Unusual voting results only one story got 2 votes to win and that was Sue.
Next month's meeting will be on the 2nd of November at Pat & Brian's.
"Packed up"
Sue's story
'When
I lived ...' Those three words conjure up all sorts of memories for
most people, especially if they have moved around the country, or
even lived abroad. My mind immediately goes back to the time when I
was first married and we had to move whenever my husband changed his
job, which usually involved travelling some distance. He didn't do
this because he was found wanting in any way, but as a way of gaining
promotion.
Brian
had chosen dairy farming as his career and having completed his
college training and his Army service, we married and made our first
home ten miles outside Cambridge, where our first child was born.
Two
happy years later, it was time to progress, so we moved to Wiltshire,
with me expecting my second child. It wasn't an easy process, moving
a great distance, with a young child, another on the way, and having
to see the furniture off before we left, clean up, then drive to our
new home and hope to get there before the van. This would have been
an impossibility but for the kindness of Brian's parents, as we
didn't even have a car!
This
move proved a disastrous one, as the lady farmer was not very
pleasant and her beloved pedigree Turkey stock had all just been
destroyed because of fowl pest. Not a happy time, although Brian
became the dairy herd manager. This job only lasted six months, until
Brian became herd manager on a Co-operative Society farm in Radstock.
We
were very happy there and our second daughter was born the day after
we moved. We had a modern house - our first, the other two being
Elizabethan and early Victorian respectively - on top of a hill above
the town, with panoramic views all around. Even when we were snowed
in from Boxing Day until March 1963, we enjoyed our life there, with
friendly, generous people in the village who made sure we didn't go
without anything. We would have happily remained there, but fate
played a hand in moving us on yet again.
This
time Brian was head hunted by a gentleman farmer from Whitchurch
Canonicorum in Dorset. He came to see us! He wanted Brian to breed a
herd of pedigree Red Poll cattle, which was a challenge Brian could
not refuse. The only problem was, there was no accommodation, but
planning permission for a Woolaway bungalow had been granted.
Meanwhile,
a large caravan had been purchased for our use. Not ideal for the
four of us, but full of youthful optimism and a certain sense of
adventure, the job was accepted and we packed up once more and set
off for Dorset and what was to become my spiritual home. Would we
have moved if we had known what awaited us, what fate had in store
for us, in the years to come? Judge for yourselves.
We
spent the winter enduring more cold, snowy weather and life would
have been much more difficult but for the kindness of the farmer's
wife, who made her bathroom available for me to bath the children,
allowed me to use the washing machine and plied me with coffee while
entertaining the children on many a bleak morning.
The
summer in our new bungalow was sheer bliss and I could walk the two
miles to Charmouth beach on sunny days, spend the day there and
return home in the evening with Brian when he finished work.
This
life came to an abrupt end when the farmer's son-in-law was sacked
from his job and brought to the farm to take Brian's job and our
home. We were given one month to find another job and a new home, so
once again were on the move, this time with little time to search,
and fate took us to a village between Watford and the M1 and events
which changed our lives forever.
Do
I dwell on 'what ifs'? What is the point of that? I firmly believe we
have to live life as it is and not always be wishing it had been
different, and I have enjoyed a full and happy life doing my best to
live by those principles.
