I returned to Yorkshire at the start of January 1969, finding a flatlet (more like “digs” than a flat) in Horsforth, and starting work with the CEGB. My Grandma Cook died that February. As soon as possible, I bought a bungalow (42, Banksfield Crescent, Yeadon). Katie and I started “going out” in the Spring, were engaged in June and married on 1st November 1969. We lived in Yeadon until the middle of 1971.
Housing: My first address was a flatlet in Horsforth. It was somewhere to stay, and not much more. I was on CEGB pay as a Senior member of staff; so there was no problem in getting a mortgage. I found a bungalow, fairly new (the garden had not had anything done to it!), and got my old friend Geoff Waite (now a practicing solicitor) to do the conveyancing. It cost me £2,500, and I got a mortgage with the Halifax. So I was introduced to the joys of property ownership, building insurances, Rates and the like.
The next thing was to furnish it – how should I go about that? I had been visiting the Clark family, particularly after Sunday morning services at the Cragg (for Sunday lunch! one of my favourite treats was to eat the “jacket” part of a jacket potato first, but it took some time for Mrs Clark to accept that I did this because it was the “best bit” and not because I didn’t like it), and found Katie willing to help me with advice. So we went into Leeds, and found pots and pans, cutlery and some furniture at Lewises and Schofields, to add to the bits and bobs I’d had in Romsey days, and the place became basically furnished.
Marriage: Katie was at the time “going out” with a young man from Ripponden, but somehow that didn’t prevent us spending quite a bit of time with one another. Her family made me very welcome, especially Marie (then aged about 9 or 10) who would sometimes monopolise me as soon as I arrived (notably squeezing between us on the settee!). At Easter, her sister Pauline was getting married, and I was to be organist – but I was also pressed into duty to help Katie with the wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses that she was making; my role was to hold the finished dresses up, so she could steam the creases out of them. So my arms were fairly tired before I attempted Widor’s “Toccata” for Pauline and David. I introduced Katie to opera at the Bradford Alhambra theatre, and we had a few days out in the Dales. All this time our friendship deepened, and eventually she agreed to be my wife – I’d dropped hints that this was on my mind, and eventually she said “well, why don’t you ask me then?”; so I did, and she said yes!
The first decision was how to break this news to our families. My parents were due to visit Rawdon, to take anniversary services at the Cragg, in June, so we decided that this (when both families would be together) was the right time to announce our engagement. On the Thursday evening I broached the topic at the Clarks, and got a “Oh yes” reaction from Katie’s mum … she didn’t quite say “yes please”! We bought a ring in Leeds and celebrated ourselves by a cinema visit – Barbara Streisand’s Funny Girl. So when we met my parents at the station on the Friday evening, the ring was on the finger; on the way to Rawdon, Katie and my mother sat in the back of the car, and my mother chatted non-stop about the journey up, the weekend ahead and who they were going to meet. Eventually I could wait no longer, and butted in saying that they weren’t very observant, were they! It still took my mother a few minutes to realise what she was supposed to have seen, but then all was well and they were both delighted. At the services at Rawdon, of course, Mum and Dad were the centre of attention, greeting old friends, and we stood a little way off – it was Roy Jones who noticed the ring, and said to the group something along the lines of “you’re so busy chatting, but I know some real news”; and so the church folk knew.
Wedding plans occupied much of the next few months. Because Pauline had been married at Easter, we couldn’t burden Katie’s parents with the expense of a second reception in a year; so we decided that it would be a low-budget event, and therefore that we didn’t need to wait unduly. Back at Romsey, Christine Burgess had re-worked the words for her marriage ceremony a bit, and it had made a big impression on me; I wanted to do the same – so Katie and I took the “standard” words and re-wrote them from new, to make them (if anything) even more emphatic, and to include the gospel message and our personal faith wherever we could; much of this was planned in the garden at Coleford. The minister, Rev Gordon Weston, was sympathetic, but the Authorised Person, Roy Jones, was nervous that the service might not be in “accordance with the tradition of the Baptists” as stated on the marriage certificate … Gordon Weston assured him that the Baptist tradition was that “there were no traditions”, and all was well – but we did have to use two particular phrases word-for-word as required by law.
