Pauline and I had a brief honeymoon of 3 days in the Lake District, staying at the Pheasant Inn, close to Bassenthwaite Lake, where my parents had had their honeymoon. It was short because of the kids who were being looked after by Pauline’s brother and sister-in-law, Keith and Marie. It wasn’t a great success. February in the Lake District is not terribly inspiring and Pauline seemed to have reacted badly to the wedding, wondering what she had committed herself to.
We had purchased a house prior to the wedding in Penkhull and were having work done on it so we moved in temporarily to The Maisonette, a converted outhouse of Ramsdell Hall where my in-laws lived. This meant that we had to ferry the boys to and from Springfield School each day. Also the boys were not best behaved, hardly surprising after the unsettled lives they had had for the past couple of years. Dougal still wet the bed and drew on the furniture. This was a major change for Pauline, who had lived the life of a rich man’s daughter since her early teens but she stuck to it and it wasn’t that long before James called her Mum. (What? said Dougal, who followed suit soon after.)
Our Penkhull house was a great success. The boys could walk to school and we had lots of good times there. We were surrounded by allotments and friendly neighbours and enjoyed a great street party to celebrate the Silver Jubilee and lovely bonfires on both Guy Fawkes nights we were there. We had some wild parties there.
One day the kids came back with a kitten they said they had found in a hedge. This became a family pet named Wellington, a lovely animal that unfortunately got run over shortly after we moved to Betley.
We weren’t entirely happy though as my business, Twinram, was very demanding in the summer and Pauline’s very demanding in the winter. Also Pauline didn’t want her life-style entirely curtailed by the demands of the boys and her husband’s commitments. We took two free trips on the QE2 to New York, getting Pauline’s relatives to mind the boys in our absence. In the summer they went to the USA to stay with Penny.
We also had a 3-week holiday in USA ourselves, motoring from San Diego up to San Francisco.
Mike then confounded me by saying he wanted me to buy him out of Twinram. For me the business kept me grounded and represented continuity as it had been unnerving being suddenly in the midst of a wealthy and locally famous family. For Mike, though, it was a different story as comparisons between my lifestyle and his, or more importantly, Pauline and my lifestyle and his and Paula’s was having a negative impact on their volatile marriage.
In 1978 we went on a 3 week trip to South Africa . Pauline and I had been searching for a house in a more rural setting and in 1979 found one in Betley. This property was a former 3-up,3-down on a 5 acre smallholding on the outskirts of the village that had been converted with a massive extension into a lovely, if unfinished, country house.
James was now coming up to secondary school age but the choice for us was a grammar school, Newcastle-under-Lyme, or a secondary modern, Madeley and unfortunately the former one was full. Pauline’s father had taken a great interest in the boys (and was delighted when they called him grandfather) and offered to pay for boarding school. James had said that he would like to go to such an institution so we went to see the head of Wrekin College who offered to take James a year early because he was so bright. Dougal had a year at Betley Primary School and then joined James.
I came up with the idea that Chris and I should go on a walking holiday as a awy of keeping in close contact and we started off from Hartland Point going east on the South West Peninsula Coast Path. It took over 20 years of short holidays to complete the walk and we also interspersed our walks here with walks in the Pyrenees, the Alps and Corsica. We also extended the walk northward so walking from Poole, round Land’s End to Minehead, then to Bristol, Chepstow and along Offa’s Dyke to Llangollen. Unfortunately Chris’ MS, which was diagnosed very early on, became too bad for us to continue our annual walks.
We had a nice family life at Wayside when bringing up the boys. Dougal built underground camps in the sandy soil, lit fires everywhere, went fishing with his mate Quentin. James was more interested in the BBC computer. At the back of the house was a flattish area which had been left after the sand had been extracted (Betley had a number of commercial sand extraction pits). The previous owners had called it “the tennis court” and one summer we made it into a grass court. Keith donated a sit-on mower and Alex donated a line marker. We played on this court for several years and had great fun. One wet summer we found the court very limiting and because we had got more serious about our tennis we decided to have an all-weather court installed. By then the lads were not around much but we played with friends.
Pauline was keen to have children of our own but had problems. She went through various unpleasant procedures, including a trip to Cambridge where she had in vitro fertilisation under Mr Steptoe. Eventually we came to the conclusion that she was infertile and she investigated the possibility of adoption. I had thought that bringing up the boys would have satisfied her maternal instincts and was approaching 40 but I knew if she wanted to adopt I owed it to her to go along with it after the great job she had done with the upbringing of the two lads.
Cheshire Social Services were very helpful and after attending classes and being approved we were rewarded with a 5-month old little girl who we named Nicola. She was great fun but very demanding. I took 2 days off each week to take my turn in looking after her – which I really enjoyed.
