fire in the living room were just normal aspects of life.

We lived in a cul-de-sac so it felt safe.  In fact it was safe and we knew most of the neighbours.  A number of other couples with small children had moved in and, as toddlers and infants, we often seemed to be in each other’s homes.  Colin and Sheila Machin had Claire and Tim (see Holidays) and John and Isobel Cole had Francis and Richard.  She was Peruvian and would often talk with her boys in mind-boggling Spanish.  The only real threat came from next-door's dog - Rex the Alsatian, or from trusting one of your new young friends not to tell their parents if you’d done something naughty.  It was guaranteed to be disclosed and passed back in due course, via the parental security network, to Mum and Dad.

Elsewhere on the estate, just a short walk away 'just round the corner' or ‘two minutes down the road' were several other family friends and their kids.  For my parents it was a perfect first home neighbourhood:  young professional couples and their families bonded through a social scene that involved embryonic coffee mornings, the odd dinner-party, and mutual self-help on everything from home maintenance to baby-sitting.

But with three growing youngsters it was time for an upgrade.

First to go was the Morris, replaced by a Hillman Minx (not sure if you’d name a car a “minx” these days) and this was followed a couple of years later by our all-time favourite, the Ford Zephyr.  With its bench front seat and plenty of space we could stand up in the back on the prop shaft tunnel and have a clear view through the front windscreen.  On long trips on holiday, in the absence of in-car entertainment, we’d stand up, bouncing around, singing favourites: ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday; Hey hey we’re the Monkees.’  Eventually Mum would run out of song ideas and we’d have to revert to I-Spy books or counting AA or RAC boxes.  Occasionally we’d have the thrill of a hump-backed bridge – we’d sneakily stand up, encouraging Dad to accelerate whenever we spotted a sign, preferring the thrill of temporary weightlessness to the risk of a head-on crash.  Where have all the humpback bridges gone?

By 1965 it was time to move house.  I wasn’t consulted but couldn’t complain too much as it would mean I’d be guaranteed my own bedroom.  Plus I could still keep my friends as we were barely moving 200m, just round the corner.

89 Balmoral Drive. 

There was no need for a removal company.  We just wheeled everything down the road or shipped it in a borrowed van. Within a few months the plumbers had installed central heating, the redundant coal space had been converted into a downstairs loo and Dad had knocked down the pantry to make room for a breakfast table in the kitchen.

The house cost them £9,000 and it wasn’t long before a two-storey extension was built to the rear providing a ‘playroom' downstairs where the piano was sited along with various toys, and an enlarged bedroom upstairs for my parents.  (It would cost £148,000 today based on price inflation but is now actually going for £450,000)

The neighbours seemed pleasant enough and I don’t recall my parents moaning about any of them.  There were plenty of families up and down the road with children of all ages, quite a few of whom were up for games in the street.  Next door on one side were the Greenhalgh's, who had three boffin-like nerdy boys and Bimbo the spaniel.  On the other side were the Fewkes, Mavis and Freddie with their two children John and Mary.  They were older than us and we didn’t have much in common as kids.  A few years later they would move to Edinburgh before Mavis and her children re-entered our lives in 1978 in a totally unexpected way.

In contrast to our previous home in Ranmore, I’m overflowing with memories of our time at Number 89.  The challenge is to how distil a true reflection of the feelings, the events, the routine and the extraordinary, from the kaleidoscope of experiences that we absorbed during the 15 years we called it ‘home’.

Let’s wander down the side alley to the back door.  No-one in the neighbourhood where we grew up ever used their front doors except the paperboy, postman or some other rare official visitor.  The back door was usually unlocked and led straight into the kitchen.  There was a formica-topped table to the left that we could just about squeeze around, hemmed in by the fridge.  To the right, a new-fangled Hoover washing-machine was under the work surface that Dad had installed, and the window above the sink looked out onto the garden.  The opposite wall to the door housed the Belling electric cooker, the main work top and cupboards and the novelty feature of a serving-hatch through into the dining room.

