Lucky Dip

I love the story of how Ma and Dad eventually got together. Dad used to visit her step-brothers and he once told her he was going to marry her some day. She just sneeered at him because he was a lowly usher in a lowly bioscope, with low wages and even less prospects. His eldest brother, Jack, had paid for him to do a plumbing apprenticeship, but he was lazy and unmotivated and never completed it-thus ending up at the local bio. She was a bookkeeper by then and highly efficient, earning well with high ambitions. Ma was dating Karl, a mature man of 35, (she was in her mid-twenties), but supposedly not 'in love' with him. She was a very big woman and already on the 'shelf', so probably saw Karl as her 'last chance'. One evening they both arrived with engagement rings, asking her to marry them. She was in two minds and weighing them both up, money and security versus youth and excitement (and maybe even love?) They sat in her kitchen and glared at each other till 4 am until Karl got up and wearily trudged off home. Accordingly, she accepted Harry (and later told us that his ring was the nicer one anyway.) I think he just had more patience...or maybe more 'love'?

The Gravedigger

Ernest worked for my parents as their 'houseboy' for many years, and to me he seemed like part of the family. Sheba had her puppies and smothered one each day. Due to her ignorance and our lack of knowledge about this we coudn't prevent the inevitable. So we had to bury them. Ernest was given the unenviable task of digging the little graves in the back garden, laying the teeny tiny bodies inside, then covering them over as unobtrusively as possible so that Ma wouldb't know where they were buried when she came out of hospital.What an awful time for us all, and I often lay awake in bed at night worrying that I could've saved them. If only......