28th August- More Nostalgia and Black and White1

I seem to have missed blogging Zachary's 9th Birthday last Friday!! So here he is with a Lego model he had just made.The Black and White really isn't the same is it!!

To continue with family and jobs it is now my ex husband turn!

My ex Andrew came from quite a poor family. His father and mother came from Thornton Cleverley and after the war they moved to Clacton on sea and lived in one of the prefabs built after living in a caravan. I am not sure what his Dad did then but they kept chickens for eggs but couldn't buy them proper food so shells were collected on the beach and ground and given to the chickens so there were shells on the eggs!! When shoes had holes, newspaper/cardboard was put in the soles. Father in law became a local busdriver and when I was around he was a coach driver for Eastern national and just started to abroad taking passengers on holidays. Sadly he died from cancer before retiring shortly after my Father. My mother in law wasn't working when I met Andrew but when he was at school his mother was a waitress at a local hotel to earn extra money.
Andrew left school and worked in London for the Prudential Insurance and then at 21 started work in Barclays Bank locally in Clacton on sea. I met him when I was at teacher training college in Clacton in my 2nd year and on finishing college I got a job in my home town Hastings and Andrew got a bank transfer to Barclays there. We got a bank mortgage on a 3 bedroomed house with a very large garden out in the country in a village called Guestling with which was rather above our budget £3, 500!! I earned £1000 a year and Andrew £600 a year, it was 1966. We married in March 1967 and we could only afford to have carpet in the lounge and our bedroom .The rooms upstairs we tarred the floor boards and I made rag and wool rugs for the spare room. We had to chose whether to run a car or have a telephone..we chose the car!
No luxuries until we had a twin tub, fridge, carpet on the stairs hall and landing and dining room and finally a television yet we were happy. Very different from today's materalistic world of must have!!
Andrew continued to work for the bank until the night my dad died, he had just been transferred to Northampton head office and we were moving to Nether Heyford. We decided we needed to stay in Hastings where my mother was so he left the bank, got another mortgage and he got a job with the Inland Revenue. This was when he met the lady who broke up our marriage 3 years later!! He stayed as a 'tax man' until he retired at 60. 2 years ago he died of lung cancer aged 68. yes he had smoked cigarettes and a pipe!!
Just to finish I lived in the same house we bought in 1966 , I bought my ex out with my parents money and on marrying Peter in 1985 we continued to live there for another 10years before selling it (for a lot lot more money than £3,500) and downsized to where we live now so we could retire early and pay off our mortgage...more about our jobs tomorrow!!