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Judy’s Dad turned 70-years-old on the tenth and she made him a cake decorated with emblems representing his life so far. We met at their house in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham, with her brother Frank and his family. (1994)
Notes from bygone years – November (Remember, remember). Hint: Click images to enlarge them.
November 2023 (1 year before publishing this article)
Bristol Boxkite at Bristol Museum
We drove to Bristol to take Donna’s saxophone in for a service at Headwind and then spent the rest of the day in the city. We visited the museum and spent some time in the art gallery there. The main lobby still has the Bristol Boxkite hanging from the ceiling, reminding visitors of Bristol’s long and continuing contribution to the aerospace industry. We also walked down Park Street in the rain, investigated Bristol Guild, ate at a student cafe, and looked around the cathedral briefly. A good day out!
Erin (our cat) responded very well to steroid treatment and was fit and happy for the first half of the month, but towards the end of November she was becoming very unwell again and there was nothing more that the vet could do to help her.
JHM: I posted an article about Chuck Pfarrer and his maps of the Ukraine war; and another about Yara who lives in Kyiv. World events: An AI safety summit was held in the UK; and global average temperatures exceeded 2° C above pre-industrial times.
The Christmas cactus was in great form in November, and a couple of Streptocarpus as well.
We had a visit from two friends from the St Neots area, Jim and Kevin. Jim’s wife, Pam, couldn’t make it this time, and Kevin is living on his own. I took them down to Cirencester and we visited the Corinium Museum. Jim was suitably impressed by the tesselated pavements, and Kevin (a fitter by trade) was intrigued by Roman lock mechanisms and the workmanship of these items.
We were meeting at the Baptist Church in Bibury for a while to help encourage them with some changes and fresh ideas. I was involved in other meetings as well, and we were helping Donna’s Mum and Dad with decorating and getting about (though that was becoming harder).
I went to the election hustings where our local MP, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown was booed and heckled a lot. I certainly wasn’t inclined to support him.
There was quite a lot of rain this month, and a dusting of snow as well. As a result there was some flooding. There’s a concrete bear (a garden ornament) on a wooden platform on the edge of Riverside Walk in Cirencester, and the bear is our water level gauge. As we walk past we see him sitting with his fishing rod on a dry platform (usually). But the photo shows him during the flooding, still clutching his rod and line.
Donna was training as a teacher but was having some second thoughts because of unruly and difficult kids, she also wanted to spend less time running the Open Door Small Group since the teaching work gave her much less available time. Meanwhile I put in a claim for my state pension and we helped some friends move house.
John, one of the guys I’d met at Caffe Nero, was grasping spiritual truths really quickly. He was asking a lot of questions and understanding everything quite deeply. I found this very exciting and immensely encouraging.
I was meeting frequently with different people, there was the Open Door small group once a week, coffee shop meetings with some friends in town, and meetings with my friends Jim, Sean and Kevin rotating around our three homes. It was all good and seemed useful, but three such different groups! Another friend, Chris, was working through Revelation and we met for coffee to discuss this too.
I took my coffee shop friends Matt and Kev to the Newforms Gathering at Kidderminster at the end of the month (photo).
I wrote a short note on the old family dining table we’d been using. It came originally from one of my Dad’s relatives and we’d used it when Judy and I lived in Yatton in the 1980s and 90s. Now we no longer needed it as we required something a good deal larger; we decided it should go to one of my daughters (assuming one of them wanted it).
We had new next door neighbours, Annette and Jerry moved into number 126. And there were major changes taking place in Unilever’s IT organisation that would affect us at Colworth where I was working.
Mum and Dad booked two adjacent holiday villas at Ross-on-Wye and the whole family spent the weekend together. It was a lovely time, a great way to keep in touch, typical of Mum and Dad to organise something like this. They were both closer to the end of their lives than any of us could have imagined, so it’s a special memory for all of us.
Mum had no idea there was an alien spacecraft hovering above her head! Click the photo for a better view.
We had a new gas heating system installed in our home – boiler, radiators, hot tank – everything. The preexisting system was old, decrepit and very inefficient, so high time to replace it.
On 4th November I flew to Schipol for Unilever business at Rotterdam.
