On the 25th February 1963 I got up early for an exciting event, exciting to me anyway, it meant nothing to Edna. Overnight there had been a big boxing match in Miami, America. Cassius Clay as he was then known was challenging Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. The BBC was going to screen it at 7am on TV. I didn’t turn the radio on and watched the sensation that unfolded with Clay winning in the 6th round. After the fight Clay announced he had changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
In spring we set off for a holiday to Newquay in Wales. I remember having seat belts fitted to the car before we set out. They had only recently been made available and were not yet compulsory. They were like a parachute harness in which you slid both your arms. We chugged along, my maximum speed was no more than 40 mph so the journey took ages and finally we arrived there late afternoon. That would have been our first trip through Shrewsbury, I can remember now going round the island near Meole Brace and driving up past the Brooklands Hotel to go up the Roman Road. We liked Newquay and had a good time; we stayed in a small-whitewashed cottage on a hill just outside the town. By this time Edna was harbouring a thought that she hadn’t yet discussed with me. The first night we got there we started to get ready for bed. She suddenly brought out of her suitcase a brand new white nightdress. I think it was appropriately called a baby doll dress. She said, “ I thought I might tempt you, it’s time we started another.” What a waste of money, I didn’t need any tempting!
One big event occurred for me in 1963, I went to Wembley for the first time. A coach was filled from County Hall one Wednesday afternoon in October. England against a team called the “Rest of the World” to celebrate the centenary of the Football Association. A crowd of 100,000 turned up to watch an England side pit their skills against the best in the world, including Puskas, Di Stefano and many others. It was a football feast and I for one thought it was brilliant, hardly a surprise.
A terrible event occurred on the 23rd November when a gunman in Dallas, Texas assassinated the American President John Kennedy. Such great hopes worldwide were pinned on that one man at a time of the “Cold War.” I have read that time stood still when people heard the news and the exact moment was never forgotten. That was certainly the case with me. I would probably have never remembered that on that evening I would be attending an evening course on car maintenance run by a Mr. Judson at a local school and we had been discussing the clutch and it’s problems. Why all that has stuck in my memory I don’t know. When I got back home Edna had heard the news and told me immediately and I sank into a chair in disbelief. The world suddenly seemed a more dangerous place. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was later sworn in as the new president.
After Emma we never seemed to have a problem once the decision was taken to try for another baby. I suppose we were lucky in that respect, it didn’t seem to take very long either before a bull’s eye was scored. Sure enough Edna was able to confirm that number two was on its way a few weeks later. We were both very pleased, Emma would have a friend, that’s what we hoped and thankfully after a shaky start that’s what happened. A very young Deborah Ann came into the world on the 14th February 1964. This time the birth was very easy, she was so eager to get out. I remember sitting in the dining room eating cornflakes reading the paper while Edna did the business, again around 10pm. At this time I still didn’t have the nerve to be present, reading the paper appealed rather more. Once Edna had started in labour we arranged for our friends John and Margaret Hague to pick Emma up and take her to their house. In the end, she ended up staying the night with them, which must have come as a shock to her. They brought her home the next morning. It was a very cross little madam who walked into the bedroom to find mummy holding a little baby, that didn’t help things one bit! In hindsight she should have stayed at home and it took a few days for her to accept the new situation. It was soon obvious that Debbie was a calm smiler, that was really good news, less trouble all round.
In the following February a problem began that was to last a very long time and have an impact on my life. I had had a pretty strenuous weekend, playing football on the Saturday and some heavy digging in the garden the following day. On the Monday morning I woke up to find my back had seized up and literally I couldn’t move. That was the beginning of many years of disc problems and was also the end of playing football regularly. Edna told me later she got worried visualising having to look after me as well as two kids. It wore off after a few days and I simply had to learn to live with it.
We met a new member of the family around this time. Eric, Edna’s younger brother rang to say he would be calling in to enable us to meet his girlfriend. They had been on a camping holiday in Scotland and would stop on the way back home. They arrived late one afternoon and we were introduced to Celia Lane who two years later became Celia Barrett. Celia had been at Leamington College for Girls at the same time as Edna but two years below. Celia told me recently that Edna was a very studious girl at school, apparently she was known as “The Professor.” When we first met Celia said she felt a wreck with her hair an absolute mess after the camping. I can’t say I have never noticed Celia looking like a wreck at all and thought she looked fine. Eric had done well!
During the first week of June in 1964 several of us got into a spot of trouble in the office. I mentioned earlier that you could see the wicket on the Trent Bridge Cricket ground from the drawing office. It was a sunny day and England was playing Australia in a Test match. It was a bit distracting, I had the choice of concentrating on Ted Dexter batting or that particularly difficult drainage layout I was struggling with. There wasn’t any competition really. We had a long balcony outside our windows with access to it from some French windows. It was very hot in the office and somebody suggested having ten minutes on the balcony to watch a bit of the cricket, a few of us trooped out, cup of tea in hand. A few moments later unknown to us the TV cameras at the cricket ground panned around picking up County Hall. Richie Benaud was commentating and he muttered something about “the workers up there must be having a late lunch.” The next day there was a mention of this in the Nottingham Evening Post. Oh dear! An inquest was held in the office, and the suspects were hauled up in front of Dan for a telling off. At least he didn’t have a cane like Mr. Gibson.
In the early summer of 1964 I was considering moving on from Nottingham. I now had some experience behind me and the theory at the time was to try different offices. A second consortium of local authorities had recently been formed and was producing buildings using the SCOLA system. Guess where the initials came from? I decided to apply to Shropshire County Architects department who had been instrumental in setting it up. I wrote a letter outlining my experience and asking had they any vacancies. I was invited for an interview towards the end of June. The office was based in Shrewsbury and on arrival I liked the look of the town immediately. Built around a loop in the river Severn it had a pleasant scale compared with the cities of Nottingham and Sheffield. The County Architects Department was close to Lord Hill’s Column, a major landmark in the town on the London Road. A new Shire Hall building was under construction on the other side of the road. The office turned out to be a small Victorian building called “Column House” with rows of temporary huts behind. Ralph Crowe the County architect and Geoff Hamlyn his deputy interviewed me. It seemed to go well and they offered me a post subject to clearing it with a committee. It seemed the approved establishment was full and they had to get approval to increase it by one, presumably they wanted me because of my CLASP experience. The agreed salary would be £1,565 per annum, which was double what I started on at Notts four years earlier. I was quite happy when I drove back home. I intended to give it another three or four years in Shropshire and then move on. I didn’t realise on that journey back, we would put roots down and my stay there would be for the next thirty-three years.
