How about this for a prophecy, “Someday when we are married and have our own house and kids we will be able to look back and think of these times when we were separated so often. It is an old joke that when people have been married a few years they dig up their old love letters and have a good laugh. Without any fear of doubt in my mind at all I say we will be happily married and be able to live together happy and contented. The date now is September 7th 1958. Perhaps on September 7th 1968 we could look at this letter again and see just how right I was, and believe me Edna I know I am right.”
Over the next few weeks letters from Edna were getting less frequent and very short. She was finding her new job stimulating but very tiring. She had to work most evenings on marking and preparation of the next day’s lessons. Her first impressions of the staff at the school were correct and she very quickly settled in. She used to tell me about the characters there, Jeff Jennings was the joker and according to Edna was, “ an awful tease.” He was always having fun with her and Lorna. Ken Honeybone was usually Jeff’s partner in crime. Nick Chamberlain the art teacher and others whose names have now gone from my mind but she enjoyed the atmosphere of the staff room and the kids were not that bad. I remember she had a soft spot for one naughty lad in her form called Wilfred and a girl called Kathleen Chambers. One day Wilfred brought his book up to be marked, “I took one look at it and told him to do it again. I heard a mutter from Wilfred, thinking I could not have heard correctly I asked him what he had said. The answer came back, “Bloody Eck Miss!” My mouth dropped open.” It was a great time for Edna and she was happy in her work and new friends. One of her early letters at that time said, “ Mr Jennings gave me a little lecture today on working too much, I think I will take his advice.” She used to mention him a lot; “I was talking to Jeff today about work when he suddenly asked when we were getting married. He then got talking about himself and his relationship and how horribly frustrating it was waiting for the day. He said he was finding it a great strain etc.” She then wrote, “so you see we are not abnormal and he sees his fiancee every day!” Jeff eventually got married in April 1959 when Edna wrote to say he had brought some wedding cake into the school. Lucky Jeff, he was getting his oats four months before me!
In one of her letters I found a scrubby piece of paper obviously written by one of the kid’s, which she had kept. “ We have had Music today with Miss Barrett. She made some of us stay behind at 4 o’ clock to do some work and I was one of the unlucky ones who had to stay behind for laughing at a boy called Fisher. Then the teacher made me stay long for talking when I arrived at her room.” What a toughie she was! She wrote to tell me of a mother who had gone into school complaining about this Miss Barrett who was keeping her little angel in after school. She was full of herself one day when she felt she had had some success in the classroom. “ You know the atrocious work of Form 2. As a shot in the dark I attempted some grammar thinking they needed to start sometime. I was quite amazed at the results- mind it took about an hour to drum in what a sentence was. It was obvious they had never been told from the ridiculous answers I received. I think I may have grabbed at the right straw here, fingers crossed. It was something new so after a look of boredom they listened it was wonderful to see the interest when they realised they could do something.” Another typical one concerning Jeff and Ken, “ I walked jauntily into school today and Jeff said, “You’ve had a crafty weekend. I went red.” He went on to say that he and Ken had walked past her house the previous night and heard unmentionable noises and furthermore the curtains were about a foot apart. I told him you were very tired and had been asleep when you had been over here. Jeff said, “There’s only one reason a man falls asleep and I should know, it completely shatters you!”
We were seeing each other every weekend and with the scooter I was able to get over at least once during the week in the evening. The late night ride back from Worksop to Sheffield was becoming a regular feature of my life. It was also easier for me to take her back home from Sheffield. She was getting used to clinging on the back of the scooter, it certainly was £85 well spent. About two weeks into her fledgling teaching career there was an amusing incident. In her own words, “Today I was on duty and after locking my form room I went to supervise second sitting. After dinner a child came to me wanting to say his tables so I unlocked my door, I was shocked to see another child standing there; I asked “What are you doing here?” the child cried, “You locked me in,” Boo hoo, Squalls of tears etc. I was horrified, the time was 1pm and school restarted in another 15 minutes and he hadn’t had any dinner. Luckily I managed to find the kitchen staff to find him something.”
Back to University for the start of 4th year and immediately plunged into a one day Sketch Design. There were constant references throughout the correspondence along the lines of, “Oh no another SD to face.” It was pressured work; we would walk in to be given a brief and schedule of accommodation for a project to be designed and drawn up in 24 hours. The types of project ranged widely from a Motel, Sports club, Youth Hostel, a museum for Greek antiquities to a Riding School. People often worked through the night. A panel would assess the schemes comprising the year tutors and sometimes the Professor involved. A few days later a mark would be given and these would all be taken into account at the end of the year. I am not sure Edna was too impressed when soon after term began I wrote to tell her I was captain of the Department football team and I had to organise a trial game for the following Sunday. Hmm “Would you like to come over and watch?”
