This is my autobiography, written originally as a book especially for my grandchildren. I realised that they have known me during their lifetimes, but did not know about my life before they were born. Hence the title 'Grandpa's story', and I hope you may find it interesting too.
Ebenezer
I was born on April 6th 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, and was named Michael Raymond Ebenezer Prior. I did not know I was called Ebenezer until I was 8 years old, and when I found out I burst into tears because I thought I was named after Ebenezer Scrooge! But my grandfather explained to me that Ebenezer was a family name, and that it was a Hebrew name from the Bible, meaning "Up till now the Lord God has helped us". I'm really pleased now to have a special name with a good meaning. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My father was a wool merchant in the family business in Bradford, and my mother stayed at home to look after the family - me and my older sister Rosemarie.
Daddy was not allowed to be a soldier because he had a bad ear infection and was partially deaf, so he did duties at night in Bradford as an ARP warden instead. (ARP means Air Raid Precaution, so he had to look out at night for enemy bombers). The wool merchant business was called Ebenezer Prior Ltd, and had branches in Bradford, Chichester, Taunton and Wellington in Somerset. It was named after my greatgrandfather who ran the business in Chichester (although it was founded by his father John Woods Prior, probably in about 1840).
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| My grest-grandfther: Ebenezer Prior when mayor of Chichester |
I was very proud to be his great-grandson (though he died before I was born) because he was kind to his workers and did a lot for them. He was chief magistrate of Chichester, and also Mayor of Chichester in 1895, and this photo is of him in his mayoral robes. Like his own parents and grandparents he was a Christian: he believed in God, and his reason to make life as good as possible for his workers and for the citizens of Chichester was because it was one way in which he could serve God. Nowadays we take lavatories and sewers for granted, but before they existed lots of people died from dreadful diseases like cholera. Great Grandfather Ebenezer led a group on the Chichester Council which made the city install drains and sewers throughout the town, against great opposition because of the cost, and for the first time, Chichester became a healthy place to live. Wendy and I went to Chichester a few years ago and saw a display cabinet in the museum all about Ebenezer Prior Ltd. Obviously the people of Chichester must be as proud of Ebenezer Prior as we are, though the company has long since closed down.
I have written in much more detail about Ebenezer Prior in my blog entry of January 31 2020, entitled 'A remarkable man'.
see
http://mpriorblog.blogspot.com/2020/01/
Primary School
When I was 4 years old I started at Cottingley Primary School, near Bingley. We lived near Cottingley Woods, where Rosemarie and I often used to go and play. The only thing Cottingley is famous for is the 'Cottingley Fairies'.
Our headmaster told us about two little girls who photographed fairies in Cottingley Woods in 1915, and their photos became world-famous. It was only when they were over 80 years old that they admitted that their photos had been a hoax. Up till then, many people believed the photos were of real fairies.
The great snow
When I was 5, the snow came. 1947 was one of the worst ever years for snow.
I don't think we shall ever have snow like that again. But because I was small, I didn't know that it was unusual. I remember walking to school along a path where the snow on each side was higher than the top of my head!
My grandpa
My grandpa was called Ebenezer, though everyone who knew him well just called him Eb.
Granny was from Scotland and was from the Kennedy clan. They lived in Burley-in-Wharfedale which was only about 10 miles away, so we saw them regularly, and always saw them on Sundays because they went to the same chapel as us. It was called a 'Brethren Assembly' and was founded by grandpa. Sundays were very quiet in those days, because all the shops were shut and there was no traffic apart from buses and cyclists. I loved the journey to chapel on the electric trolley bus.
Grandpa ran the branch of our business in Bradford, and was well-known for his absolute honesty as a businessman. All of his suppliers and customers knew that they could trust him completely.
Grammar School
When I was 8 I started at Bradford Grammar School - which my father had also been to when he was a boy.
I spent the next ten
years there. Whilst I was there I joined
the school choir, the cadet force (basic
training and then Navy cadets) ....
and the Drama Club, where I was backstage lighting manager. When I reached the 6th form (year 12) I was in charge of the school Film Society and made a film of our school sports day using an old gunsight camera which we bought from a war surplus shop and rebuilt. Originally it had been on a Spitfire fighter plane. The cameraman from the local newspaper had been a spitfire pilot and recognised the camera straight away. He took this photo, which appeared in the newspaper.
