Getting to Here!

I guess the next step in this to set the scene how I got to where I appear in the diaries.

Out I popped into the World in the early 60s in swinging, happening Liverpool, the third child & only girl. I had bronchial pneumonia as a baby and continual chesty coughs, Dad looked for a job on the coast and finally managed to gain a good position as an engineer in Southport Circa March 1965.
Off we all went with the excitement of sandhills, beach and occasionally the sea, as small people we could not often walk that far …. This excitement and new life was swiftly removed 2 years later when my Dad died very suddenly aged 44.

So faced with raising 3 kids, no income (no insurance then that paid off the house) and no family living near, Mum had the choice of either selling up and taking us back to Liverpool or staying put to carry on Dads dream of a healthier life for his children at the coast.
Thankfully for us we stayed. Let this never at anytime appear as though I am ashamed of my Scouse roots, because no further from the truth could you get …….. but lets face it as a kid growing up at the sea side ..what more could you ask it was sooooooooooooo cool

Mum got cleaning jobs, which she could do in school hours

‘I will not have you being latch key kids’ she would say

Growing up in a middle class village for a Scouse family was tough. At that time my brother and I were the only kids on free school meals (our Primary School had braided blazers, shirt and tie and the boys wore caps), my Mum was ignored in the bread shop as Mrs Cooper, Mrs Thornby et al where called in front of her at the bakers for their bread order, I was constantly corrected on my speech by my best friends' mothers …

‘now come along dear it is Barth .. not bath, Garrargge .. not Garage!’.. they would say

I was not allowed in some of my mates homes because I was from Liverpool …. I would sit on the step whilst the rest went in the house…

All this was stored in the memory banks and has made me the person I am now .. I expect that is what has given me my levels of tolerance of people and all our differences … and certainly I must confess as have seen some of these parents now as an adult I think

‘You made my life hell as a child with your bias… but look at me now !’ & smile to myself

Along the way we got by with clothes from the families Mum cleaned for, the Church and a lady that owned one of the big sea front Hotels

(Early check in here!! .. was given a head scarf from one such charitable family to use for my Cindy doll… I cut it up to make sheets for her bed I had made out of a cornflake packet after watching Blue Peter. The scarf was a Hermes !!!!!)

Once I went to Secondary School Mum did get a full time job in the Civil Service and she also met a man (she was 36 when Dad died ) … He was the widowed son of a neighbour and our life changed again………………….. He had a car……….. a tan Ford Cortina 2000E OEM 59L…..


Will get around to the secrets of the diaries over the next posts……….. just to say the first is the ‘Summer of 1974’... I didn't get bitter .. I just got better :-)