Life Archive

I do not remember Peter asking whether I would be staying. I was a baby, so my contribution to the record is limited.

I know I was born on a Friday because the date on my birth certificate works out that way. Mum also said Friday, although she gave me two different times over the years and once moved the whole thing into the afternoon. I have kept the morning version because that was the one she used most often.

My earliest memory may not be mine.

We visited Nan Wells on Sundays often enough for the routine to feel fixed, though I cannot say whether it was every week.

Denise lived two doors down and knew the street already. This gave her authority.

We moved to Portchester in August 1969, a few weeks before my seventh birthday and before I started at Castle Lane Junior School.

Mum walked me to Castle Lane on my first morning. Denise came with us and behaved as though she were showing two visitors round.

Gran Collins counted her change before she left the counter.

We went to Hayling Island for a week in the summer of 1971 and stayed in a caravan. It was not our first caravan holiday, but it is the first one I remember in enough detail to separate it from the others.

Decimal Day was Monday, 15 February 1971. I was eight and had been told that money was changing, although the pound was staying the same. This seemed an unnecessary way to organise it.

We went to Weymouth in August 1972 and stayed in a boarding house near the seafront. The week was wet often enough for the rain to become part of the daily planning, though not enough for Dad to admit the holiday had been affected.

By 1976, Denise and I spent some Saturday mornings looking at records. Looking was free. Buying required several weeks of not spending money on anything else.

I have left school.

I received my first pay packet on Friday, 31 August 1979, after four weeks at Wessex Marine Supplies.

The first evening class began on Monday, 8 September 1980, six days before my eighteenth birthday.

I met Alan at Fareham Civic Hall on Friday, 17 October 1980.

The tutor at evening class said I needed to practise at home if I wanted to improve my speed.

We bought the Chevette in 1983 after agreeing that buying a car counted as large spending, so both of us needed to know about it.

The Fareham flat was our first home together. We had the tenancy before the wedding and moved in properly after Shanklin.

We married on Saturday, 12 May 1984, at Fareham Register Office.