Whilst in the school cadet force I was introduced to Ordnance Survey maps for the first time, and I took to them straight away. To me, reading a map seemed like cracking a secret code, and since then I have built up a large collection of ordnance survey maps, including the first one I ever bought. This bit of it shows where my school was, in the grounds of Clock House - marked as 'Clock Ho' on the map.
On the other side of the road is Manningham Park Lake, where one winter we dared each other to jump on the ice to see who would go through it first and get soaked - until the headmaster came and stopped us! Very naughty!
Home, and away.
My father (Jack) married my mother Gertrud (who came from Germany) the week before the Second World War started. Mummy must have had a really hard time because the war meant she could not contact her family for the next 6 years, and as she was living in England, some people thought of her as the enemy. But she coped, and encouraged me always to do my best.
Germany
After the war, my parents wanted us all to go to Germany to meet my grandparents over there for the first time. We went, by train and ship, in 1950, because we didn’t yet own a car. Most people didn't have a car in those days, and the ones who did couldn't use them much because there was a shortage of petrol. The sea journey from Hull to Rotterdam was very rough. When we arrived at Rotterdam it was still in ruins after the war - the first time I had ever seen a ruined city. I was 8 years old.
My mother's home town, Wuppertal, was also full of ruined buildings which had been bombed during the war, but fortunately my grandparents' apartment was still standing. Because so many people had lost their homes, my grandparents had to share their flat with a homeless family. My grandparents - Opa and Oma - couldn't speak English, and Rosemarie and I couldn't speak German, but it didn't matter: we got on wonderfully, jabbering to each other in our own languages and laughing a lot. was taken to Germany every two years after that, until I left home, and I learnt to speak German fluently. I can't any more because I haven't spoken German for many years now. A great railway memory to me of Wuppertal, was its 'Schwebebahn'. The name means 'swaying railway' and it was (and still is, to this day) a monorail train system which travels through Wuppertal above the river - and it does sway when it goes round corners!
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| Schwebebahn - Wuppertal |
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| Encounter with lions - Germany 1954 |
Rosemarie
Rosemarie was born two years before me. I always wanted to do what she could do, so when she learnt to play the piano, so did I. When she learnt to swim, so did I. Rosemarie wanted to be a nurse, but she was very ill when she was due to go to nurse's training college, so she never had her wish. She became a secretary and worked in Barclays bank, then as a headmaster's secretary in a grammar school, and later as a secretary for four surgeons in Airedale District Hospital. She never got married, she always lived with my parents, in Cottingley then in Ilkley, and finally died unexpectedly when she was still only 59, a few months after I married granny Wendy.
Hobbies
Trains
I expect you all know my love of steam trains. Where did that come from? Well, my father Jack Prior loved steam trains too, and he was an artist who loved painting cloudscapes. Steam trains made clouds of smoke and steam, so he sometimes painted pictures of them. One of his railway pictures was bought by a very famous author called J B Priestley, and a black and white copy of it was printed in the newspaper.
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| Forster Square Station, Bradford by EJW Prior |
When I was very little, daddy gave me a book called 'Narrow Gauge Railways of Britain'. I took it to school to read to my teacher when I was learning to read. I was 5 years old. Another boy interrupted me, and was told off by Mrs Boyes, my teacher. "Don't interrupt, Geoffrey! Michael is reading from a very difficult book!" The picture on the front of the book was of a train on the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, which had closed down many years earlier. Just recently it has been re-opened and we have travelled on it. A beautiful modern replica of the locomotive has been made.
Later, when I was 8, I took an entrance exam for Bradford Grammar School. I passed! My parents were so pleased that they gave me a toy electric train set as a reward. The locomotive was called 'Duchess of Atholl'.
Over the next few years my train layout got bigger and bigger. I still love steam trains, and I like to travel on steam railways when I get the chance.
