Mum met our dad, Tony, at the YMCA in Tottenham Court Road, when she was just 19 years old. In her words she fell "madly in love", she had fond memories of them spending the night on the pavement in the rain to watch the Queen's coronation. They had very little money and would spend lots of time in Lyon's coffee bars or Regent's Park. After the third child, Carleton, had been born they moved to Caversham and my father would commute to work in London until he got a job at Cyril Lord Carpets in Reading. He was then asked to run the Cyril Lord carpet shop in Bridgwater, Somerset which he enjoyed. When Cyril Lord went bankrupt Tony opened his own carpet shop. This meant that our parents only saw each other at weekends, and this wasn't easy as by then there were two more children in the family.
It was their intention to move down to Somerset but there were problems with selling the house and it never happened. At this time my mother had to go back to work to make ends meet and we had a series of au pair girls to look after us. They were from all over Europe, quite a few from Scandinavia, and my mother stayed in touch with several of them for a long time afterwards. As many were just 17 as my mother had been she looked after them like a mother, although that wasn't always easy, when some of the bolder ones used to go out and come back late at night which wasn't allowed.
Of course, the marriage suffered and my mother had a tough job bringing us up on her own, with my father appearing late on Saturday night and leaving again on Sunday night or every early on Monday morning. This was before the M4 and M5 and at that time it was a four hour journey from Reading to Bridgewater.
They battled on but finances were always an issue. Our father built up a very successful carpet business with two shops and later a large warehouse. However, he was quite reckless with his business ventures and didn't always pay his bills on time. When there was the possibility of the bailiffs moving in and losing 5 Priest Hill my mother asked her friends and her parents to help out and the house was put into her name. I remember how worried she was at this time and how determined she was to pay everyone back which she did as soon as she could.
Our parents always remained friends, although leading separate lives at times. We remember our mother putting up with Dad's crazy ideas for making money. He had a large van and used to arrive at 5 Priest Hill with tons of candles (to sell during the miners' strike but they were too late!), tins of macaroni cheese (a new idea at the time), and once many recently slaughtered chickens which my mother was supposed to pluck and prepare for sale. However, they stank and were obviously past their sell-by date.