Then came a bad time, when he was out of work for two years, after the Austin motor works closed. We lived in Tilehurst, which is a suburb of Reading, .... first in a row house and then in a detached one, across from the recreation grounds. I remember him carrying our gooseberry bushes to plant at the new house. We had chickens, too and Mother would sell the eggs. One time she sent me with some in a straw basket, to this lady, and, after getting there, I set them down heavily and broke most of them. I was about five.

Dad got a job at Vickers-Armstrong, who built aeroplanes, and we moved to Byfleet in a moving van, looking out the back. That's where we four children were reared. It was a smallish village, mentioned in the Domesday Book and having a manor house, a water mill (Bluegate's Hole) and other interesting places. The river Wey runs through it en route to the Thames. We happily used a golf course, St. George's Hills, as a playground; also the Byfleet batter, which was part of Brookland's race track. We even got to investigate old aeroplanes like the Vicker's Vildebeeste; it had a radial engine and looked very fierce.

Dad worked there for thirty years and got a gold watch, when they retired him. He wasn't allowed to work as a smith but went back as a clean up gaffer. He died, from lung cancer, at age seventy three.

When World War 2 happened, Mother went to work outside the home. As a young girl, at about age thirteen, she was put to work in a drapery store. She liked working for the General Post Office; the rounds were done from bicycles then and the mail was pushed through the doors' letter boxes.

Her lifetime obsession was cats; it's rare to get her picture sans cat.

She died from a myocardial infarction, at age eighty three.