Music
As a child I sang soprano in our school choir and was sometimes a soloist. In the choir I sang at Bradford Cathedral at my headmaster's wedding, and also in St George's Hall (Bradford's Concert Hall). I learned piano and music theory up to grade 5. I learned the violin for a short while and played 2nd violin in the school orchestra. Later, I taught myself to play the guitar. I used my knowledge of piano and guitar to accompany singing at church and at our teenagers' bible class. I don't play music any more, but love to use music as parts of soundtracks for my videos.
Art
Although my father was a skilled watercolour artist, I tried but failed to be good at art. The best I could do was to copy cartoons drawn by other people, and I enjoyed doing this a lot. I still have a copies of Hoffnung cartoons which I made when I was a teenager.
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| 'You and your hiccups!' |
Photography and videos
As a teenager I became interested in photography. I sold my big model railway set in order to buy a slide projector and screen.
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| Aldis slide projector |
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| Voigtlander Vito B 35mm camera |
I bought a Voigtlander camera, and in later years bought all the equipment for developing and printing black and white photographs. (When I went to Uganda I took all this equipment with me and taught my African students how to develop and print photos. I lost all these items when we had to leave Uganda in a hurry: that story comes later…..) After I married Wendy, she encouraged me to get a video camera, and I have enjoyed making videos ever since. I have a complete record of the lives of all our grandchildren since they were born, and lots of other videos too.
Computer
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| Commodore PET computer |
Most youngsters today have computers or tablets or smartphones. I was in at the beginning, when computers were just starting to appear. I taught myself how to use computers and how to write simple programs for them when they first became available in schools, and one of my jobs was to teach Information Technology to schoolchildren. At home, my computer has been very useful for my hobbies of photography and video editing
Crusaders
All the way through childhood from the age of 9, I was a member of Crusaders, a Christian organization now called Urban Saints. My dad was one of the leaders of Bradford Crusaders. After I had been 10 times to Crusaders I was awarded a Crusader badge, and after 50 times I was given a bible which I was encouraged to read every day, with some 'Scripture Union' notes to help me understand what I was reading. What I was taught by my parents and by Crusaders helped me a lot, and I decided when I was eleven that I wanted to be a Christian like my parents and grandparents, and of course my great-grandparents. I am so thankful I did this. I gave my life to Jesus, whom I believe to be alive today, and started to read a bit of the Bible every day to find out more about him. (see appendix). After all these years I still read the bible every day, and have a time of prayer, which I used to do together with granny Lindsay and now do with granny Wendy, who is also a Christian. Living for Jesus all makes very good sense to me. At Bradford Crusaders I remember having stories read to us about great Christians of the past, and I remember especially the stories of William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury (see appendix) Some people as they grow up simply want to enjoy life, and to have a good job, a good home and a nice family. But these men, because they were Christians, wanted more than that. Like my great-grandfather Ebenezer - in Chichester, (see appendix) - their main aim was to serve God by making life better for other people. When I was in my mid-teens, school gave us a lot of hard work. We had to go to school on Saturday mornings, and had homework every night including Saturday. I remember an older boy at Crusaders, who also went to my school, saying that because he was a Christian he had decided never to do schoolwork on a Sunday, so that he could rest, go to church and go to Crusaders on Sunday. It was his way of trying to obey the fourth of the Ten Commandments - "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy". I decided to do the same and always got my homework finished by Saturday night. Ever since, I have kept Sunday special whenever possible, for God and for rest. . I stayed with Crusaders for many years, becoming a leader when I grew up, first in Bristol and later in Surbiton. The most fun times were Crusader camps, and I used to help run camps during the school holidays.
The picture is of Surbiton Crusaders Whit Camp which I was in charge of, in 1968 when I was 26.
Hostelling and climbing
Going back to my schooldays: the trouble with my closest friends Peter and Stuart was that they both loved cricket. I didn't. As I grew older I began to enjoy hiking, climbing and youth-hostelling more and more. I would hitch-hike up to the Lake District with other good friends, John Tough and David Williams, and climb mountains. My favourite Youth hostel was Black Sail Hut, high in the Lake District hills.
I loved climbing mountains and have climbed up Hellvellyn via Striding Edge, Scafell and Ben Nevis (twice).
