Margaret meets Alan at a social evening in Fareham, where careful dancing leads to a telephone call and a first date.

Margaret and Alan buy a used red Chevette after George inspects it and offers the nearest thing he gives to approval.

Margaret and Alan marry at Fareham Register Office and begin married life in a flat still filled with boxes.

Two days after their wedding, Margaret and Alan take the Chevette and ferry to Shanklin for a four-night honeymoon.

Margaret and Alan settle into their first married home, a compact Fareham flat with second-hand furniture and a coin-operated laundry.

Claire is born in Portsmouth, and Margaret and Alan begin adjusting their Fareham flat and daily routines around their first child.

Margaret and Alan leave the Fareham flat for a three-bedroom house in Havant, taking on a mortgage and room to expand.

Michael is born in Portsmouth, and Margaret adjusts to caring for a second child alongside three-year-old Claire.

Margaret returns to paid employment as a part-time clerical assistant at Eastbrook Junior School.

A low-cost family camping holiday in the New Forest begins with a borrowed frame tent and competing ideas about how to put it up.

The family takes its first overseas holiday, flying from Gatwick to Majorca for a week in a modest apartment.

A visit to see a litter of kittens ends with the family bringing home a tabby named Mabel.

Margaret’s recurring pain is diagnosed as gallstones, leading to surgery and an unwanted demonstration that home and work can continue without her.

The family’s first home computer takes over one end of the dining room and creates new uses, instructions and arguments about whose turn it is.

Margaret returns to Weymouth with Alan, Claire and Michael and tries unsuccessfully to identify the boarding house from her childhood holiday.

Margaret and Alan move from their Havant house to a smaller bungalow in Emsworth as their children become more independent.

Margaret records the final week of her father’s life after a severe stroke and the practical decisions that followed his death.

A chance meeting in Fareham brings Margaret and Denise back into contact after eighteen years.

Claire marries Simon after organising the day with the same attention she gives to most family arrangements.

Margaret meets her first grandchild and discovers that Claire has her own clear instructions for handling a newborn.