In Weekends I touch on the Saturday breakfast scene in the kitchen during the sixties, crammed in round the table, arguing over the cereals and listening to Junior Choice.  Other routines or incidents spring to mind such as the time in 1971 when Dad rushed off to work looking hassled, declaring ‘I’m taking the paper with me.’ I thought we’d established a mutually respectful relationship when it came to the morning paper.   He’d usually have flicked through the headlines whilst having his cornflakes and be leaving, as I appeared in the kitchen for my breakfast.  He’d normally catch up with the paper reading later in the evening so this left it free for me to focus on the sports pages before school.  The only good thing that can be said about the Telegraph is that the sports reporting was excellent; every cricket and football match was covered, there were supporting tables of batting averages or goal-scorers and even less popular sports like swimming received attention.  In the days before the internet and 5 Live Sport this was our main source of the latest sporting news.

So why had Dad taken the paper and broken our unwritten rule?  Mum offered a strange explanation: ‘Rolls-Royce have gone bust.  Your Dad might not have a job by tonight.’  I’m not sure if I accepted this as mitigation but Mum seemed concerned so I didn’t whinge too much.  Looking back I would acknowledge that, if the first word you hear that the industrial giant you are dependent upon for your income has gone into liquidation is via the morning paper, then maybe you would want to read the article in a bit more depth.  Then again, why couldn’t he have just taken the relevant page?

Note.  Rolls-Royce was placed in the hands of the receivers in February 1971 having under-estimated the financial costs of simultaneously developing three ground-breaking aero-engines: the RB211 for the new jumbo jets, the Olympus for the supersonic Concorde and the Pegasus for the revolutionary Harrier jump-jets.  Combined with, no doubt, some poor senior management and Ted Heath’s Tory government’s initial refusal to bail out any 'lame ducks’, the company fell into a big hole.  In the end, the Government was forced to fund a restructure and survival plan that eventually saw the company back on an even keel.

The afternoon routine was well-established.  Traipse in from school, drop your bag anywhere and make a beeline for the biscuit tin.  Mum was invariably in the kitchen ironing, baking or washing, listening to Jimmy Young.  She always broke off to conjure up a squash or lemonade with which to wash down the fig-biscuits or custard creams.

 ‘How was school today?’

‘Okay - can I go out to play?’

No doubt leaving a pile of crumbs on the kitchen table, I’d do a quick change and be ready a few minutes later when a friend or two would pop their heads in at the door.   Ideally I’d head off round to my mates’ or the street.  Playing in the back garden was okay but it had certain constraints, the biggest one being that you were continually under surveillance from the mission-control kitchen window.  Any trespass onto the flower beds, any use of dodgy language or unkindness to anyone was easily spotted.

On the other hand, the kitchen window was sometimes a saviour in later years if you’d locked yourself out.  Drag the dustbin over to provide a platform and, assuming the fanlight was on the latch, it was possible to wiggle through it head-first and lower yourself unceremoniously onto the draining board.  The kitchen was Mum’s domain.  We’d drift in and out taking for granted the meals, the cakes, the sandwiches and snacks that somehow materialized from fridge, cupboard or cooker.  Sometimes we’d stick around for a bit to watch her cooking but this ran the risk of getting caught and asked to do a job:

 'Can you whisk this for me?’

‘Please just pod these peas.’

‘I need this washing up doing.’

‘Okay but only if I can lick the bowl.’

Eventually, as I entered my teens, I was persuaded that I had the capability to generate my own snacks.  Post-swimming creations revolved around toast; a highlight was something called a ‘toast topper,’ usually a fishy or meat paste. But you really couldn’t beat a spread of dripping.

And then suddenly, after February 1976, we were alone in the kitchen.  No more sponge cakes, lemon-meringue pies, coconut pyramids, roast dinners, bangers and mash, hazelnut gateaux, rice puddings.  I wouldn’t particularly miss the stew and dumplings but we were forced to quickly face up to life without the chief cook and maître d’hôtel.  Dad actually proved quite proficient.  The neighbours and grandparents chipped in.  Jackie always seemed to have made something at school and Rick was quietly capable even in his early teens.  We coped.  This was before the real advent of frozen fast food meals so we evolved a blend over a week that combined healthy things (I could do the fish in breadcrumbs or the liver and onions) with rather less nutritious treats like a Vesta curry and Angel Delight pudding.  We all mastered the chip pan without too much trouble and somehow managed over the years to avoid leaving it on too long allowing it to catch fire.

By our late teens and early twenties the kitchen was often the hub for our local friends.  With Dad, and latterly Mavis, in Egypt for extended periods, we effectively became young home-owners. ‘Back to Sheafy’s for a Chinese?’

‘Chip-butties anyone?’

'Bring some records round’

‘Na - fancy staying over tonight?'