I have also climbed Mount Olympus in Greece, Piz Morteratsch in Switzerland and Gahinga on the Uganda/Rwanda border. Gahinga was exciting. It was over 10,000 feet high and had to be approached by a long trek through a forest inhabited by mountain gorillas
I wrote in a blog entry in February 2020 about my climb up Mount Olympus. See
https://mpriorblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/
Jordan
In 1960, when I was 18, I was a winner in a competition, and was invited with 48 other young men to go to Jordan as guests of King Hussein. This was very exciting and interesting. We spent a few weeks in an Army Camp on the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem, with 48 Arab young men, and were looked after by the Jordanian Army.
We visited many places, including Petra, the Dead Sea, and the Red Sea at Aqaba.
For a short while we got lost in the desert, and it was reported in The Times: "48 British youths lost in Jordanian desert" !
University, followed by teaching.
I was the first person in the Prior family to go to university, and studied Economics, Accountancy and Commercial Law at Leeds University.
I thought these subjects would be
helpful afterwards when I was going to work for
Ebenezer Prior Ltd. But things didn't turn out that way.
At school a form-mate had said to me "Getting a job will
be easy for you. You were born with a silver spoon in
your mouth."
Because of this, I wanted to prove to myself that I could get a job without walking straight into the family business, so I thought I would have a go at teaching, and got a job at Bristol Grammar School for a year. I liked it so much that I decided to carry on teaching and not join the family business.
Some years later, my father decided to close the business down, and he then spent his time on what he liked best, painting and selling watercolour pictures. He became very well-known as a Yorkshire Artist, and was encouraged by my mother who loved his paintings. This is one of them.
My next job was as a teacher at Surbiton Grammar School, a boys' school in south-west London. During that time I taught Economics, but also ran the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme. Each year we got about 30 boys through the Bronze Award, about 12 through Silver, and half a dozen through the Gold Award. I went twice to Buckingham Palace to be with the boys who received their Gold Awards from the Duke. I enjoyed best organising the expedition section of the scheme, where the Gold Award candidates had to trek for three days and nights through rough country without contacting civilization, covering 50 miles. We usually went to the Lake District or to the Yorkshire Dales for this.
Church…. Lindsay….. Marriage
In all the places I went to, I always joined a church. Church is a place where I can join with other Christians in worshipping God. It's a bit like joining a club, with the difference that it includes people of every age and every sort of person too. I can make friends with other people whom I meet at church. They help me when I need it, and I help them when they need help. We all have the common aim of trying to live lives which are pleasing to God. In the church near Surbiton I met Lindsay Sims, whom eventually I married, in 1966.
We had great fun when we were going out together. I took her rowing on the river Thames once, and discovered that she didn't know how to row! A big motorboat was chugging towards us and Lindsay was taking our little boat round in circles. So she simply jumped into the river (which wasn’t very deep) and pushed our boat out of the way. Lindsay had been brought up in Northern Rhodesia (now called Zambia), and this caused us to think about going out to Africa to teach. A great sadness was that we had no children, and were told by a doctor that Lindsay would never be able to have children. We prayed a lot about what to do next, and decided that we should go to Uganda, where a job was available for me. But then came a miracle! In 1970 Janine was born whilst we were in Uganda, so it proved the doctor had been wrong! Janine spent her first 2 ½ years in Uganda and was a delight to us both
Uganda
When we went to Uganda we made friends with Roger and Margaret Stevens, who helped us to settle in. We have been friends with them ever since. We lived in a brand new bungalow in Kabale, Uganda, and had two full-time servants, which was very nice.
(This picture was painted for me by one of my pupils, Elly Tumwine. Subsequently he became the Commander of the National Resistance Army which overthrew the government of Idi Amin in a coup and installed Yoweri Museveni as President. (As I write this in 2023, Museveni is still the President!) Unfortunately Tumwine turned out to be a very cruel man)
I worked in a boarding school named Kigezi High School, which had 600 pupils. On Sunday evenings we would go to a service at the cathedral, which was next door to the school. Instead of church bells it had three huge African drums, which the year 13 pupils taught me to play, to call people to the service. Every day started with school assembly. The pupils did not have to come to this, but every weekday about 400 of them did come, because they loved singing the hymns (very loudly!). The pupils were not divided into age groups, because they joined the school when their parents could afford to pay the school fees, not when they reached a particular age. So in year 7 the pupils' ages ranged from 11 to 16. In year 13, some of students were 23 years old. One of them, named Jason Turimumahoro, was very friendly and told me about the school Christian Union which he was running.
