” At the end of 1961, again chasing work, Colin found a job in Johannesburg and we were on the move again. Echoing the P Elizabeth situation, my Durban boss had been transferred to Johannesburg a few months before me and after contacting him he recommended me to one of his friends & I had a job in a Joburg Building Soc. I never had to go to a job interview, or indeed apply for one myself until I was in my forties as I was always given work by my bosses.
Before we left Durban we travelled to Gwelo in Southern Rhodesia for a friend’s wedding. We had acquired a relatively new Volkswagen Beetle & left Durban on the Thursday evening after work, stopping off in Joburg or Pretoria to pick up a distant relative of the groom, and after a short kip on the side of the road, arrived at the Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) border at about 7am (Colin drove all the way as I didn’t drive). We then found that our passenger had forgotten her passport & we had a very long wait at the border while they arranged documentation for her. We eventually arrived in Gwelo in time for supper – a drive of about 1000 miles. We enjoyed the wedding & spent Sunday driving all the way home.
Our first home in Johannesburg was in the northern suburbs – a bungalow converted into two flats by the elderly lady owner. It was fortified like Fort Knox as Joburg has always had a high crime rate. By this time we had two dogs, Mitzi and Candy (a wire-haired dachs cross) and we therefore acquired the services of a maid each morning to clean the flat & look after the dogs. A few months after we moved in the maid was forced by another woman to let her in who then proceeded to empty the flat of all my clothes, jewellery and a couple of very pretty yellow hand towels. The only things she left were a tailored shirt hung between Colin’s suits and a dress I’d unpicked to remodel. I didn’t even have a change of underwear. She also took a small handgun Colin thought we’d need because of all the unrest at the time (just after Sharpville). Although it was locked in a desk she broke in to it & took the gun. The police were very upset by this. I got home first and found two hysterical dogs locked in the living room and all the doors sealed and bolted from the inside. When Colin arrived home it took him precisely 5 minutes to break in much to the consternation of our elderly landlady who then sold the bungalow for something more secure. We thus had to move again and found a pleasant bungalow on the north western fringe of Joburg at Roodepoort. Because we were fairly remote we then acquired another two dogs, large Rhodesian ridgeback/cross Labradors. The two big dogs slept outside the bungalow to warn us of any approaching raiders but often got into trouble by raiding neighbouring hen runs. Although nothing was proved, I once found some feathers so kept very quiet!
I was doing very well at work and when one of the cashiers was caught stealing, was promoted again. One of the clerks who was from a fairly poor family was getting married and I offered to make his bride’s gown and later on also had to do some maternity dresses for her.
Richard was born in November 1962 and because I’m Rhesus neg & Colin is positive, my pregnancy involved fortnightly blood tests. My veins were difficult to find and the doctor used to curse me! We had a very good doc/patient relationship but he wouldn’t believe me when I insisted I was having a boy on Nov 14th (my mother’s birthday). Up to 3 days before he said I wasn’t ready & it couldn’t happen – but it did. I managed to call him away from his golf game as well. Colin had to stand by during the birth (not allowed in the room in those days) to courier a blood sample to the lab if necessary. Luckily it wasn’t. While I was in the nursing home my mother arrived to stay for a week and at visiting time Colin slipped me a whole lot of information on emigrating to either the UK or New Zealand, behind my mother’s back.
As November is the start of summer in S Africa I dressed Ric in as little as possible – a T-shirt or vest and nappy. The wife of the farmer who owned the bungalow had had a boy 3 months earlier & this child was always swaddled as tightly as possible much to the bemusement of the local maids [my progress was apparently much faster]. By this time we’d reduced down to three dogs – we’d had to rehome Sally as she wanted to be the only dog in the family & thus we didn’t think she’d take kindly to a baby in the house. The other three adored Ric & let him crawl all over them & I even found him chewing (gumming!) ones tail! One evening the dogs got very excited because a snake slithered in under the front door. It eventually disappeared in the bathroom & we thought it had gone outside via a gap next to the basin’s drain. Wrong. Next morning with Richard next to me in his pram, I opened the curtains & it fell out on the pram. I don’t know how, but somehow I threw it out of the window, followed it and killed it with a stone from the rockery. It was highly poisonous [a black mamba apparently].