And we had a new permanent house guest, Truffles the cat. She was a gift from friends who had more than enough cats, and Truffles preferred being a bit of a loner (though very affectionate with humans).
JHM: View the predecessor website at this time. World events: Australia decided to keep the Queen as head of state; and Kuwait revoked a 1985 law that granted women’s suffrage.
Judy was getting stronger after the problems with the attempted chemotherapy. She was out of danger and out of hospital too during November. She had lost her hair and was wearing a hospital wig, but new hair was already starting to grow and the wig would be only a temporary measure.
Judy’s Dad turned 70-years-old on the tenth and she made him a cake decorated with emblems representing his life so far. We met at their house in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham, with her brother Frank and his family.
In November I bought a new video camera to replace the one stolen in August while were on holiday. This time I bought one of the new, higher resolution Hi-8 cameras. The photo of Beth was made from a VHS copy of a Hi-8 original.
Debbie was probably playing clarinet around this time, but I don’t recall if they ever attempted a piano/clarinet duet!
World events: Dial-up internet was introduced in the USA; while the East German communist government resigned and the Berlin Wall came down.
I developed a DECO database for the Plant Science Division at Long Ashton Research Station to improve the processing and storage of bibliographic information.
This month we had a bit of a breakthrough. My boss at Long Ashton, Ken Stott, put us in touch with a friend of his who was a bank manager; we were then offered good terms on a mortgage.
During the interview we had to hide the fact that Judy was pregnant, as her income had been taken into account.
John Jefferies and Son Ltd published their Christmas bulb offer (see the full details, but don’t place an order – they’ve sold out!)
My Granny (Nor) celebrated her 80th birthday and the family gathered for photos and a short celebration at Uncle John’s house, 4 Tower Street, Cirencester.
In the photo – Back row: Cousin Tim, me, Uncles Bob, John and Dick, cousin Jeremy, and my Dad. Middle row: Judy, Aunty Betty (Bob’s wife), Pippa (Jeremy’s wife), My Mum, and Deirdre (Tim’s wife). Front row Aunty Jo (John’s wife), Nor, and Aunt Millicent (Dick’s wife).
Bonfire Night on 5th November was always an important calendar date when I was a child, and indeed right up until recently. It’s gradually been replaced by Halloween over the last ten or twenty years.
This triple Roman candle was the prize firework item in my parent’s back garden in 1964. I took a time exposure on a tripod while this one ran its course, and the photo came out remarkably well. I was 16-years-old and in the Lower Sixth at Cirencester Grammar School.
World events: NASA launched Mariner 4 to Mars; and France tested an atomic bomb underground in Algeria.
I was still in my first term at Cirencester Grammar School. My classroom was in the southernmost of the three Prefab Classrooms; the first year forms 1A, 1B and 1X had these three rooms, perhaps because they were a little way away from the classrooms for the older pupils.
It was an easy walk to the playground where the tuckshop was (it’s important to get important details sorted out as early as possible).
World events: The first section of the M1 Motorway opened; and the MOSFET transistor was invented in the USA.
I was in my second year at Querns School, and half way through the first term. I think that we had Miss Hourihane as our teacher for this second year as well as my first year, although I can’t be sure about that.
I joined the Trex Club, Mummy helped and I remember being a bit puzzled by the whole process, frankly! If you’d like to join, here are the full details.
World events: The first Godzilla film premiered in Tokyo; and a four-kilogram piece of the Hodges Meteorite crashed through a roof injuring a woman.
There’s little to say about this month, as in October I was 1¼-years-old, life went on, and we were still living in my grandparents house in Victoria Road, Cirencester. Dad continued working on the nurseries, part of the old family business.
World events: Oil was discovered beneath the Caspian Sea; and Winston Churchill supported the idea of a European Union.
Mum and Dad briefly talked about the idea of one day being married, and Dad bought a postcard of Cirencester Parish Church in the village shop in Coagh! They visited Uncle Samuel and Aunt Annie in Belfast on 23rd. On the 29th, Dad heard he was soon to be posted away from Northern Ireland, they were both very sad at this unwelcome news.