Rather like the phenomenon that happens at parties, we’d tend to hang out in the kitchen, our friends probably sub-consciously recognising that the rest of the home was a little less ‘open house.'

Let’s exit the kitchen and wander through to the dining room.  It wasn’t huge and opened up into the lounge but it accommodated an oval wooden table, sideboard and a Welsh dresser.  We’d always eat meals as a family, seated at the table, and it was unheard of to consume anything other than a ‘before-bed snack for supper on our laps in front of the telly.  At Christmas we were always joined by Harry and Ethel and tradition dictated that after dinner we couldn’t settle down to play with presents or watch the Christmas specials until we’d played some games.  Usually I’d take on Harry at table-tennis - not easy on an oval table, and it was years before I got the better of him.  It was a similar story when we set up the antique table-skittles: no matter how hard we tried, he always seemed to finish off more accurately.  At least I could beat him at Subutteo, although the oval pitch shape meant that a run down the wing would probably result in a player on the floor with the consequent risk of being stood on.

When not used for meals it was the room for family games.  A whole variety of board games were sampled over the years: some became family favourites, others were discarded as too complicated or boring.  Inevitably some evenings ended early with the odd tantrum amid accusations of cheating.

And I can’t look at the dining room window without a twinge of guilt.  Bowling at Robbo in the back garden, we’d use the wall between the kitchen and dining room windows as our ‘wicket keeper.’  Obviously if we played the other way round we’d have spent ages looking for the ball at the bottom of the garden amongst the raspberries. So, this was clearly a good idea, provided we stuck to using a tennis ball.  Not so clever on the day we opted for a harder compound cricket ball.  I bowled a wide.  It hit the drain cover and bounced up to smash the dining room side window.  Hardly surprisingly, Dad was not impressed!  As a lesson I was dragged off to the local glaziers, deducted pocket money to pay for a new pane and then had to help replace it.  I still remember the soft, tacky texture of the putty that was used to secure the glass in the days before double-glazing.

And so to the lounge: bright, airy and comfortable, with a sofa and two arm chairs, a waist-high bookcase and the current incarnation of a Redifusion tele’ in corner.  By 1974 Dad had treated us to a hi-fi system that was proudly stacked on a shelf he’d created in the other corner.  The excitement when this arrived was almost Christmas-like and Dad’s methodical, engineer’s approach to assembly and connecting all the wires seemed to take far too long.  Eventually we all gathered to listen to the free ‘demo' disc that highlighted our new ‘amazing stereophonic sound.’  Half-an-hour of a train whistling through a tunnel, Concorde taking off, or the chimes of Big Ben were enough.  Clearly the system worked and Mum drifted off to the kitchen whilst I negotiated for ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ to take the opening slot in preference to Dad’s Handel’s ‘Messiah’ or Jackie’s current preference for Rick Wakeman.  Rick wasn’t old enough to assert his choice but, looking back, his recently acquired ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ was quite a mature selection for a 12 year-old.

The sofa was the place to be when we were younger.  It commanded the best position for watching the telly and Mum usually sat there in the evening, offering before-bedtime snuggle-up comfort.  It was also the prime spot for noticing anything happening in the road.  The large front window gave a wide panorama on our part of the street.  If it seemed interesting I might get up and take a closer look. 

‘Mum!  It’s the pop (lemonade) lorry!'

'Rag and bone men are here!’

‘Looks like Hector (the McDougall’s spaniel) has escaped again.’

By the mid-seventies I’d peek out of the window, feigning nonchalance, nervously trying to spot Helen Lovett’s arrival after I (Mum) had invited her round for tea.  A few years later in 1977, I glanced out of the same window to note that my brief fling with Sally Smith was definitely over as Kev Snow’s car was parked outside her absent parents’ house.  It was still there in the morning.

For most of my teens I commandeered the arm chair nearest the hi-fi.  Here I could listen to my records or Radio Nottingham’s rock show using the headphone lead that just about stretched, but was also able to half-watch what was on the box or curl up with a book without needing to share leg-room or cushions.  The sofa did eventually came back into its own when Naomi arrived on the scene: we’d wait impatiently for Jack and Rick to head off to bed to give us a bit of time on the couch before I’d usually have to get her home.

The lounge-floor carried its own memories: kids’ parties when we were little, seated in a circle playing pass-the-parcel; board games, Lego and jigsaws during school holidays; indoor-putting or Subbuteo with Robbo on wet days.  And Rick’s gerbil, Monty, giving us all the run around, hiding under furniture to avoid capture after we’d let him out for exercise.