All these months we been mulling over Colin’s emigration plans and eventually decied on the UK, mainly because Colin applied for a job in London & was successful. If New Zealand had offered work we might well have ended up there. My mother took the two small dogs as they had by now retired & were living in a flat while they were buying a house. This new bungalow was put in my name so they could get a mortgage which made things easier for me when it had to be sold. As the flat was very smallwe stayed with Colin’s parents for two months before we sailed. It was cramped and not very pleasant as I still didn’t get on with his mother, & Ric wasn’t very keen either [!].
We sailed at the end of July 1963 and while we were in Cape Town where the ship stopped for 3 days, we met Wanda’s fiancé Dave, & his family who took us for a tour of the city. We enjoyed the trip over except that I had an early miscarriage just before Madeira & we couldn’t go ashore. My morning sickness was exacerbated by the motion of the sea, and also our blood differences didn’t help. This started a series of miscarriages because once my antibodies discovered their power there was no stopping them and eventually led us to adoption.
We landed in Southampton in the middle of August 1963 and lugged baby, buggy, & baggage across to the train. We went to Uncle Stan’s in Devon for a few days (luckily he met us in Exeter so we didn’t have to change trains) and then off to London. We stayed in Ealing with our bridesmaid Colleen while we house/flat hunted. We had been warned by all the old S African aunts that flats in England didn’t have bathrooms & other dire predictions and although we saw some pretty dire places, we eventually found a very nice 1st floor flat in Haverstock Hill in Belsize Park. We had left ourselves, as we thought, enough money to tide us over till pay day, but then our goods arrived from S Africa (the big wooden chest packed with some precious things). The contract we signed had said door to door, but after some confusion we discovered it was door to Southampton docks and we had to find nearly £100 for delivery. In those days that was a lot of money – more than a month’s salary – but the local bank manager was very good and advanced us the cash! I started walking with Richard in the buggy and covered most of Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage and Hampstead including the Heath. I knew no-one except another couple in the same house, there was no day-time TV, so I walked. It was fun. After 4 months I found an unfurnished basement flat in Steeles Road (2 beds, large living room & some outside space for Ric). It was free, but I had to do three mornings work a week for the doctor and his matron wife upstairs. Mondays – washing in an unheated twin tub so by the time I got to the final wash of his sock the water was blacker than the socks. I didn’t think this was very hygienic (er matron?). Tuesdays, the ironing and Fridays cleaning the three son’s (only one lived at home, 2 at boarding school) bedrooms and bathroom on the top floor. Being an ex hospital matron, she expected me to move all the heavy furniture every week, with no help & Ric playing around my feet. I lasted till the November when we thankfully moved out to Rayleigh in Essex. The other niggle was that they expected us to stay in all weekend in case they wanted to go out so we could take any phone message for the important surgeon! However, the nine months we had there rent free enabled us to get together some furniture from second-hand shops & auction rooms etc.
We had managed to get a 100% mortgage from the GLC and signed up for a new build on an estate in Rayleigh. There was a delay and as we were getting more and more fed up with the doctor’s flat, we rented a house on Woodlands Close in Rayleigh & moved out there. Again I was walking – knew nobody – I must have covered as enormous distance. We were in the rented house for about 6 months and having failed to convince the builders to start the property we’d signed up for, we bought our first house in Woodlands Avenue. Innocents abroad as we were, we hadn’t realised that there were charges above the 100% mortgage, but luckily the plot of land we’d bought in Port Elizabeth before our wedding suddenly sold, raising exactly the sum needed. We did live from hand to mouth in those days. We moved in in May 1965 and started making friends with the young families down the road. However, after 6 months Ric (aged 3) thought we should move as we seemed to have a new home every few months! We spent 71/2 years there before moving to Maylandsea, then up to Norfolk.
When Ric was four we went on our first continental holiday, flying from Southend in one of those bull-nose planes which took two or three cars as well as passengers. It was a very bumpy and noisy flight & we were all very glad to land. We spent a few days in Ostend, exploring the neighbouring towns and countryside by bus and train. We particularly liked sitting by the harbour & watching all the fishing boats. When we returned to the UK, the airport officials didn’t stamp any conditions in Colin’s S African passport so he was free to come and go as he pleased. It was still a couple of years before he could become naturalised as a British citizen.