After a couple of years another phone call and another baby, Alisa. My favourite memory of them is bath time. After the bath I would drag them around the room on a large towel pretending it was a train. We had three German au pairs to help us with the children, Bergit, Claudia and Ute.
Pauline’s parents purchased a place in Mallorca and this became a family destination for us. Quite early on I purchased a sailboard and took up windsurfing. This became a passion for me and Dougal. Pauline’s father took up boating and was generous enough to entrust two of his boats for me to captain. We had some amazing times, particularly on Lady Annabella, which we motored to Ibiza, Formentera, Minorca and right around Mallorca with various people accompanying us – Dougal and Jo, the Clark family and Chris, Vicky, Jeremy and William.
I decided to try windsurfing in the UK and we had our first try, Dougal and I, with Pauline, Bergit and Nicola watching, in Bala lake. It was freezing as it was March but we liked Wales so much we decided to have a look around. Pauline had fond memories of static caravans and had taken me to her brother’s van at Prestatyn. Having come from Cape Town I was unimpressed. Anyway we drove from Barmouth up to Criccieth, a beautiful coastline that we both liked, and decided to try out a week’s hire at Greenacres, Morfa Bychan. Pauline loved the experience, and I disliked being stuck in the centre of a load of caravans. However, I could see that it was ideal for children and agreed to having one so long as it was by the beach. Fortunately there was space by the dunes behind Black Rock Sands. The caravan we purchased became our bolt hole. Dougal, Quentin and I went windsurfing off the beach at every available opportunity. We taught Nicola and Alisa to ride bikes there.
The girls both went to playgroup in the village hall and then the local village school in Betley which they really enjoyed. Nicola seemed very bright and always had projects on the go – raising money for a donkey sanctuary, writing magazines, making outfits out of newspaper. Alisa was very calm and well liked, had an amazing memory and direction finding ability but struggled with her reading.
Nicola passed the entrance exam to Newcastle High School (an ex-grammar school gone private) but didn’t take to it and had to be removed at half-term. She became very rebellious and didn’t take school work seriously after that. Alisa went straight to Madeley Comprehensive and did OK there. I became a Governor of the school but did little but turn up to a few meetings.
Over the years we went skiing quite a number of times, taking the family with us. We went with the Clarks to Valmorel with the Clark family and two of their friends for a couple of years. The we went to Hotgurgle in Austria for a couple of years. Dougal really took to it and spent a couple of seasons in Chamonix. I was chatting to one of the mothers outside school, Heather, and she invited us to meet the group she was planning to go with. We went away with them to Val D’Isere and Dougal came over to visit us from Chamonix. Next year we went with the same group, the Heaths, the Bermans, the Clarks, the Adams and the Allmans to Mirabel and had a number of injuries in the party. The following year we went to St Anton but with fewer of us. We also went to Chamonix, both with Dougal and with the Clarks.
Pauline had a close group of women friends who she saw frequently and she also went away with her mother and aunt most years. As a couple we mixed with her women friends’ husbands and with family. I only made one close friend during this period, Martin Gowans, and always felt a bit of an outsider with the rest. My friendship with Mike was on hold, although towards the end of my marriage we gradually came together again, meeting weekly for lunch. When his marriage split up I saw a lot more of him and he, once more became my confidant.
My brother-in-law, Keith, did his best to include me in his circle but I didn’t enjoy the company of his friends, who were a loud, rich spoiled bunch on the whole.
In the early days in Betley the milk was delivered in green-topped (unpasturised) bottles by Ernie, a local character, who persuaded me to join the Betley Amateur Theatrical Society. I was terrified in my first, very minor role but thereafter was either in or producing productions until just before I left the village. I was Chairman for a while and Secretary for a number of years and made quite a few friends. I performed in a number of roles but wasn’t a natural, in spite of being a bit of a show off, as I became tense and nervous. I greatly admired Pam Jones, a local farmer’s wife who wrote and produced pantomimes, plays and musicals. After a few years I volunteered to try producing myself and discovered I was quite good at this, with my organisational skills. My two most successful were Outside Edge and one of the Farndale Women’s Guild plays. I cast Sue as my leading lady in this. I thought she deserved to be given this role and had got to know her when we had been cast opposite each other in another play. I had the feeling that she, like me, was not happy in her marriage and as the rehearsals wore on became more and more drawn to her.
Pauline and I had not been getting on for a number of years and the stresses of the liquidation of Bizar was, for me, the final nail in the coffin. We had some dreadful rows as we drifted further and further apart. My friendship with Mike, who by then had left Paula and was lonely, became close once more and he became my confidant in the final months of my marriage as my own behaviour became more erratic. I decided to proposition Sue at the end of the BATS production.