Head into the hall; check no post’s come through the front-door letterbox, and don’t knock over the phone off its stand in your rush to be the first to get the paper.  Ignore the cupboard-under-the-stairs as it only holds the ironing board, vacuum cleaner, hats and coats.  We had an ancient Hoover that sounded like a Saturn V rocket launch and seemed to forever be needing a new drive belt before it would fire up.  The stairs were a two-flight arrangement that returned back on themselves to reach the landing.  The downside of this was that the bannister on the upper section was quite short for sliding down and any Slinky needed re-setting at the half-way point.  On the flip side it wasn’t long before I could successfully descend the stairs in two leaps, taking advantage of the wider platform at the stairs turn-around point for a controlled landing after the first jump.  The fact that the dining room door was directly opposite the landing zone in the hall enabled a falling ‘paratrooper' to avoid smacking into the wall on his second leap. This wasn’t a method approved by my parents so I’d usually just settle for jumping the last few stairs each time.

Go left at the top of the stairs for Jackie’s bedroom at the front and Mum and Dad’s at the back.  Alternatively turn right for Rick’s room or go straight on a few steps to the end of the landing for the loo with the bathroom on the left and my room on the right.  Before we open the door to my room I’ll pause a moment to look from Rick’s bedroom window down onto the drive.  The Zephyr has been replaced, firstly by a white Mark 2 Cortina and then a heap of mechanical trash masquerading as an Austin Maxi.  I actually learnt to drive in this tank before Dad traded it in for a red Ford Escort Mark 2 which I ended up buying off him when I started work in 1981.

Back to my room.   My own territory. 

A peek inside would have revealed some insights about its inhabitant.

During the sixties the wardrobe (an old traditional wooden one that Dad had painted white and purple!) was partly used for storage of games and toys.  If it wasn’t already spread across the floor, the Lego or Meccano would be stored here in biscuit tins along with the plastic soldiers and zoo animals.  Also hidden away in its depth was a stack of Beano comics and Football Monthlies.  Hanging from the ceiling by ‘invisible' cotton was a flying circus of Airfix models.  I was quite good at the assembly and gluing stages but always seemed to botch the final painting step, usually getting into a right mess with the various little pots of paint and the fine brushwork required.  In these pre BluTack days Dad wasn’t keen for me to sellotape pictures directly onto the wallpaper so my football posters were confined to a cork noticeboard he’d made and hung up for me.  Along the wall by the single bed was a clever bookshelf arrangement that included a lamp, clamped in place, to allow reading in bed.  On the shelves Enid Blyton ruled alongside Stig and Robin Hood, but their reign wouldn’t make it far into the next decade.  A chest of drawers inherited from Harry and Ethel (and now residing in Hurstwood Road) was on the opposite wall whilst the window offered a great view southwards across the garden, the neighbours and over to Bramcote village in the distance.

The room evolved.  Secondary school meant homework which necessitated a table being squeezed neatly in the far corner, adjacent to the window.  Here I could gaze out on the garden, seeking inspiration for essays or solutions to maths problems.  It took a few years for me to make the connection but it was from this window that my daily gazing triggered an appreciation of the regularity of the seasons.  I’d notice the buds and leaves forming on the tree in the spring, the sparrows nesting, and the subtly changing position of the setting sun in the evening.  On a hot summer’s evening, stuck in doing school work, it was possible to see the sky to the west fill with threatening dark clouds - ‘black over Bill’s muthers’ - and know that there was a good chance of a thunderstorm heading our way.  Autumn storms provided a different distraction: watching the rain drops drizzle their way down the window pane whilst wondering if the shed would get blown over (again) by the driving wind.  And on a crisp winter day it was possible in the clear air to see way beyond Bramcote village to the clouds of steam rising straight up from Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station ten miles away.

The noticeboard pictures morphed into a mix of cricketers, Slade and The Faces, whilst on the bookshelf Biggles and Molesworth replaced the Puffin books, the Famous Five and King Arthur’s knights.  Suddenly the toys’ space in the wardrobe was commandeered by a tennis racket, cricket bat and other bits of sporting kit and the Beanos were relegated beneath a growing pile of The Swimming Times.  There wasn’t a lot of floor space but enough for Robbo and me to practise forward defensives or diving slip catches onto the bed.  If you were careful where you walked, it was also possible to lay out the Scalextric track in a figure-of-eight, though we seemed to spend more time trying to sort out the various electrical contacts than actually racing the cars.  Pride of place on the shelf by the bed was my little Pye transistor radio that I purchased duty-free on our summer holiday to Guernsey in 1971.  At night, with the little earpiece plugged in, I’d just about be able to pick up Radio Luxembourg, although the reception was usually appalling.