The big day turned out to be one of those fine and sunny November days, and the sunshine on the golden leaves was wonderful. My best man was David Collins (a friend from Littlemoor and YPF days), and Katie’s Matron-of-honour was her sister Jackie[81]; just before they left for the service, Jackie found that her new shoes were missing, so she used Katie’s going-away shows for the wedding, and they swapped at the Reception – those new shoes never ever turned up! The service went according to plan, with my father giving the address, and we came out to a guard-of-honour formed by Katie’s guide company. We suffered the usual problems of jaw-ache while photographs were taken, and were driven to the “function rooms” over a café in Yeadon High Street for the buffet reception. I had left my car in a “secret location”, and the plan was for the best man to drive us to where I had left it; well, David was in collusion with some of the lads (including Gordon Weston!), and he drove so slowly that they were able to follow us – we made a sprint dash for the car, and got away with only limited “decoration”; we stopped in Apperley Lane to clean the car up, and then started the long drive to North Wales. Among the guests were Lynn Harris and Pete Clarke, and Bill Eldridge and Jenny Burgess from Romsey.
Holidays: Of course, in the early months I needed to return to Coleford, to see the family; this happened several times in 1969, and Katie came with me on at least one occasion before our engagement. This prompted (I found out later) speculation from Mum, Rosalie and Marguerite, Rosalie apparently saying that if anything came of it, she for one would “approve” (the cheek of it!). After our engagement, we had two or three visits to Coleford, to plot and plan the wedding. At each visit, Mum would have found more of my belongings that she wanted me to remove – and softened the task with a fruit cake to take away too! It was on one of these Coleford breaks that Katie broke the handle off a jug, whilst drying up, to be met by loud gasps of “Oh!” from the family; she was really quite horrified, thinking she’d broken a family heirloom – but we reassured her that the handle had been cracked at one end for years; we had wondered how long it would last, and sometimes had tried to break it and failed, so the “Oh” was amazement that Katie had succeeded on one attempt, where the rest of us had failed for so long.
The first major holiday was our 1969 honeymoon, in a hotel at Beddgelert in North Wales; this I thought this would be a suitable picturesque place – Rosalie and I had discovered it on our holiday touring the UK. We took day trips out into the countryside, admiring views, enjoying the chaffinches who in one lay-by came and sat on the car bonnet until fed crumbs, and of course visiting “Gelert’s grave”[82] from which the town is named. The hotel was comfortable, and the evening meals excellent. We thought we’d put on a reasonable mature and responsible pretence of being normal hotel guests – until we came to leave, and discovered that the hotel staff had swept a neat pile of confetti under the bed! I suspect that anyone arriving for a week’s holiday so late on a Saturday evening can’t pretend to be normal guests.
Then we started holidays more regularly. Of course, there were still family visits to Coleford. But the other holiday that stays in my memory was in 1970, a car-tour to the Lakes, up to Scotland to get to know Katie’s relatives in Glasgow, then via Loch Lomond to Oban – where we found a B&B, and then were going out to eat and to the cinema; “We lock the door at half-past nine, we do” the landlady told us, so when the film finished at 9:25 we had to run to the B&B and just got through the door in time. Then on to Inverness and down to Aberdeen (staying with Janet and Arthur Winfield, married and living at Stonehaven); they took us for a late-night walk in a park – being still light in mid-summer, where all the paths were edged by night-light candles. Then we motored back to Yeadon via Edinburgh.
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[80] Title of a Goon show, of blessed memory
[81] Jackie had recently been left by her husband, again, so we were doubly grateful that she was able to do this.
[82] The story is locally commemorated … one day Prince Llewellyn returned from hunting, to find his baby son dead, and his dog Gelert with blood round its mouth; in a rage, he killed the dog – but later found the body of a wolf. The wolf had killed the baby, and the dog the wolf. Filled with remorse, he built the grave for his faithful dog. A wonderful story – totally fabricated by the landlord of one of the hotels in the town!