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Notes from bygone years – October (Noctober after dark?). Hint: Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
October 2023 (1 year before publishing this article)
Text from a Herculaneum scroll
An exciting scientific paper published in the journal Nature described how X-ray data and clever data manipulation had made it possible to recover small scraps of text from scrolls lost when Vesuvius erupted in October 79 CE. Hope was expressed that it might become possible to recover much larger sections of text, or even whole scrolls.
Our cat, Erin, was not feeling well; due to a tumour she was not eating very well and often threw up afterwards. She was losing weight quickly as a result. The vet suggested a steroid injection to see if it would help her cope better, but it would clearly be only temporary relief. It seemed well worth a try and during the second half of the month she seemed very much her old self again.
We visited Westonbirt Arboretum on 23rd October to enjoy the autumn colours, and Donna’s Uncle Ken died on 26th after a long illness.
I began intermittent fasting, only eating between 11:00 and 21:00, as part of a Zoe trial. I’ve changed the timing slightly, but I’m still following the principle two years later.
There was a Roman Army historical display in the old amphitheatre on 2nd October, it was great fun to watch the events going on and look at the Roman equipment. They fired a melon from a ballista and it sailed right out of the arena. Seeing a crowd at the amphitheatre gave me a sense of scale and made the place look much larger. The crowd in the photo is using about a third of the seating space.
On Mondays I enjoyed meeting my friend Stephen for a walk, a coffee, and a chat.
I spent some time working out the route of the old canal through the built-up parts of Cirencester, it was an interesting exercise, poring over old maps.
We were also helping Donna’s Mum and Dad quite a lot, I get on well with Tony; we’ve always enjoyed chatting and he seems to trust me. He was mostly wheelchair-bound at this time as his Parkinson’s progressed, but on a good day he could still do quite a lot for himself.
On 19th I joined the People’s Vote march in London, quite an experience!
My friends Jim and Pam ran a church Mums and Tots group (Puddles) in St Neots. Jim ask me to take a set of photos of each mum with their child for official use by the group, here’s a more general shot that I included for them.
I was meeting frequently with different people, there was the Open Door small group once a week, coffee shop meetings with some friends in town, meetings with my friends Jim, Sean and Kevin rotating around our three homes. It was all good and seemed useful, but three such different groups!
Donna’s Mum and Dad came to stay for a weekend in the middle of the month and we drove over to Olney for a walk and then to Stoke Bruerne to look at the canal and the ladder of locks. There were some great autumn colours on the day. The photo shows Isobel, Tony and Donna on a bridge.
At the end of the month we visited Cirencester to visit my Mum and Dad, and while we were there we popped over to Westonbirt Arboretum to look at the autumn colours. There’s always a wonderful display there, and the trees were more or less at their best.
These are the web development servers in the open plan office where I worked as part of the Web Team. Today these would all be virtual servers hosted at a data centre elsewhere in the company. It was very useful to have multiple copies of each website, one for the developers to work on, another for testing purposes, and a third for the live service.
Things seemed to go from bad to worse with Judy’s colon cancer. In October (I think) she began the first of three courses of chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil) to shrink the metastases and slow them down. This was expected to give her at least a couple of extra years of healthy life. But after starting the first course she became quite unwell and the doctors discovered that she lacked an enzyme that normally enables the body to dispose of the drug. She had to spend some weeks in hospital, quite dangerously ill for some of them.
I had been working in Long Ashton’s Electron Microscopy Lab, helping to manage the instruments and operating the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) for staff unable to do the work themselves. But with a further reshuffle at work I’d been moved to the Computing Section and was now working on MS-DOS and developing the environment that became the LARS System.
The Good News Crusade came to Portishead and a number of us from Yatton and Claverham were involved. There were several days of the Crusade itself, and then we (and others) arranged some post-Crusade meetings as well.
Mum and Dad had a late touring holiday along the Devon and Cornwall coast. Dad took several 35 mm transparency films of that holiday.
We were living in our flat at 20 Belmont Road, and I already had a Scottish Widows life assurance policy as a first step towards securing a mortgage. We were still not well-placed despite having quite a lot of available reserves in our joint bank savings account.
I was back in Bath University and the fourth year was underway with the final exams looming after Easter. Judy’s position was similar, back at Aber (Aberystwyth) for her third and final year. She took the photo from a ground floor window in Alexandra Hall on the Aber seafront as the sun was setting.