Rag weekend was an important date in the University calendar. The object was to raise money for local charities and also to have a lot of fun in the process. In my first year I didn’t know what to expect. There was a large procession through the streets of Sheffield on decorated lorries known as “floats.” Each Department would adopt a theme and create a structure to represent that. We were always expected to do well. Each float would be laden with students jangling collecting buckets for the money. There was always a fancy dress Rag Ball, a big event held at City Hall. On the 29th October 1958 it nearly brought about the end of my relationship with Edna, or so she said later! I had the balmy idea we would exchange clothes, I wore one of her dresses, the pink one she had been wearing when we first met, lots of powder and lipstick plus a couple of large balloons strategically located. Very reluctantly she got togged up in my shoes, suit and tie. We got ready at Highnam Crescent and took the bus into the city centre; we must have had a few odd looks. Cross-dressing obviously didn’t go down too well in Priors Marston and it was a very stony faced lady who waltzed around the floor that night. She told me that she had quite gone off me! Relations were strained for days; eventually she came back to normal. I never made that mistake again!
On the first anniversary of our meeting we got officially engaged on the 7th December 1958. We travelled over to the shop in Tynesbank on the Friday the 5th December. Josephine, Reg, Marjorie and their first child Pauline aged about 18 months came up also for the weekend. Edna and Josie stayed with Lizzie and Albert at Beechfield Avenue. Josie remembers that she liked Albert but couldn’t understand a word he said with that strong, “ Eh bah gum” accent. She remembered he kept a hen in his back garden that must have made her feel at home. She also recalled that my mother gave Reg and Marjorie an electric blanket the first night, they hadn’t used one before and left it switched on all night, it must have been a bit warm. On the Saturday we all travelled over to Blackpool to see the illuminations. I can remember pushing Pauline in her pram along the darkened promenade, flashing lights glittering everywhere. Her little eyes were open wide in amazement! Edna’s diary entry for that day said, “ Bill and I got engaged today Whoopee!!!” The intention at that stage was we would get married when I had finished at Sheffield in the summer of 1960. In the back of the diary also, there is a hilarious entry that referred to a conversation over that weekend she had with my mother. It read – “Mary’s Doctor talk, safe period normal cycle 28 days.1-8 days menstruation, 12-15 days, Ovary ready to be fertilised. 15-18 days, Time at which ovary could be fertilised.” My mother clearly had never heard of contraceptives!
Some time in summer 1958 Keith had ended his engagement to Sue and later found a new girl friend called Janet, by coincidence she had her engagement broken the same day that Keith did. She had just started teaching at a local Grammar School, he met her in October soon after term had started, and that was the reason I changed flats again in the spring of 1959. I left Highnam Crescent and moved in with Abdul Hitam for the rest of the fourth year term. Abdul had a room quite close to the Department in Wilkinson Street. I have this memory of lying in that room listening to endless Nat King Cole records. I cannot remember why I moved I certainly hadn’t had a row with Keith; he was to be my best man that August. I assume he may well have moved in with Janet or, she moved in with him. Josie told me a nice story about Abdul. Apparently I took him down to the farm once and Annie was a bit worried about what to give him to eat. He was a Muslim and she knew they didn’t eat meat so she cooked him pork sausages, not realising they contained meat. Strange considering she was a farmer’s wife. It was very embarrassing when he had to explain sorry he couldn’t eat that.
Reading all these letters of mine again, I am struck by the amount I would write and the frequency. There were at least three a week and sometimes daily. I was even putting letters in the post on the days I was travelling over to see her. My writing then was far better than today’s scrawl. It must have taken me a long time to write as I was almost printing each individual letter. I suppose that is the method I used then to letter up drawings; all the letter writing was good practice. Edna if anything wrote more than me sometimes ten pages. It was also not unusual for her to post a letter then write another on the same day and get that in the post as well. One of my letters to her began, “Thank you ever so much for your four letters received this morning.” Once Edna had left Retford and started in Worksop my visits were not restricted to weekends only and I was chugging over on the scooter in midweek. It’s easy to forget now the pressure and intensity of the work I had to do at University. Carrying on a close relationship at distance did sometimes cause problems in getting schemes in on time and the anguish this caused was often mentioned in the letters.
I mentioned earlier I used to attend jazz concerts at City hall. I didn’t realise until reading the letters how frequent they were. A typical example in October 1958 I saw, Humphrey Lyttleton, Jimmy Rushing, The Dutch Swing College Band, Chris Barber and there was a University jazz festival as well.
I spent the Christmas holiday being a temporary postman in Walkden, for which I earned the grand total of £14. One day I bumped into my old girlfriend Sheila who had given me the sack three years earlier, she was also working on the post and we had a chat. I laid it on very thick in a letter to Edna saying how much nicer she was compared to Sheila. Well I would say that wouldn’t I! I finished work on the post on the 21st December and the next day caught the train to Rugby to spend Christmas at the farm.
