Peter Wells

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.

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.

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.

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

We left for Shanklin on Monday, two days after the wedding.

We went back to Weymouth in August 1999.

Dad had a stroke less than a week before he died.

Claire married Simon on 9 September 2010.

Mum treated her bus pass as proof that the buses were there for her personal use.

Mum had a stroke on Tuesday 27 September 2016.

Elliot was a month old at his first Christmas.

I did not decide to write my life. I decided to sort a few dates.