A memoir from the 1970s.
He accepted the Hartlepool nuclear power station job in November ‘73, with enthusiasm. In similar fashion, the GLC said they’d buy our named-for-a-race-horse Enfield house. We paid a flying visit and chose a new one. Then followed much disruption, separation, until May when the GLC discovered it had run out of money. Another visit, an … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Moving North”
I liked the old Volvo: its seats were comfortable and the large boot accommodated a family’s luggage. Driving through France for a family holiday, the temperature gauge edged into the red. We pulled off the road, and I found that the plastic header tank for the radiator had swollen considerably. Driving on, slowly, we found … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Moteur Mal”
At school I enjoyed English seeing how the characters developed on the paper. At college a tutor would always put a line through my work and write nonsense sentence without discussing my work. Years later I took up writing again winning several prizes for charity. Including First prize for prose for Iain Renee Hospice Care … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “My World at Seventeen”
The cloud had smothered the savannah for weeks, selfishly holding onto its precious cargo. Our car slowed to avoid the bloated carcass of a cow, it’s juices seeping onto the dirt road. Nature was withholding the manna from above. ‘Looks like there’s a hut on fire at the site’. The driver motioned to a black … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “20 November 1974”
1972 was the year I started my first job, voted for the first time in a referendum on the EEC and joined the local drama and musical society. My passions were writing and theatre but I needed a livelihood and a career. Choices were few and there was no money for University. My job was … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Me mammy says it’s not right”
There is a house in Occitanie, beneath the Albères Mountains. We began our visits in the seventies, always in summer, when colours are heated to intensity and every breath draws in the scent of herbs. We rose early, enlivened by the sun, to set off on the Bread Walk, down a dusty rust-red path, past … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “The Bread Walk”
The blue Mini had several dents and rusted bumpers. It cost £60. I’d saved the money from my job teaching English to foreigners in London. My boyfriend worked in a vodka factory and used to come home tipsy, drinking from accidentally broken bottles in the machinery. We packed the mini with all our belonging. I … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Leaving for Poland”
Early 1970s we arrived in Chester. My husband my seven month old daughter and me. It seemed like a minute ago I had been dancing in the Cork Opera House, a soloist with the Irish Theatre Ballet Company. Now I was missing that life, and I needed to earn some money. In 1973 I opened … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “A Great Memory”
The seventies was a restless decade. My twenties. I flitted all over the country, touching down on every compass point in the search for myself, gaining university degrees, losing friends, trying on different jobs and fashions for size. Boyfriends came and went too. I was the first to admit that I was fickle, perhaps needing … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Dawson”
The year was ’72 and it had not begun well. The miners’ strike. And as it dragged on, power cut after power cut for hours at a stretch. One lunchtime, Chester city centre blacked out, I dined by the light of a hissing hurricane lamp in a café with soup bubbling on calor rings like … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Lunching”
It was cold the moment of her birth that late July morning 1970. ‘Bit parky in here,’ a cleaner said. I felt the chill – and never knew about the sinister frost brought by an unseen, uninvited guest, never guessed that my Briar Rose would fall at sweet sixteen under a malevolent curse which wounded … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Deeper into darkness”
Well, he was a kitten actually and my brother had given him to me as a birthday gift. Just after the New Year celebrations were over in 1970 I took a trip to the animal hospital to see about having him neutered. When I was called in to the consultation room I was surprised to … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “It Started with a Cat”
At the beginning of the 70s I left Wales, and the Holyhead County Secondary, to return to Hull where I took a part-time job in an all- girl Junior High (ages 10 – 13). The school served the working class, fishing community; the every same area in which I was born and nurtured. I also … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “1973-74”
Just after O levels, a week before turning sixteen, school friends Jo (me), Pep and Clob joined the 30,000 crowd at the first Reading Festival. The weekend ticket cost £1.50. My diary recorded our first sight of drugs. Saturday 26th June The site was a quagmire. Tons of hippies & heavies. We read in the … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “1971: Reading Festival”
Spring 1970. The estate agent opened the front door. Yes! I felt an immediate affinity with the Victorian terraced house we were viewing. The motley furniture which crowded every room didn’t distract from its solid appeal. It was the sort of property I felt we might end up in years down the line, rather than … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Ideal Home”