Because I got married whilst an apprentice, events in this chapter overlap with the contents of the Ediswans, Enfield Technical College and Cossor chapters. My wedding took place at St Matthew's Church, Ponders End, on June 20th 1965, where, just prior to the event, I had to urgently relieve my upset stomach in the cloakroom of the adjacent infants' school. I somehow avoided getting anything on my fashionable blue suede shoes whilst kneeling in front of a very tiny toilet, and did arrive, supported by my best man brother Alan but rather pale faced, at the altar just in time to receive my bride. My condition that morning was due to the previous evening's Stag Night, which had been a pub crawl with college chums, which had ended up at Dad's Conservative Club. I survived without disgracing myself through the ceremony and the following long photo session that took place outside my parents' home to which we and all the guests had returned. However, when we entered the house and I saw the magnificent spread of food that my mother had prepared, my system rebelled again, and I took to my upstairs bed - for the last time - to recover. As a result, I did not partake in the wedding breakfast at all, only rising - thankfully then quite recovered - to enter the taxi that took my new wife and me to Paddington to catch a train to Torquay where we would spend our honeymoon.
The events just described could have been interpreted as a bad omen for my union with my new wife, June, but our holiday at the Hunters Moon hotel was an enjoyable and happy time for us, despite June's embarrassment when a cloud of confetti filled our bedroom as a result of the vacuum created when lifting the lid of our suitcase. I will never forget the sight of her, in just rather saucy underwear, kneeling to try pick up all the decorative paper shapes from around the room, despite my protest that it was a waste of time as our evident youthful appearance surely indicated that we were in the on honeymoon category of guests.
June Violet was the daughter of Arthur and Elsie Titmus, and was born in 1938, so was two years older than me. She lived with her parents, sister Josephine, and grandmother in Frome road, Turnpike Lane, not far from Alexandra Palace. It was at the roller skating rink up there when I was about seventeen that we met, and where I eventually tempted her to partner me instead of her friend, Marion, during some of the dance sessions that took place. The decision regarding which of the pair to choose was not hard, as June was obviously the more attractive of the two, with her pretty face and shapely long legs showing beneath her brief skating skirt being a major part of her allure. I also danced with a number of other girls, but June soon became my only partner, both at the rink and in the world outside. Eventually we became an item, and spent a lot of time together, including our continued visits to the roller rink.
It was in the very early days of our relationship that I persuaded June to let me take her home from the rink one night since, as my brother was off in the RAF, I had been able to quietly spirit his 500cc Matchless motorbike out of our garage, to use it to go to Ally Pally in an effort to impress June. However, at the end of the evening, having persuaded her to ride on the back to take her home, I got into a little competitive chat with a friend on another motorbike over who could get to Turnpike Lane traffic lights first from an earlier set about five hundred metres before, where we were both awaiting the green light. I easily won the competition, but it was not my friend who eventually quietly pulled up next to me, but a policeman on one of the almost silent water-cooled Velocette machines that they used at that time - The Noddy Bike. He asked if I was aware of my excessive speed in a built up area, and requested my licence. I replied that it was in the post, and then had to confess that it was only a Provisional - which prompted sarcastic comments about the impressive display of invisible L plates on the bike. When the copper learned that June had no licence at all, I had to admit that I did know that it was an offence for a Provisional motorbike licence holder to carry passengers who were not themselves fully qualified. I dreaded the next questions which would have been about my absent Road Tax disc and Insurance Certificate, but the bobby thankfully ended the interrogation by saying that he was tired and about to go off duty so really didn't want to get involved with time consuming paperwork. Also, with a smile in her direction, he declared that he could see that the my passenger obviously needed to get home soon, so just told me to be more careful in future, thereby avoiding accidents when carrying attractive young ladies. I'm pretty sure that June was NOT still wearing her short skating skirt at the time, but I remain in no doubt that her presence, daintily perched on my pillion, was the real reason I avoided an extended session in a cop shop that night.
As a confirmed boy-friend, I once joined June's parents and sister Josephine on a summer holiday to Westward Ho! At that time there would have been no question of sharing with June, and I slept on a makeshift bed created on one of the long seats in the hired family caravan. It was deemed that a window should be open each night for proper ventilation, and as this was just above where I slept, I often woke with a frozen shoulder. However, belly board sessions on the waves at the long local beach soon cured those, and it was quite a good holiday, despite being without many opportunities for canoodling. The following year June was permitted to go on a holiday with just me, to Brambles Chine holiday camp on the Isle-of-Wight. This was allowed as another couple from the skating rink were to go with us, and the - unspoken - understanding was that we boys would be in a different chalet to the girls. The first couple of nights saw my friend Roy and me making ourselves scarce for a while from the group of other youngsters staying at the camp, to creep off to our two chalets and reposition the four single beds to make two doubles. When we realised that the other couples in our row of chalets were all doing the same thing, just before the evening meal at around five o'clock, we organised teams that very efficiently and quickly moved from chalet to chalet re-arranging the beds. The only losers in this nightly procedure were Roy and his girl, since the beds in the chalet they used were of slightly different heights, making some activities a little trickier than usual!