(Jason is the one in the middle of the photo, between the two girls). I joined in and helped him to run it after that. It was a club for those who were serious about their Christian faith. Being a Christian is tough wherever you are, because often the other pupils think you are stupid to be a Christian, so to have a time each week when they could share their life with others was a real help to them. Whilst we were in Uganda a soldier called Idi Amin threw out the government and made himself President of Uganda.
Shortly afterwards he came to visit our school and I had to shake hands with him. But he turned out to be a very wicked man. When the headmaster was away on leave for several months I had to take over as headmaster of the school for a while, but I enjoyed teaching more than I enjoyed being a headmaster.
Another great moment was when David was born whilst we were on holiday in England. We were staying with Lindsay's parents at the time, so he was born in Ipswich. We took him back to Uganda when he was 12 weeks old.
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| David |
Turbulence – the Air Pocket
We were flying back to Uganda in a Boeing 707, and whilst we were in clear air over Sudan we suddenly flew into turbulence. I think pilots call it ‘clear air turbulence’ which is totally invisible: they can’t see it so they can’t fly round it. The plane started to judder; I grabbed my armrests and put my arm across Janine to hold her steady. David, who was just a few weeks old, was asleep in a carrycot on two spare seats. Suddenly the plane hit a massive air pocket – a hole in the sky! – and dropped down it like a stone. The wings flapped, passengers were lifted out of their seats, one passenger hit the ceiling, baggage was strewn everywhere, the air hostesses got covered in orange juice and other drinks which they were serving, and David landed two rows further forward, upside down under his carrycot in the gangway! We were all very shaken up, including the pilots, and I think most of the passengers thought we were crashing. The pilot radioed Entebbe airport to request for a doctor to check David for injury. When we arrived, a doctor did come on board and said David was ok, but the doctor was obviously very drunk, so we didn’t trust his judgement. We had him re-checked at Mengo Hospital in Kampala. They said he was ok, so we breathed a sigh of relief.
Paddington Bear saves the day.
We went on to Kabale, but life there became very difficult, because of Idi Amin, who was throwing some people into jail and killing others. During this time Uganda was invaded by rebels who wanted to overthrow Amin, and Kabale was cut off from the rest of the country for several weeks, so that for a while we couldn't escape even if we wanted to. Then something else terrible happened when Amin decided to throw out all the Asians living in Uganda. There were, I think, more than 64,000 people whom he threw out, many of whom eventually came to live in Britain. He then started to threaten the British people who were in Uganda….. Lindsay and I didn't want to run away, just because life was difficult, but we were no longer sure whether being in Uganda was the right place to be. So we prayed: we said to God that we were willing to stay in Uganda if that was where He wanted us to serve Him, but if He wanted us to go back to England, would He please give us a clear message that we should leave. Then we packed two suitcases, just to be ready in case of need, put them under the bed, and carried on living our lives in Kabale as normal. Three days later a great friend of ours named Hugh, who lived 90 miles away where he was the Chief Medical Officer in the next county, arrived on our doorstep. As we greeted him and asked why his wife hadn't come with him he said "I've already got her out of Uganda. I'm leaving in a fortnight and I have come with a message from the British Government to tell you to leave as soon as possible." "Why have they sent you with the message?" we asked. "Because the phone lines are tapped by the Ugandan Secret Police" he said, "and the British Government doesn't want them to know what we are saying, in case they arrest British teachers and doctors before they can get out. There is a danger that Amin may soon decide to make big trouble for British people in Uganda." So it was that in October 1972, we departed, leaving all our possessions behind us apart from our two suitcases and a baby carrier. Instead of putting Janine in the baby carrier we put Jan's Paddington Bear in it, which turned out to be a very good idea.