Move on a couple of years and a small new-fangled cassette player complimented the audio experience within the room.  Somehow I’d complete any homework despite having ear and fingers poised to try and capture, with a swift press of the record button, any decent track that the Radio One DJ might play.  Invariably the last few bars would require a sudden chop-off to avoid the prattle that spoilt the fade-out.  Of course recording the music was only half the battle; the real challenge was to be able to listen to a whole C-90 cassette without it jamming and chewing up your favourite bit of tape.  This necessitated another delay to the homework as the surgical removal of twisted tape and subsequent re-winding onto the spool took precedence.  Whilst pride of place in the musical collection always went to the albums that lived downstairs in the lounge, it wasn’t long before there was a large choice of bootlegged music, stacked in the piles of cassettes in my room.  Robbo, Nico and some of the older lads in the swim squad were all good sources for albums to record and it wasn’t long before I had a decent (quantity not quality) spread of hard rock to choose from.  Would it be the West Coast sounds of The Band, Jefferson Airplane or The James Gang?  Or was I more in need of a dose of classic Deep Purple, Cream, Bowie or The Who?  Rock dreams led inevitably to a guitar in the corner - a Tatra Classic nylon-stringed acoustic that I saved hard for and religiously strummed in a doomed attempt to uncover any latent musical talent.  A few classic riffs from of ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ or ‘Smoke on the Water' were the peak of my achievement and, although I could get through the whole of the ‘House of The Rising Sun,’ no-one seemed to recognise it. 

A mirror was now hanging on the wall above the chest of drawers; it seemed like I might be taking an interest in my appearance and it might then be possible to find a comb, hair brush and a spray can of Brut somewhere in the room.  The book shelves had been populated by a growing collection of classic science-fiction: Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, Asimov and Arthur C Clarke occupied a whole section.  A very detailed search of the bookshelf above the bed might also have uncovered a prized girlie-mag tucked carefully between the football annuals and encyclopaedias.  Supplied by Pete Brailsford from the county swim squad, the October 1973 Mayfair was actually rather mild stuff but enlightening nevertheless.  The only pin-up who successfully made it onto the more public noticeboard was a colour photo of Aussie teenage swimmer Shane Gould in her costume which I’d cut from the 1974 Commonwealth Games edition of the Radio Times.

It would be another year or two before a real girl made an appearance in my room.  Helen Lovett, the Speedo heiress, never even ventured upstairs on the few occasions she came round for tea.  Alison Kirk was happy to sit on the bed listening to tapes and chatting away but always left a good snog until it was nearly time to walk her home (to Chilwell, a good four-mile round trip).  Sally Smith would choose the music and teasingly lead me on in the right direction but we never made enough progress before she moved onto someone else.  It was Naomi who eventually laid claim to my affections and we would comfortably hang out for ages in my room with a Joe Jackson or Eagles soundtrack, putting the world, our own, or our friends’ lives to right.  Sometimes she’d stay over when we were back from University which was never a problem with Dad (and Mavis) being in Egypt most of the time.

There were a few further adaptations to come: the rock and sport photos were replaced by arty Roger Dean album artwork or surfing posters and pride of place on the chest of drawers was taken by my 21st birthday present - a Sanyo music centre that combined the record deck with an in-built cassette player and FM radio.  At last it was possible to make decent recordings in my room.  There’s something about having your own space, barely changed for year after formative year and it was one of those things I count myself fortunate to have experienced.

But nothing lasts forever.

Dad and Mavis returned from Egypt when his contract ended in 1980 and understandably decided the time was right for them to move.  Mavis would always be trying to fill the space left in Number 89 by Mum.  She had funds from the sale of her Edinburgh bungalow and we three children and her two were now dotted around the country at work or university. They started looking for something bigger in a rural setting but still within striking distance of Nottingham so we could all stay in touch with grandparents and friends.  With Dad now based in Derby for work it drew the search westwards.

Number 89 was sold for £42,000 (£165,000 at today’s prices but recently going for £450,000).

