| By 1969 I had started work in the accounts department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and Cynthia and I joined the International Club in Camberly. I remember watching the Apollo manned landing on the moon from the IC premises. They organised frequent meetings and dances and outings in the UK and abroad. |
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Then, my dear Cynthia, at the tender age of 19 in the summer of 1970 we set off on what for me, and I think for you too, was the first unchaperoned adventure abroad - a two week package holiday in Morocco and Spain. Whilst in Tangier we took a day trip to Gibraltar in an ubstabilised boat. It was rough weather and bundles of live chickens tied at the legs were flying everwhere. Here we are (I made that funny yellow dress in towelling!). | |
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| I was hooked on Morocco and wanted to see more. That year the age of majority had been lowered from 21 to 18. We were 19 and suddenly free! I gave in my notice and booked a passage back to Tangier, taking my very first car - the Vauxhall Viva - via Plymouth/Lisbon. I travelled all over Morocco and further afield, supplementing the little cash I had by exchanging lifts for boxes of oranges or fuel. I crashed in the Atlas Mountains, rolling the car from one hair pin bend to the next level below. It landed on its side and I was unhurt though shaken. It was more than 24 hours before any traffic passed but, when they did, they took me to their home, fed me and put me to bed whilst organising for the car to be fixed. I woke up in the night with all the family in bed with me (granny, parents and several kids) - there were only two rooms in their small home.
Eventually the money ran out and I returned home in 1971 to find a new decimal currency in place. Getting home took longer than anticipated - by Calais the car had four punctures and bits missing everywhere. I had no money left for the ferry or repairs. There was a postal strike in Britain and I couldn't contact anyone by phone, letter or other means. The British Embassy said I was too close to home for repatriation. Eventually a passing aquaintance, that I was so lucky to run into, lent me the money.
After the adventures, living at home with my parents was too claustrophobic, so I got a job in London and moved to a sad bedsit in Clapham - £4 per week. After several jobs in accounts in central London, I resumed training with a firm of chartered accountants in north London. In 1972, at the age of 21, I met the man who was to become my first husband, Barry. It was the time of the three day week and numerous strikes.
 In February of 1972 my younger sister and only sibling, Nadine, married Geoffrey at Chawton near Farnham. I was a bridesmaid. They had two children, Rachael and Jonothan, and stayed together many years until the kids grew up. They lived in a beautiful country cottage in Chawton, but Geoff was a real country enthusiast - rearing and shooting pheasants etc. and it was a lot of hard work for Nadine clearing up the muddy welly footprints, the house generally, cooking and so on and holding down a full time job caring for mentally handicapped children. Finally she gave the family an ultimatum - clean up your act within a month or I leave. They didn't, she did.
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 In 1974 when I was living with Barry in Muswell Hill and still training in accountancy, I bought my first house in Southgate - a two up, two down. It had no bathroom or kitchen and had to be completely gutted. With some help from family and friends, I attempted to construct an extension at the back. The council surveyor called regularly to ensure that the work fell in line with submitted plans. There was a two week gap when the surveyor went on holiday and during which time I built the extension walls to ceiling height. When the surveyor returned from holiday he quickly pointed out that, although I had plumbed the walls horizontally, I had forgotten to plumb them vertically! (I was training to be an accountant - not a builder). He said it all had to come down and I couldn't even re-use the bricks.
 At this time I was regularly travelling the country on audit. On one occassion I came back to Muswell Hill a day earlier than expected to find Barry in bed with the local barmaid. We both knew her well, but he had told her I was his sister! Problems with the house and the man got on top of me and, in 1975, I took time out to go and live in Rome with Cyndy whom I had met at the RAE. I couldn't leave my beloved Labrador hound, Charlie Cheesecake, behind and so we travelled together to Rome by train. Cyndy and her, then, future husband Andrea made us both very welcome and Rome still remains my favourite city. I had to earn some money however and spent some months travelling around Italy selling encyclopaedias door-to-door. I quickly learnt the language (maybe the Latin lessons helped). I also did some catwalk modelling and TV ads.