The autumn term meant the start of my time in the Lower Sixth at Cirencester Grammar School. During half-term a friend and I dug a hole in the Lower Garden just east of the footpath behind Churnside (37 Victoria Road). We found some Roman stonework, small pieces of burnt clay, pieces of a broken amphora rim, and a small piece of Samian ware with a failed repair, also a piece of tegula (roof tile). We had no idea this was a bad thing to do!
I was in my first term at Cirencester Grammar School. Amongst other subjects I had to learn some Latin, it wasn’t my favourite subject at the time. The image shows a Latin exercise in which I managed to get seven correct answers out of nine. I think my favourite subjects were maths, geography and chemistry.
World events:Luna 3 returned the first images of the far side of the Moon; and Astérix the Gaul first appeared in a French comic.
Cindy turned three and I was in my second year at Querns School; we were living on the Beeches Estate in Cirencester. 17 Queen Anne’s Road was a three-bedroom semi so I had my own room. Mum and Dad’s room had a special feature, a wall-mounted electric fire with two switches. I never saw this heater in use, but there was also a two bar plug-in electric fire that was used downstairs on very cold days in the winter.
I was 1¼-years-old, and life went on well enough as far as I’m aware. We were living in my grandparents house in Victoria Road, Cirencester and Dad was busy working on the nurseries, part of the old family business founded in 1795.
As October passed and Mum and Dad spent more time together, they became what today we would call ‘an item’. His brother Bob, an army officer and 15 years older than Dad, was married to Betty from the town of Dungannon 13 miles south of Coagh. Dad visited them from time to time, but spent much of his off-duty time with Lilias and her family.
World events: The first German Me 262 jet fighter was shot down; and Warsaw was destroyed by the occupying German forces.
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Notes from bygone years – September after September after September. Hint: Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
September 2023 (1 year before publishing this article)
From time to time we visit Donna’s brother Paul and his wife Ness in Weston-super-Mare, and their two Labradors (pictured). They are sisters, but they have different temperaments, just like people. On this visit, Paul and Ness were heading off for a holiday so Donna and I looked after the dogs for the week.
One of our favourite walks is to take the dogs to the beach for exercise and then to Stones Cafe, a seafront place where we like the breakfasts, so we get a treat before walking home. If we just take Maizi, she gets a dog sausage as well, but fatty foods are a problem for Marple.
We finished our family holiday in the Pennines, and drove home on 2nd September. And the very next day we set out again to drive to the village of Llantisilio in Pembrokeshire for a week with Paul, Ness, Isobel and the dogs.
It was during our stay that we heard about the death of the Queen and the accession of Charles III.
One day we drove to Tenby to look around and visit the indoor market, and we unexpectedly bumped into some friends that we’d made a few years ago in Cirencester, who have since moved to Yorkshire. And here they were in Tenby!
World events: The G7 Imposed a price cap on Russian oil exports; and Liz Truss was appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
The fencing around our back garden was finished, and we were very pleased with it.
I was working on some decorating in Tony and Isobel’s new house, next door but one to ours; having them living close would make it far easier for Donna to help her Mum cope as Tony deteriorated (he had Parkinson’s). A local builder made some alterations for them, including bricking up an unwanted door.
JHM: I wrote an index for articles on my family’s old business. World events: In the UK, Thomas Cook went bankrupt; and in the USA an impeachment inquiry began against President Donald Trump
Donna started her teacher training at the college in Stewartby; and at a Small Group meeting in St Neots she read out Ezekiel 47 and asked, ‘How deep are we prepared to go?’ This led to some good discussion. She was also helping with the Food Bank at this time.
I was meeting with my friends Matt, Kev, John, and Mo, we’d been reading the Bible together and trying to follow Jesus better. Meanwhile, the BBC reported the grim news that Islamic State had beheaded a British aid worker in Iraq.
We visited York to see Debbie, Beth and their families, Sara was six this month.
I flew to the USA for the House2House Conference in Dallas over the weekend of 2nd-6th. From there I flew to West Palm Beach to stay with Steph and Earl, then on to Boston on 14th to join up with Donna for a holiday, returning home via Gatwick on 26th.