The Old School House (TOSH)

Roughly mid-way between Castle Donington and Ashby-de-la-Zouch where the A453 passes through a small hamlet there’s an old Victorian school building just set back from the road, adjacent to a farmhouse and the gates to the drive leading to Staunton Harold estate.  Closed as a school in 1964 it had been converted to a family home and, with sweeping views north across the fields of the estate, it was an ideal rural location. It cost them £65,000 (£240,00 at today’s prices but estimated now to go at £800,000).

It was a big house for ‘just the two of them’ with a large kitchen-diner and large dining and sitting rooms downstairs.  In addition there was a couple of old parlours that doubled as a bedroom and ‘activity’ room where Mavis would do her painting and crafts.  A narrow staircase led upstairs to a large master en-suite bedroom, the main bathroom and three other bedrooms. They’d decided they wanted the opportunity to comfortably host the extended family or visiting friends and had also considered the possibility that one or more grandparent might have to take up residence if their own circumstances changed.

Dad and Mavis soon had the house to their liking, repairing the roof, re-painting the external woodwork and re-decorating most of the indoor rooms.  Mavis redesigned the garden and created a new rockery and it wasn’t long before the house was a credit to the area.  They had also thrown themselves into village life, trying hard to integrate.  Whenever we were home it seemed like they knew most of the farming families in the area and were already members of a variety of local clubs and societies.  It was certainly a family hub.  Most of my trips ‘home’ from Bristol were linked to a family gathering of some sort.  Birthdays, Harry and Ethel’s Golden Wedding, Rog and Jill over from Oz and so on.  Jackie’s 21st in 1982 was a bit different: nobody could get there due to heavy snowfall.  I was supposed to be driving down from St Helen’s, where I was on a course, to Bristol to pick up Na and then we’d head up to TOSH.  After hours crawling along the M6 in a blizzard I opted to short cut directly there and eventually made it before the roads completely closed.  Na was stuck in Bristol in the freezing bedsit, not knowing what was going on until she eventually got through to TOSH on the phone.

A couple of years later, in 1984, I took Sue up for her first visit to TOSH on a weekend trip.  Working in Bristol I just wasn’t seeing my grandparents as frequently and I was pleased they finally got the chance to meet the mystery Bristol girl.  Dad and Mavis were back in Cairo so we’d actually stayed at the house on a few occasions before she was finally introduced.  Of course the big gathering was Jackie and Nick’s wedding in 1985.  They married in the idyllic setting of the Staunton Harold estate church and the reception was in a marquee squeezed onto the lawn.

Somehow though, ‘coming home’ wasn’t quite the same: it was a different feeling.  Definitely a sanctuary, a rendezvous-point, a comfortable B&B and a good spot to recharge, refresh and catch up with everybody’s news.  On the other hand, I didn’t have my own room and I was never sure which room we’d been allocated until we turned up.  Whilst it might still have been my ‘home', my status had subtly altered to that of ‘welcome guest.’  I could still loaf around, even lie-in a bit, help myself to things in the fridge and so on, but there were boundaries it no longer felt acceptable to cross.  Best not to leave things lying around or the bed unmade; better to crack on with the washing-up; can’t just watch the football in the lounge and not engage with the conversation.

The late eighties and early nineties were a time of infrequent visits.  Sue and I were full-on with our own lives in Bristol and Dad and Mavis were entering their travelling period, seemingly on continuous extended trips to far-flung corners of the globe.  Dad, having left Rolls with a deal in 1986, had effectively re-launched himself as a self-employed business consultant.  He just about pulled in enough business from small Midlands based firms to finance their hectic lifestyle and continue to maintain and enhance TOSH.  Being self-employed made it possible to structure his work around their holidays and their visits to stay with children in Guernsey, Spain, Bristol, Brussels and Peterborough. So we continued to time our stays at TOSH to coincide with the big, not-to-be-missed events.  Dad’s 60th, Mavis’s 70th, Joan’s visit from Oz, the annual Rotary dinner when he was President and Mavis was the Ladies Inner Wheel equivalent and, of course, Christmas.  It worked well as we had all adopted the same strategy and it guaranteed a house full and an ideal way to see each other.

With the arrival of Stuart and Murray the main focus for the visits became about taking the grandchildren to see the new grandparents.  We never now made the trip into Nottingham to see any of my old mates, instead opting for walks down the lane through the Estate to feed the ducks on the lake. The tractor activities on the farm or the cows in the field were always a source of entertainment for Stuart.

