...When you were a baby. in tell me a story about when you were...

When we moved to Yorkshire town, dad was on a temporary contract so we lived in a rented house. It was a typical 1930’s semi detached house in the area of town that dad was told that we had to live. This was because doctors had to be ‘on-call’, so they each had one night a week and weekends on Rota in which they had to stay at home and answer the phone to any patients who needed advice or home visits. All the local doctors were spread out around the town and local villages because of this.

Dad was quickly asked to join as a partner because the other doctors liked him; my mum had fallen in love with a house at the other side of the road which had gone up for sale. Mum and dad had to really weigh up the pros and cons of buying such an expensive house - £8,250! Dad still lives there 44 years later - it’s probably worth a little bit more now!

It was another 1930’s semi but definitely not a typical one, the two attached houses are completely different from one another, different numbers of bedrooms and layouts!

In June 1971 they walked across the road, taking the few possessions they owned and us with them.

The house and garden were fantastic. At the far end is a waterway, essentially an overflow plug for the local river to avoid flooding the town centre. When the river fills up it backs up into the overflow, flooding the back gardens of all the houses along our road. The part of our garden which floods is the apple orchard, when I was a child it had four rows of cooking apple trees, but I must wait to tell your about the things we did in the trees. Beyond that are the outbuildings - a two story building which we referred to as the stable and a one story building behind it. There was a secret passage between the stable and the back garden as well as the path that was obvious. Beyond that was the back garden, lawn with flower beds and trees around it. At the front of the house was the front drive, it was gravel at the time with two lawn areas and a porch on the front of the living room. It was my safe place throughout childhood and, to a certain extent, adulthood. Until my mum died.

I don’t remember life as a 0 year old, obviously so I’m setting the scene in this entry.

Last updated November 03, 2015