We moved into 1 Bentinck Avenue, Tollerton, in February 1961. After the months in Hampden Street it was wonderful to have our own place. It was tiny really, and an awful lot of space went into a long corridor that went virtually down the middle. We had two bedrooms a dining room, lounge and kitchen and a freezing cold bathroom at the end of the corridor. The heating was a bit of a mess; a mix of fixed electric fires, a coke burner and an open coal fire. We coped and Edna I am sure was looking at it in a different light to me. She was looking at a nest! She had been teaching at the Luttrell School for nearly eighteen months but with the purchase of the bungalow other things were now on her mind, and in the autumn she told me with a delighted look that she was pregnant. Apparently we were not so quick at producing Emma as subsequent babies, she told Louise later that several times when she was hopeful, the period came and she cried.
Our neighbours were an elderly couple Mr and Mrs Fellowes in an adjoining bungalow and Mr and Mrs Potter in a semi on the other side. Mrs. Potter, who we called “ Pansy,” was well intentioned but liked to give advice very regularly which Edna hated. Another problem there was yet another yapping poodle, Mitzi reincarnated. I got on well with old man Fellowes, a genial character with a twinkle in his eye and a sharp sense of humour. When Edna stopped working later that year she made several good friends in the road. One of them still sends a Christmas card every year The Doctors surgery was virtually directly opposite our house on the corner with the main road. When the time for the birth came, he wouldn’t have far to walk, perhaps as well considering what happened. That summer we bought a dog, a Scottish terrier puppy called “Aggie”. Edna thought the world of her, although it was a bit mad. The postman was very wary having had the odd nip. There are several photos of Edna hugging the dog, good practice for all the hugging she was to give to babies over the next twenty years.
Edna was still in touch with her old friend from school Lorna. She was by now a Mrs Edwards having married Bob who was a policeman. We used to have occasional nights out together in Nottingham. I have this memory of going to a packed “Stork Club.” Clubbing was not normally our scene but it was a great night out.
During the summer I had to go back to Sheffield for my professional practice exam. This was always held one year after passing finals and until passing the practice exam. I could not be regarded as fully qualified. I can remember going into the main hall of the University at Western Bank to see a long table with about half a dozen elderly gentlemen, presumably the great and good of the Architectural world. I was asked questions on the experience I had gained over the year. It seemed to go well and I duly passed. I was now eligible to join the Royal Institute of British Architects and put the letters after my name. W.A.Clarke BA (Hons.Arch) ARIBA. I liked the sound of that. It seemed a long time since I had been sat on the roof with Dad at the age of fifteen when that man got out of his car carrying a roll of drawings.
I had always been interested in science fiction and tales of space travel. Flash Gordon had ignited that. In 1950 there was a series in the Sunday Express about a journey to the moon by rocket. I carefully cut the articles out and kept them in Dad’s books. In the early 1960’s when President Kennedy promised to have a man on the moon before 1970, I closely followed all the various stages of the developments. This included the Russian successes with Sputnik the first man-made satellite in 1957 and the Yuri Gagarin flight who was the first man in space. The American’s responded with the initial Redstone rocket flights followed by the manned Mercury and Gemini programmes. News of Gagarin’s flight came through on the 12th April 1961. I had just left work around 5-30pm and was walking across Trent Bridge towards the town centre when I heard a newsboy shouting, “Man in space.” I rushed over to by a newspaper and read all about it. That incident is worth a comment in itself, you don’t see lads selling newspapers on the streets nowadays. In the early 1960’s newspapers and radio were the main means of news communication. Television news was brief and the schedules rigid. There was none of the endless non-stop twenty-four hours news channels that fill the TV screens today. There were what was called “News theatres” this was a cinema totally dedicated to newsreel programmes like Pathe News. Every major city would have them they do not exist today. Three weeks later Al Shepard became the first American in space when he made a fifteen-minute flight perched on top of a Redstone rocket. We had a radio in the drawing office and stopped work to listen.
I made one bad decision that summer. We had booked a holiday in Cornwall; it was at Newquay and looked an idyllic spot. It was in a small pub down by the harbour, overlooking the sea. I rang them and sent off a letter enclosing a deposit, to secure the booking. At that time we also wanted to buy a Television, we hadn’t had one up to that point. After a few weeks agonising we pulled out of the holiday and spent the money on a small green, plastic faced 14inch TV. That was the last opportunity we would have for a holiday on our own for the next twenty-five years!
For most of her life Edna had pen friends. It started when she was nine and joined a club that provided names to write to. She started to write to a girl of the same age called Brenda from Skegness. This correspondence carried on until 2003 when Brenda sadly died. Over all those fifty-six years of correspondence they never met once. I remember one day we on the scooter near Skegness and I suggested we call in to see Brenda but Edna didn’t want to, it was almost as though an illusion would be shattered. They spoke on the telephone for the first time in 2000 after Edna had come out from a long stay in hospital. She also had several pen friends from abroad. In 1961 she invited a French girl to come and stay with us for a couple of weeks. I went down to London to meet her and bring her back to Nottingham on the train. It turned out that Mademoiselle was a very swish dish indeed. Heads were turning as we walked to the station in London. When I got back to the office I mentioned the fact she was staying with us. I suddenly became very popular and several of the lads were queuing up to be invited home. Dick Patterson made the most progress and took her out several times. I wasn’t sure what Edna made of all this, and she must have been glad when the time came for her to return home.