By 1995 Dad and Mavis were contemplating another move.  Dad had long-since retired and they were now living off their pensions and capital, their offspring were all established elsewhere and the possibility of an ailing grandparent as a resident had not materialised.  They decided it was time to look for something smaller.  It seemed a sensible decision and they easily sold TOSH to a local family for £225,000 (£450,000 in today’s prices but estimated at £800,000 today).  They wanted a bungalow in a rural location and focused their search on Monmouth, to be near Jack and Nick, or the Cotswolds to be nearer Sue and I. (I don’t recall being aware of this option.)  As it happens, they opted for a place in Llangwm, just 5 miles down the road from Jack and Nick in the direction of Usk, the nearest small town.

Bywell, Llangwm

Now we all thought the plan was to down-size, but it certainly didn’t give that impression.  Okay, so it was technically a bungalow having just one storey, but it was split over two levels linked by a short staircase.  Built in a modern sixties style, it sat surrounded by a large garden of 3/4 acre with a small brook bordering one edge and a number of large mature trees adding a sense of permanence.  Nestled down a small lane in the hamlet of Llangwm, it was lovely spot and, whilst the views were only of the garden, the approach along the B4235 provided wonderful vistas across the Usk Valley to the Brecons and beyond.  It cost £187,000 so they’d ‘saved a bit’ in the move, but it didn’t take long before this saving was being re-invested in various enhancements.

The entrance hall, large kitchen diner and the dining-room were on the ground level.  Four large bedrooms, a study and bathroom and a huge lounge were on the upper level.  Within the first year they’d also added a utility room adjacent to the kitchen and a conservatory linked to the dining room. The heating system was overhauled with a new oil tank and new radiators and within a year they’d replaced all the windows.  Major work on the trees and a substantial re-layout of the garden all followed as Mavis got stuck into her favourite pastime of creating a pleasing mix of lawn, borders and shrubs. To cap it off they laid a new patio and re-surfaced the drive.

So they hadn’t really downsized at all.  But so what?  There was still plenty of room for several families of guests to stay at the same time.  They didn’t need to release capital; they enjoyed hosting family and friends, and they were still just about healthy and mobile enough to cope with a big property.  We just shrugged our shoulders and watched with admiration as they once again jumped straight into carving out another new social life.

The local Rotary Club in Usk, the local WI, the Local History Society (dad was a founder member), the Rock Garden Club, and, incredibly, the South Wales croquet team all kept them occupied, in addition to their regular gatherings with the other couples in the village.  I really don’t know how they squeezed it all in.

But the dynamics of the family home had altered again.  Living relatively close, only a 25 mile drive from Downend, it was never necessary for us to stay overnight.  We could easily pop over for a few hours, usually taking in lunch or an afternoon tea.  The boys could play in the garden or we could go for a short walk by the Usk or around the lanes.  Occasionally I’d venture into the study to see what Dad was up to on his latest project, but we never needed to use, or even bother looking into, the bedrooms.

The big family gatherings continued and fortunately there was ample room to spread out.  Even with a full complement of grandchildren in the lounge or adults in the kitchen or dining room, it worked well.  That’s not to say it didn’t sometimes get stressful.  If the Guernsey and/or Spanish branches were both in attendance, with or without offspring, and if Rick and Carla were also able to put in an appearance, it could get quite noisy and uncoordinated.  Not a problem for our generation, who are all quite laid back, but it didn’t help Mavis’s need, as the host, to be in control.  Best to stay out the kitchen if she was in cook-mode, so we’d normally start on the wine in the dining room and patiently await the traditional casserole and somewhat soggy veg’.  In later years, as Mavis began to struggle, it was sometimes a battle to be allowed to take over the catering.  We were all capable of producing excellent meals but it required a bit of pre-planning and manoeuvring to make it happen.

It sometimes felt like a big advantage to be able to jump in the car and head home after a full-on get-together.  Christmas was usually okay but events where we were an integral part of a bigger 'do' added an extra level of tension.  Dad’s 70th and 80th, Mavis’ 80th, which was combined with their Silver Wedding, or being ‘guests’ at major Rotary events are just a few examples where we had to recognise the need to tread carefully.