We drove down to the RHS Garden at Wisley and spent a good part of the day there exploring. There’s a lot to see! Donna managed to get this picture of me while we were there.
We’d been invited to a party in St Neots in the evening, but we still had enough time to look around quite thoroughly before driving home and getting ready for the evening event.
JHM:I posted meeting notes on Touch and seasons. World events:Chechen rebels took 1,128 people hostage; and West Sulawesi became the 33rd province of Indonesia.
We had a house-warming barbecue on 12th at our new home in St Neots, with a mix of guests from Unilever, Open Door Church and some neighbours.
On 17th we set off for a holiday in Sorrento. The photo shows the remains of a bakery in Pompeii, the grey devices are flour mills and you can see a brick-built oven in the background. Pompeii and Herculaneum were both amazing to see.
During surgery to remove Judy’s colon tumour, metastases were found in her liver. She was offered a course of chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil) but although this was likely to give her a few more years, it would not be a cure.
This was a shock to the whole family, I have few photos, documents, or notes for the year following Judy’s surgery.
World events: Britain lifted the Northern Irish broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin and paramilitaries; and the Taliban movement was founded in Kandahar, Afghanistan..
Due to lack of rainfall and a hot summer, the water levels in Chew Valley Lake fell to the lowest we could remember. The photo shows a road crossing the River Chew over a stone-built bridge, all of which would normally be under water.
World events: An IRA bomb exploded at the Royal Marine School of Music in Deal, killing 11 people; and Hurricane Hugo devastated the Caribbean and the southeastern USA.
It’s always fun to do something unusual. Here are Debbie and Beth eating outside in the sunshine, it was lunchtime judging by the direction of the shadows.
There are fully grown apples on the tree beyond the table, but unpicked so presumably not quite ripe at the time of the photo.
At this time we were busy with faith meetings of various kinds. Our band, Fountain, played and Judy spoke at Pill Baptist Church around 16th, and on 21st Colin Urquhart spoke at Portishead URC where I recorded his address in support of the coming Good News Crusade.
We visited Blenheim Palace, possibly with Judy’s Mum and Dad. It was a fine, early autumn day with a blue sky and strong sunshine.
Judy was pregnant at the time, we had no way of knowing whether to expect a boy or a girl (no ultrasound scans in those days), but in the event it would turn out to be Debbie. A highly satisfactory outcome!
Judy’s 21st birthday was 10th September and we were all invited to Cheltenham for her party. I think this was at 18 Hales Close, and Judy’s brother Frank must have taken the photo. We were both about to head back to University for our final year, me to Bath and Judy to Aberystwyth.
Our Irish holiday continued into the beginning of September. This is the River Bann at Toome Bridge just north of Lough Neagh. Granda was a water bailiff on the Lough, protecting the eel fishery from poaching. The boat he took us out in is the one in the bottom-right corner.
World events: The Forth Road Bridge opened in Scotland; and the Beatles refused to play to a segregated audience in Florida.
After my Grandpa’s death and the funeral, Granny (Nor) went to Kent for a holiday in the area where she grew up, and visited places she remembered and was fond of. Perhaps she had friends or family to visit as well, I don’t know. What I do know is that this card had a long strip of conceretina-folded photos with other views that you could pull out. However, this has not survived.
World events:Luna 2 became the first human-made object to crash on the Moon; and the Xerox 914, the first plain paper copier was introduced.
We were on holiday at Muddiford, near Christchurch 0n the south coast of Hampshire. I was six at this time and Cindy was three, and Dad decided to send a postcard to Ireland on our behalf. His message on the back seems a bit cheeky, though, recommending Muddiford over Portrush! I wonder what Granny-in-Ireland thought about that? (view the card)
It was Mum and Dad’s second wedding anniversary at the end of September, and I was 14 months old. I was likely becoming more confident at both walking and talking. Possibly I’d have been doing unhelpful things as well, like trying to climb the stairs! Keeping a young child safe gets harder as they try new things.
Dad’s Uncle Herbert died (he’d been ill for some time). Dad continued working with radar at the Ballinderry RAF site, and visiting Coagh to spend time with his new friend Lilias. And on 6th September Dad reported hearing ‘awe inspiring drumming’ in Coagh.