We made a few friends in W Avenue, particularly the Millingtons whose kids Annette, Jodi, Peter & David were always playing at our house. Colin built a wooden climbing frame which was usually known as Thunderbird 2 and this was always full of kids staring into the Humphrey’s garden next door. He & his family were aloof from the rest of us and was always ticking us off for something or other. Mind you, we sometimes gave him cause – by creosoting the fence not realising this covered his roses in spots of creosote, and breaking up the front path which spattered his immaculate lawn with chips of concrete.
In 1966, after numerous miscarriages, we adopted Sandra bringing her aged 6 months home by coach from Gosport. In 1968 we adopted Michael. [sadly in 1981 Sandra’s adoption broke down and she went into care and I haven’t seen her since much to my regret – Ric].
When Ric was 8, Sandra 5 & Michael 3, we took off in our newly acquired mini for a drive to Yugoslavia. It meant we stayed in various places en route where we met up with our fellow travellers. Spent a week in Moscaneca Drava (sic) on the Istrian peninsula, & drove home again. This was in 1971, not a lot of time after WWII, & we met several local veterans who always ascertained we weren’t German before they spoke to us. We had read all the AA advice before undertaking the trip and were loaded up with every conceivable spare, apart from the silencer. This came off while we were driving past an airfield in Yugoslavia & as parking & photography etc was strictly banned there, we spent some anxious moments while Colin tied it back with string and duct tape. It eventually fell off completely outside Selfridges on the trip home. We made friends with an older couple and their even older parents. We were in our 30s they were50ish & parents 70ish. We all decided to take a different route home from the recommended one & had a lovely trip via Lake Bled & into north Italy & Austria. The only trouble was when we were stopped by some heavily armed carabinieri, we couldn’t understand a word or gesticulation & they thankfully gave up trying to make us understand & we drove on never knowing what they wanted. Although we set off at the same time or earlier than our co-travellers, our heavily loaded mini was always the last to arrive. In Namur, our last stop in Belgium, I went into the hotel to find our rooms & parking instructions & while I was trying to communicate with the manager an old crone in the foyer dashed out. Whenwe were directed to the annex, with parking in front of the door, there was quite a commotion going on. Said crone was loudly telling a Rolls Royce driver to vamoose as the space was for her “English Friends”! It turned out her son was a pilot in the Battle of Britain, and everyone from England was her friend! We were very low on petrol and needed enough to get across the channel where we could use our cheque card. At a garage we put in petrol – so much in German Marks, so much in Italian Lire etc etc using up all our small change. The owner must have been used to this as he didn’t quibble!
We also had holidays in Scotland, where we stayed in Girvan & visited Dumfries, Edinburgh, Stirling and got lost in Glasgow. We also had a holiday in the north of Scotland at Muir of Ord from where we visited Inverness, Fort William, Loch Ness & Aviemore. We had a dachshund Trudi with us & Colin took her canoeing on a loch near Aviemore! Most of our holidays, however, were spent at Farlecombe; Uncle Stan’s farmhouse at Bickington (Devon) – from there we used to go up onto Dartmoor & explore the old settlements & climb up Haytor etc. One trip we were crossing a river [Becky Falls I believe] by way of large stepping stones. I was carrying Michael & Richard crossing on his own. Colin was filming from the bank when Ric disappeared. He slipped into a crack between the rocks up to his chin in the water [quick interjection here; I was wearing wellies and went fully under]. Colin pulled him out and we had to hurry back to Farlecombe as it was a freezing October day & Stan’s van had no heating. Luckily he didn’t even get a cold [or indeed, drown]. It was the last in a series of “dips” into water – the first just his new sandals, then up to his waist [I remember it as a stumble and sit], before this almost [actual] total submersion. We also did a few camping holidays, one down near Falmouth during the week the Fastnet Race ended in disaster, very stormy weather. Also one at Pevensey on the south coast where again it was stormy & it took several men to help us pitch the tent. Our best camping trip was a stop at Hexham on the edge of Hadrian’s Wall. We had both dogs with us [I had a Dalmatian by then called Domino] and Domino used to jump on and off the wall & grazed her knees. We went on to a pleasant campsite on teh shores of Loch Lomond. We all set off to climb Ben Lomond but 1/3 of the way up I sat on a rock with Trudi while everyone climbed. Suddenly Domino realised I was missing and I watched this white blur tearing down the ridge to find me.
[There’s one more post in what mum has written but it stops somewhat abruptly in the mid seventies because “your father will have written about the his side of things and the rest you already know”, so I’ll take some time to put together the rest of the story and post it in due course.]