Did it still feel like the family home?  In the sense that it was ‘familiar’ then the answer is ‘yes.’  Of course it was the place our parents lived; the furniture, the crockery and cutlery, the pictures, the games in the toy cupboard, the books on the bookshelves were pretty much as you remembered over the years.  And it was still the most natural thing to do to just drop in and put the kettle on, helping yourself to biscuits in the kitchen, or flop down on the sofa for a chat with half an eye on the cricket.

But there was change coming.  Inevitably, sadly, Mavis was struggling with her health.  By her mid-eighties she was having breathing issues and despite two hip replacements was starting to use a walking stick.  Not unexpectedly, and being something of a determined battle-axe, she tried to not let it slow them down too much.  From around 2010 she was showing increasing signs of dementia and, whilst they still managed the odd European excursion, they now tended to opt for short UK B&B breaks or weekends with friends or family.  Over the next few years, as she deteriorated mentally, she also experienced increasing problems with her hearing, eyesight and mobility.  The home was steadily adapted with stair-lifts, bath-lifts, grab rails and the like and the couple who had taken so much pride in their role as hosts suddenly found themselves the recipients of meals-on-wheels and daily carer visits.  The situation steadily worsened and Dad, despite the outside assistance, could eventually no longer cope with the continual need to be on-call to an increasingly cantankerous, senile old lady.  Eventually Mavis moved to a private nursing home in Chepstow where, after an amazing brief revival to celebrate her 90th birthday in May 2014, she passed away three weeks later.

The last big family get-together at the house was her funeral.

Dad adapted, deciding not to sell up and move to something smaller.  And why not?  He could afford handymen to keep the house and garden in shape, he had friends in the village and local shops just a short walk or drive away, and Jack and Nick providing a regular evening meal and ‘emergency service’ just up the road.  The house was still a rendezvous point whenever John and Mags or Rick and Carla visited and we’d all chip in with the catering.  Sue and I would pop over from Bristol with a meal or latterly I’d use a ‘call-in for lunch' as an excuse for a decent bike ride.

But a few things had changed.  Without a mother-hostess figure bustling in the kitchen, stocking (over-stocking) the cupboard shelves and generally controlling the pace and content of any small social get-together, the ‘feel' of the home had altered.  It might have looked the same, but the soul had quietly left.  After 55 years of continual Christmas gatherings in the family home, Jack and Nick sensibly moved the venue to Trem Hafren, usually now on Boxing Day, and increasingly family visits became focused there.

And as Dad reached his mid-eighties, his mobility and confidence started to decline and it was clear that, sooner rather than later, we needed to consider alternative arrangements.  A generous and perfect solution was proposed by Jackie and Nick: the adaptation of Trem Hafren to create a ground-level bedsit.  With the added bonus of catering and welfare support on site, it was an offer that Dad couldn’t refuse and he eventually moved in with them in November 2019.  The plan was to put Bywell on the market the following spring.

The family home was empty of people maybe, but not of stuff, not of memories.

Over the next six months we tackled what turned out to be a herculean task of clearing the house. Every room, every cupboard, every shelf, every drawer was full to the brim.  The kitchen was crammed with out-of-date foodstuffs; the book shelves were rammed with best sellers, reference books and guides, often duplicated.  There were multiple sets of crockery and cutlery, loads of redundant electronic gadgets and, everywhere, souvenirs of worldwide travels and examples of Mavis’s talent for crafts.

But nestling around the rooms or on the shelves or hanging on the walls were the memorabilia of a lifetime. It was a journey back in time for us as we discovered old toys and games at the bottom of a cupboard, the cutlery we’d used as kids, a painting from 89 Balmoral, encyclopaedias that we’d read, sprawled on a lounge floor, or the records that transported us straight back to the sixties and seventies and our ancient record player.  And the photos - a whole massive archive of slides and prints that had been religiously labelled, documented and carefully presented in cassettes or albums and then confined to a wardrobe. It took several weeks to digitally save an important record of lives stretching back a century.

Some things we sold, some we gave to Freecycle or charities and some useful tools or one or two bits of furniture found a home somewhere in the family.  There wasn’t much that was actually suitable but we’ve all acquired the odd item that really means something.

It was a moving, happy-sad process, especially for Jackie and me, but eventually the task was complete, fortunately coinciding with the acceptance of an offer within a few months of the house going on the market. 

Sold for £470,000. 

And now I no longer have a family home.

Images removed to avoid copyright issues: Heinz toast toppers, Vesta curry, Hoover vacuum, Tatra classic guitar, Shane Gould