We moved house!
This was the biggest event in my life so far, bigger than starting school or even being born, because I was acutely aware of it and even had some influence over it, rather than it being done to me. And it changed my life.
This was the biggest event in my life so far, bigger than starting school or even being born, because I was acutely aware of it and even had some influence over it, rather than it being done to me. And it changed my life.
It was announced, probably over
Sunday lunch. We’re all going to live
together in a great big new house! Let’s
go out and find it! That’ll be fun!
Our parents had, I believe, come
into some kind of inheritance. My father
had been doing well at work and had a significant promotion. His career had
been built on scientific capability, but then, as now, the only way to reward
someone was to promote them, and the only way to do that was to convert them
from achievers into managers. I don’t
know how good a manager he became, but he was certainly happy to take the
money.
66 Watcombe was owned outright by my
grandparents. And the tenant in the
Stamford Road house (which had been their first home that they’d somehow
managed to retain and let) had become intolerable and had to be evicted, which
meant that could be sold too. So capital
was available.
And there were practical reasons too, of
course. We kids would soon each need our
own room. (That didn’t quite work out as planned, but that’s for later.) Grandpa had had his stroke, whilst doing some
decorating – it rendered him nearly blind, which we were told was due to him
getting a chip of wood or something in his eye – and Granny wouldn’t be able to
look after him on her own.
Well I never knew that about Grandpa, I knew he had a stroke, whatever that meant to a 7 year old. It was November 1954 I believe. I remember soon after the move almost hanging myself by wrapping by head in the roller towel on the back of the cloakroom door. Perhaps that's why I have no fear of blower driers in public conveniences.
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