In 1976 I returned to London for, what was intended to be, a two week holiday during which time I would organise the sale of the unfinished house in Southgate. On the second day there I ran into Barry who swept me off my feet and arranged our marriage by special licence. Two, or was it three, days later the deed was done at Wood Green registery office.
The marriage lasted two weeks! We had bought an old ambulance in which Barry, a superb mechanic, had renewed the engine and I had sewn curtains and helped with the accommodation carpentry. The plan had been to drive around the world in this vehicle. At the last moment, with ferry tickets booked, Barry changed his mind and was reluctant to leave a manager in charge of his garage business. I felt that if he could let me down again at this point in our lives, there wasn't much hope for the future. I left. Much later we were to become good friends, though never lovers, again. He is now blind due to a serious incident in which the police were responsible - but that's another story.
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| During my days in audit I had come across the first computerised trails. I was intrigued by these machines, and not terribly enamoured by accounts, so decided to train in programming. This was during the long hot summer of 1976 when it seemed the whole of the rest of the world was taking time off to sunbathe and I had to travel to central London every day for full time study. But I loved it. I qualified and took a job as an analyst/programmer with Boeing in Watford. In those days there were no PCs. We had to write the software on coding sheets, send it to the punch room where it was translated to paper tape or card, then on to the machine room where operators fed the medium into the mainframe.
  At Boeing I met my second husband, Bob. Looking back we really had nothing in common except work and a love of motor bikes and racing. I moved to live with him in a rented apartment in Kennington overlooking the park. During the season, we spent every weekend going to race meetings all over the country, setting up camp amongst fumes and noise, and competing on Ducatis. Our first son, Anthony, was born in December 1978. We married three months later in early 1979. Even then I knew it was a mistake - Bob had been unfaithful and unsupportive during my pregnancy, but my heart always did lead my head! Cynthia and Spoon, you came to the wedding and I can remember joking "Will you come to the next one?". This must have been the last time I saw either of you.
 Just before Anthony was born I gave up my job at Boeing believing I should stay at home a while with the baby. On my last day at work I was contacted by a friend from my programming course. He offered me a contract job and we arranged to talk that evening in a pub. He was rather bemused when I arrived extremely pregnant. However the pay was fantastic and the work sounded interesting and I persuaded him that I could continue before, during and after the birth. True to my word, and because I always loved the work so much, I was actually coding whilst in labour at hospital. The benefits were that after the first three months I had earnt enough to buy a house in Bushey near Watford.
During my time at Boeing I met a dear friend George, another programmer, whom I was able to hire to work alongside me for the first contract. We got on so well we set up our own business with offices in Bond Street. We worked long and hard and I earned enough dosh to keep Bob in membership of all the surrounding golf courses.
Our second son, Matthew was born in January 1981. I continued working and juggling child care throughout. Bob and I had frequent rows and eventually, in January 1982 when I was a week pregnant with our third child, the marriage broke up and Bob went to live with his parents. I suffered some sort of breakdown whereby I felt ashamed to go outside of the house. My health visitor was a guardian angel and without her I don't know that I would ever have recovered. She found places in a local nursery for both the boys. The nursery required that mothers spent most of their time joining in with activities, with the children and with each other.
 The nesting instinct with the third pregnancy hit harder than before - maybe because I had the time since I was no longer working. I desparately wanted a girl and completely decorated and furnished the house in pinkish themes. I also painted the outside of the house. There must have been some sort of Royal event taking place that year as I can remember  being up a ladder outside madly painting whilst street parties were taking place - maybe it was the marriage of Charles and Diana. In September 1982, when I was 31 and the boys were 2 and 1, my daughter Candice was born. I became a fully fledged single mum, a state that continued until they were all grown up and one I thoroughly enjoyed. I was responsible for my children but no longer responsible TO anyone. I had a ball.
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