By the end of the month Lilias was feeling she was falling in love with Dad, but in his diary he wrote that this was ‘a pity’. I’m glad he changed his mind later!
World events: II: In Operation Market Garden airborne landings began in the Netherlands and Germany; and the first V-2 rocket was used to attack London.
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Notes from bygone years – Some of the most august months of August Hint: Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
August 2023 (1 year before publishing this article)
Reindeer on Cairn Gorm
For our family holiday this year we had decided to book a big house in Scotland (there were ten of us, me and Donna, my two daughters and their husbands, and four grandchildren) so we needed a lot of space! We did many interesting trips and walks, and some of us decided to attempt the summit of Cairn Gorm. We saw a herd of reindeer on the way up, and the summit was in the clouds. If it had been clear, we might have gone further south-west for the views, but we really enjoyed our walk, even so.
This year’s family holiday was at Shap in the Pennines. In the photo, part of the family was out for a walk in the lovely countryside around the holiday house.
As usual, there was a lot to see and do, the Lake District is not far from here and the Pennines are full of interest too.
Some of us walked from Keswick to the top of Skiddaw one day. There were good local walks from our house in Shap, too. Donna and I spent a day exploring Haweswater Reservoir and other parts of the Lake District. We usually do a jigsaw while on holiday – this time it was a picture of Cirencester Market Place.
This year’s family holiday was in the Dordogne; in the photo, some of us are crossing the drawbridge of the lovely medieval castle, ‘Château de Beynac‘. Visiting this place was a fairy tale experience, we have nothing of this age and completeness in England apart from Dover Castle, perhaps. The château was just one of many interesting visits, and the holiday home was perfect for us, with a pool for the children and room for us all to spread out.
World events: 11 billion tons of Greenland ice melted in a single day; in Iceland, a funeral was held for the lost Okjökull glacier.
We returned from our family holiday in Lyme Regis on 1st August, and visited Donna’s Mum and Dad in Broadstone on our way home. Two of our friends were ill, one was in hospital after heart surgery and was recovering slowly and getting out of danger, the other had hepatitis and had been in and out of hospital. Both were improving. On the fun side, we watched dragon boat racing on the river in St Neots (photo).
August is certainly the month for holidays in the UK. In 2009 we rented a large house in Aldeburgh and of course, the beach was high on everyone’s list of things to do. The photo shows Sara and her Dad, Steve, on Hunstanton Beach.
I imagine the conversation going something like this… Sara: ‘Come on Daddy, sitting in the water is great!’ Steve: ‘Hmm.. Nah, I’d rather not, thanks.’
We made a day trip to walk on Kinder Scout with Beth and Paz from their home in Disley, and met up with friends from St Neots that we knew through Open Door Church.
It was a great walk on a fine, sunny day, heading up Grinds Brook from Edale, then over the top to Kinder Downfall, back along some of the edges and down Jacob’s Ladder.
World events: NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft was launched to visit Mercury; and the Summer Olympics were held in Athens.
We moved house on 20th August, from Tilbrook to St Neots, from a two-bedroom cottage to a four-bedroom detached house. Our furniture looked very sparse in the new, larger space!
We’d enjoyed living in a village, but looked forward to walking to the shops and only needing the car for longer trips.
World events: There was a total solar eclipse in Europe; and East Timor regained independence from Indonesia.
August was a difficult month. We went to the Bristol Balloon Fiesta on 6th, great fun as always! The photo shows Beth and Judy at the event. Judy was diagnosed with bowel cancer, though it seemed likely surgery would successfully remove it.
Judy, Beth and I had a holiday at Janzé in Normandy and the surgery was to be performed on our return, probably early in September but it might have been late August.
This year’s holiday was on the northern coast of the Lake District at Silloth, we were able to visit Hadrian’s Wall, Wordsworth’s house, Edinburgh, Carlisle and more.
In this photo taken by Judy you can see part of the Roman Wall fortress of Housesteads, with Debbie and me just beyond the building.
World events: The Singing Revolution in the Baltic States demanded independence from the Soviet Union; and NASA’s Voyager 2 captured images and data at Neptune.