On our journey we had to go through many army roadblocks, but whenever we were faced with Amin's soldiers or his secret police, they looked with great interest at Paddington and asked why we were carrying him! This led to friendly chats instead of difficult ones. Many weeks later we were told that another group of Secret Police had found out that we had left Kabale and were trying to discover where we were. But they were too late. By then we had left the country, after spending a long time in the British High Commission in Kampala, telling British officials how they might set about getting the rest of the British community out of Kabale if they needed to. At the time, they really thought that might happen, but fortunately it didn't, and our friends in Kabale remained safe.
We arrived back in England one night, with nowhere to live (because our flat in Surbiton was rented to someone else) and no job. We stayed with Lindsay's parents for a while. 24,000 Asians had fled from Uganda to Britain at the same time as we had left, so I was given a job to help start a school in a refugee camp for some of the children, and later to help them to get settled in at one of the local comprehensive schools.
Neston
Then in 1973 I saw an advertisement for a job in Chippenham, at Hardenhuish School.
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| Hardenuish House, at the centre of Hardenhuish School |
There we made friends with several people and especially Christopher and Joan Poulsom and their family. Christopher was a farmer and lived nearby at Overmoor Farm which was very close to our house, and the field in front of our house was part of the farm. It was a dairy farm, and in later years Lindsay often worked on the farm for fun, milking the cows or driving the tractor.
The children couldn't see their own grandparents very often as they lived so far away, but the Poulsoms were like grandparents to them. Five years after David was born, along came Andrew. He can claim to have been born in a stately home (!) - Berryfield House in Bradford-on-Avon, which was a maternity hospital at the time.
Our house cost us such a lot that we had very little spare money, and for a while we lived with no carpets on the floor and with very old second-hand furniture. We couldn't afford a new car, but scraped together just enough money to buy a Simca van, into which we fitted back windows and a back seat for the children.
To keep the costs of holidays down, we went camping, often with our friends Roger and Margaret Stevens, until one year at Broadhaven it was so wet that we decided that a caravan would be better than a tent. We all saved up, (including the children who saved up some of their pocket money), until we were able to buy a small old caravan.
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| The Simca van and our caravan |
We used it a few times, but then Uncle Bill and Aunt Eunice who lived near Bude, offered to let us use their granny-flat for summer holidays, and for the next five summers we spent our summer holidays in Bude.
The caravan stayed most of the time in our garden, as a sort of den for the children. As you know, our back garden is quite big, and for several years I grew lots of vegetables in the back garden. But as time went on I had too much other work to do, so I gave up the gardening. Now granny Wendy has started to grow vegetables again in the back garden, with great success.
The Bible Class
There wasn't a lot going on for teenagers in Neston, and we decided, with the help of our friend Barbara Dimmick, to start a Bible Class for teenagers in our house on Friday evenings. Children joined at the age of 11, and usually stayed as part of the Bible Class until they were about 18. We never needed to do any recruiting: they just brought brothers, sisters and friends along, and numbers averaged about a dozen or so each week for many years.
We would have an hour of singing, doing a bible-based quiz, reading a bit of the Bible and learning about it; then for an hour afterwards we would have games - outdoors in the summer and indoors in the winter. We would play coastguards and smugglers on 'the tip' up the road (it's now a housing estate). We tried clearing an old farm pond - not very successfully. We built a model railway layout on a base which we put onto the playroom table each week. The playroom was where our kitchen is now.
The School Cottage
Tyle Morgrug, the cottage in South Wales, used to be the school cottage of Hardenhuish School where I was a teacher. It was used mainly for geography field trips, and I first went there in 1974. It was a pretty worn-out old place in those days, and the barn was an empty shell, (not like it is today with a dormitory and dining roon in it). As time went on I started to take groups of children there who would otherwise not get a holiday at all. Then I took groups from the school Christian Union, and after that I took groups of teenagers who were members of our Teenagers Bible Class. So I found myself going there at least twice a year for many years. The time came when Hardenhuish School could no longer afford to keep the cottage, so it was sold to Chichester Youth Adventure Centre. I went to the cottage to hand over the keys to a lady called Anne, who turned out to be the mayor of Chichester at the time. When I told her that my great-grandfather had also been mayor of Chichester, she was most interested. She told me that her group were going to improve the cottage, and that when the improvements were complete she would let us know, and we could visit it again. The result was that about two years later we were invited to go to the cottage again - and have been going ever since, nowadays on family visits! Janine now does the booking of the cottage.
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| Near the cottage in 2010 |
Lindsay's illnesses
Lindsay led a very active life, firstly running the Neston pre-school playgroup, then the Cotswold Services Centre playgroup, and also helping at the farm. But then one day, when we were on holiday with her sister Hilary and family near Cambridge, she became very ill and I took her to Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. They discovered that she had a growth in her tummy which was blocking her intestine. If she were to stay alive it would have to be removed. We had to go back home, leaving her in hospital in Cambridge for her operation and recovery. Things did not go smoothly, and she nearly died, but eventually she pulled through and got better. I visited her at weekends, until she was able to leave hospital. Hilary saw her each day, of course, and our dear friend Margaret Stevens travelled regularly all the way from Leeds to see her and encourage her. Lindsay recovered well, and things went back to normal again. But a few years later, we were on holiday again, at Sidmouth, when she became ill again. It was the same cancer again, but this time it had taken root in her liver. The hospital in Cambridge was one of the very few hospitals which could do liver transplants in those days, so we asked if they might give Lindsay a transplant. They said no, they would not do a transplant on a cancer patient. It looked as though Lindsay would die, and as we always did, we prayed about it asking God what to do next……. We had a cousin in Leeds, Andrew Sims, who was professor of Psychiatry at St James Hospital. He had a friend who was a specialist in 'soft tissues' which included the liver! He arranged for us to have an interview, during which we were told that a liver transplant would be very risky. She was told to live life as normally as possible, and when life became too difficult she should come to Leeds again and they would decide whether to do a transplant. She might die if she had the transplant, but it was possible that she might live. "Don't come to Leeds too soon", she was told, "but don't leave it too late either". About a year and a half later, the moment came when we went to Leeds again, this time for the transplant. It was a huge operation, and very dangerous, but it was a success, and it gave Lindsay over four years of extra life. During those years we visited Yorkshire regularly and stayed with Andrew and Ruth Sims. We even had a cycling / camping holiday in Yorkshire when I went cycling with Andy and his friend Steven Miller, whilst Lindsay was the cook. I had made sure that our holiday was not far from the hospital in Leeds, just in case anything went wrong for Lindsay.
Like me, Lindsay believed strongly in God, and even when she was very poorly she was always happy and smiling, and used to cheer up her visitors. When the time came to die, she was completely ready, because she knew for certain that she was going to be with Jesus in heaven. During the last year of her life, Lindsay had to keep going back into hospital for short stays, but there was another answer to our prayers….. In 1991 we were able to celebrate our silver wedding. And in 1993 Janine and Sean got married, followed a few months later when David and Frances got married.
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| Sean and Janine wedding |
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| David and Frances wedding |
On both occasions Lindsay was well enough to be there and enjoy the weddings (though both times she was back in hospital again a short time afterwards!)
Alone - apart from the dog!
Jan and Sean went to live in their own home, as did David and Frances, leaving me and Andy at home. We had a dog called Amy who, as a grown-up dog became very fierce with other people, and especially with other dogs. (She used to nearly pull me over when she saw another dog worth attacking!)
Then Andy went off to university in Cardiff, so I was on my own for a few years. After having had such a busy household full of growing children and many visitors, it was strange and lonely living in an empty house with only Amy as company. I tried to learn to cook, and I used to invite people to meals to try out my not very great skills on them, and of course I carried on teaching as though nothing had happened. I don't suppose my pupils knew anything about the upheavals in my life: a schoolteacher has to act at all times as though nothing is wrong, and it is rare for schoolchildren to know much about their teachers' lives
Change of church - twice.
After Lindsay died I was still going to Neston Gospel Hall, but Andrew was going to St Aldhelm's Church in Corsham. (St Aldhelms youth group had been very helpful to all the children, and indeed it was where Jan met Sean). After a few months I thought it wasn’t a good idea for us both to be going to two different churches, so I switched to St Aldhelms, where I stayed for about a year and a half. Then Andrew was recommended by someone to give Corsham Baptist Church a try, which he did, and he continued there for a while. I thought I would stick my nose in there too, and the first time I did that, I knew instantly that it was the church where I ought to be. I have been going there ever since, and was their Church Treasurer for 6 ½ years.