Soon after our holiday, we found a toad in our garden, trapped it in a plastic bucket, and took it to a nearby field to release it. In the photo, Beth has the toad moving onto her hand with help from Debbie, and soon afterwards it was free, hopefully in a toad friendly environment.
It wasn’t unusual in Yatton to find wildlife in the house or garden – a field mouse, a bird, a frog or whatever.
There’s remarkably little to say about this month, I’ve failed to locate any photos, cine film, documents or other physical evidence.
We were living at 22 Rectory Drive, in Yatton; Judy was being a full time Mum with Debbie aged four and Beth just one and a quarter. I was working on fruit tree pollination at Long Ashton Research Station.
By this time Judy would have been four months pregnant and we were well aware of it. We were living in an unfurnished flat in Belmont Road, Bristol, and trying to buy a house. Judy was aware of the years ticking by and wanted to start a family, while I was hoping we could sort the house while on two salaries.
The still from Dad’s cine camera shows Cindy’s husband Peter boating on Loch Nell near Oban. Mum and Dad had driven up to visit them, and Pete’s Mum and twin brother were there as well.
The summer of 1969 saw Judy’s friend Big Mary marry her PhD fiance Malcolm. They were both Welsh speakers, as many of the Aberystwyth students were. The photo shows Maggs (Judy’s closest friend at Aber), Judy, Little Mary, Big Mary and Jan (I think) in red. The other two I recognise but can’t put names to.
I took the photo after the Welsh chapel ceremony, but before the reception. It was a valleys wedding, I think in Cwmbran.
We were on holiday in Coagh, Northern Ireland and visited the Black Saturday parade in nearby Cookstown. Here we are at the Assembly Field after the parade.
In the photo you can see Rachael, Lilias, Ruth, Jane (my great-aunt), Selina (my grandmother) and Mike. We always knew our Irish grandmother as ‘Granny-in-Ireland’ to distinguish her from our English grandmother, Nor.
World events: The last executions took place in the UK; Mary Poppins had its world premiere in Los Angeles.
The 11+ exam results came in, I think while we were on holiday at Burnham-on-Sea, I had passed and would start at Cirencester Grammar School in September. During the same holiday, we heard that my Grandpa had died on 22nd and Dad had to drive home for a couple of days leaving Mum, me and Cindy in the holiday caravan.
Also in August, I passed my Leaping Wolf badge before moving from Cubs to Scouts.
World events: NASA’s Explorer 6 satellite returned the first images of Earth from space; and the Mini car went on sale in the UK.
I had just turned six-years-old and I remember playing with my electric train set that I was given, either for my birthday or perhaps the previous Christmas.
It was similar to the set on the left of the photo. I well remember the picture on the box lid.
Now starting my second year of life (my first birthday was in late July), we were still living with my grandparents, I think.
I might have started saying one or two words at this stage, I was probably able to stand with perhaps a wobble or two and a sudden sit-down now and then. And maybe I could walk short distances by this time too. I remember a blue harness with three or four silver bells on the front and this was used when we walked outside on the pavement, but that memory almost certainly comes from the age of two or three.
Dad took his final radar exam on 14th and found out on 15th that he’d passed and was being posted to Inverness. He was also troubled that his girlfriend at the time, Libby, was not as interested in him as he’d assumed.
After leave in Cirencester from 16th he left for Inverness on 22nd via Paddington, Kings Cross, and overnight to Edinburgh, then via Perth to Inverness on 23rd. He was then told he was being posted to Northern Ireland instead! On 25th it was another rail journey via Perth and Glasgow to Dumfries and on 26th to Stranraer for the boat to Larne and then Belfast. With his friends Joe and Tony he caught a ‘funny’ train to Cookstown and then RAF transport to Ballinderry radar station. The photo shows part of a Chain Home radar site, similar to Ballinderry.
On the 31st Dad went to the village shop in Coagh and wrote in his diary ‘talked to girl for long time’. That girl, four years later, became my Mum!
World events: The Warsaw uprising began; and the world’s first undersea oil pipeline was laid between England and France (to supply fuel to the advancing allied forces).
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Journeys of Heart and Mind 