Wendy
The whole of our family had known Wendy and her family for many years, and it was with great delight that, at the start of 2000 I married Wendy at Corsham Baptist Church, where she was also a member.
This meant that Leila and Adrian became a welcome new part of our family as my step-children.
Then - trouble! Whilst we were on honeymoon at the village of Mousehole in Cornwall, Wendy suddenly became very ill and had to be rushed to hospital in Penzance. I wondered whether my new marriage would finish almost as soon as it had started, because Wendy nearly died. But she had major surgery and slowly recovered. Phew! Granny Wendy is an excellent cook, so my days of inviting people to try out my efforts at cooking were over, and people who come to us are now able to have lovely meals. As the years have gone by, we have had further delights: Andrew and Deborah got married on the same day as my 60th birthday, in April 2002.
Over the years our grandchildren have been born - Grace, Eva and Jacob; Isaac and Lubin; Rosie and Edith; and we take a great interest in their progress as they grow up. Two more welcome additions to our 'tribe' are Stephen Tucker - with Leila, and Nicola Hammond - with Adrian. Wendy's side of the family is big: Wendy is one of 10! So she has brought into my circle lots of uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces, and of course her dear mother Joan, who lived in Radstock.
Then in 2021 Adrian and Nicola got married. They have added Jaxon and Oliver to our tribe of grandchildren.
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| Ady and Nicola |
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| Jaxon |
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| Oliver |
We have a busy household with lots of visitors for meals and sometimes garden parties. We support our big and lively church and its members support us. I thank God for all our family and friends, and for being the source and inspiration of my life.
-o0o
Appendix 1 - Becoming and being a Christian. No-one can make you be a Christian. God himself never forces anyone to be a Christian. But Christianity is open to all. If you seek God with all your heart, he will welcome you. The Bible says so:
Jeremiah 29.13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Luke 11.9 Jesus said "So I say to you: ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
2 Timothy 3.16 All Scripture (the Bible) is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
"Christianity is a tremendous personal loyalty to, and friendship with, Christ, which results in living His life and doing His will in the world." Weatherhead - Jesus and ourselves. P172
Appendix 2 Ebenezer Prior
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| Ebenezer Prior, when mayor of Chichester |
-o0o
Appendix 3 Lord Shaftesbury: 1801-1885
Often they were not allowed above ground at all. Boys were freed from work as chimney sweeps thanks to his determination. He combatted white slavery, in which girls were sold into prostitution. Out of his straightened finances (his steward embezzled from him) he did all he could to feed starving children. When he became Lord Shaftesbury he built cottages and improved the amenities of his estate which had been woefully neglected by his self-centered father. Shaftesbury, was an advocate of better housing for the poor. His agitation led to reforms and on this day, August 3, 1872, he laid the foundation stone of a large housing complex named after him at Battersea. Lord Shaftesbury was fierce in his conviction that Christ must be the centre of a living faith.. Yet he was a warm friend of the atheistic Prime Minister Palmerston who gently mocked his belief. The people, however, did not mock. When he preached Christ, they listened with respect. At his funeral, hundreds of thousands of poor stood hatless in a pouring rain to show their love for the man who had loved them. He is credited with possibly preventing revolution and certainly with easing class tensions. Only a few people today are aware of the fact that the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus in London is a memorial to Lord Shaftesbury.
It is a great tribute to all that he did as a Christian to obtain the freedom of fellow humans from unjust and inhuman working conditions. The statue depicts an arrow of Christian love, piercing the world which is what Shaftesbury's love for his fellow men sought to attain. Prime Minister Gladstone's tribute to Shaftesbury is written round the base of the memorial, and reads "During a public life of half a century he devoted the influence of his station , the strong sympathies of his heart and the power of his mind to honouring God by serving his fellow men, an example to this order a blessing to his people and a name to be by them ever gratefully remembered."
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