June got on very well with my parents, so there were no major objections when I told them that we wanted to get married, other than the fact that I was so young, and still an apprentice. The need to get away from doing our courting in the bedroom June shared with her sister Josephine may have been quite a contributory factor in our decision, but we had been together without problems for over two years, so everyone involved eventually agreed. I think June's parents were probably quite relieved, as they only had three rooms in the house that they shared with June's grandmother, and had to do their cooking in a small, curtained off portion of the living room. June's mother created meals in a rather bizarre way, serving them in instalments. First would probably come a few potatoes, and some minutes later the meat and some peas. Gravy might appear as an apparent afterthought, usually just after the previous servings had been consumed. She was rather a strange and nervous lady, dealing with a slightly difficult younger daughter, and a bronchial husband. Despite this affliction and it resultant constant cough, Athur's only pleasure in life appeared to be smoking hand-rolled Old Holborn cigarettes, which he was only permitted to light up in the small upstairs lavatory.
I was living with my parents in Ponders End before I got married, but the only accommodation that June and I could afford was back in Edmonton, at number 4 (I think) Bounces Road. This was a house almost identical to those in Bocking Street, London Fields, where my older family members lived, with an outside toilet, and no bathroom. I think I was earning around nine pounds a week, at the time, and June got slightly more at her typists job in a solicitors office in London. From this we paid four pounds a week rent to the man who lived downstairs, but whose small son slept in the middle bedroom upstairs, for the other two rooms upstairs. This chap was a rather odd individual, whose wife had left him and the son, and apparently taken up with some other man. We did not know it at the time, but our landlord later told me when I once joined him for a chat in his sitting room at the front of the house, that he was always on the lookout through the window for his wife's fancy man, who he was convinced wanted to kill him. He proudly showed that he was prepared for an attack, by revealing the big knife he kept concealed under his shirt sleeve.
Having always helped my father with decorating, I had no problems with making our little nest more attractive, and we even found enough money to buy an aquarium which was filled with colourful tropical fish. We painted a white wood dressing table and a small wardrobe for the bedroom, and reclined each evening in a pair of chairs of similar - but cheaper - Ercol style, that were a wedding present from one of the other directors at Dads company. June had never been allowed to join her mother in her cramped kitchen, so had to learn to cook from scratch, with helpful guidance from my mother when we regularly popped back to see my parents - possibly to take our washing?
I travelled each day back to college or Ediswans at Ponders End, originally by bicycle, but later on a moped that had been abandoned by my brother. This was a machine more like a motorbike than a moped, with telescopic front forks and a swinging arm rear suspension with double jam pots - shock absorbers. Complete with a long padded seat that could accommodate a pillion passenger, it was my pride and joy. I had nowhere to park it other than in the roadside at the front of our house, from where, one morning, it had disappeared. When I contacted the local police that morning, I was astonished to find that they had it already at the station. Apparently a smart local cop had observed the lads using it, and correctly deduced that it had been taken for joy-riding, so apprehended them and the machine. All this had taken place in the early hours, whilst I was fast asleep, and I was much impressed by their efficiency which had saved me from spending money I could not afford on a replacement, or on repeated bus fares.
Although this first home was conveniently close to the Town Hall swimming pool where I attended weekly sessions of the Edmonton Dolphins sub-aqua club - a replacement for roller-skating - the strain of living with the nut-case downstairs as he became more weird, eventually made us seek alternative accommodation. We found another house, of the same style, in Ridler Road - located in the Forty Hall area of Enfield - but in which we could rent all three upstairs rooms. This new location was roughly the same distance as before from my parent's home, Ediswans and college, but June, who had previously taken up a new position with a wholesale wallpaper company at Finsbury Park had a more difficult daily journey. I worked some evenings at the nearby Hop Poles pub, where the droopy moustache that I attempted to grow earned me the nickname of Fu Manchu.
Using a loaned camera, I had taken some photographs whilst in Torquay on honeymoon, and these colour transparencies came out rather well, including some night views of the pier and its decorative lights, so I became interested in photography. When we were still living in Bounces Road, I may have borrowed the same camera to take monochrome snaps on a coach trip to the Wye Valley, and one of these was of June wearing a rather smart woollen two-piece suit. I entered an enlargement of this shot into the weekly Best Photo' competition at Wheatley's furniture shop - which also had a photographic department - that was located just round the corner opposite The Crescent, a little before Edmonton Green. I won that week, and this got me even more convinced that I was a budding David Bailey, so I got hold of the necessary equipment to do my own developing and printing. I can't imagine there was anywhere to use this in our two rooms at Bounces Road, but I certainly had a set up when we moved to three rooms at Forty Hall. I know this because I clearly recall one session where I had carefully washed everything needed to develop a reel of 35 mm film. Before pouring some developer into a measuring cylinder, I shook any water it still contained into the sink. Unfortunately, my thermometer had been placed in that cylinder after washing, so it was flicked into the sink as well, where it broke in half. It was a late Saturday afternoon, so a fast ride on my bike was needed to get to the photographic shop in Enfield Town before it closed, to purchase a replacement. Luckily I made it in time, but when I got back, I washed the new thermometer and again popped it into the measuring cylinder before restarting processing. Disastrously, I repeated my earlier actions and broke the second thermometer in exactly the same way! Luckily they were both spirit thermometers, not the much more expensive mercury ones, but I still had to wait until Monday to deal with my undeveloped film.
After June and I moved to Harlow, I met Lawrence - Laurie or Chick - Garnett at the Harlow branch of The British Sub-Aqua Club which I had joined. He and I became firm friends, as did his wife Rita and June, and we often spent evenings together, usually at his home as he had three children. It was during these visits that I was introduced to the custom of having a late supper by his Yorkshire-bred wife. In June of 1965, Chick and I arranged a diving holiday in Spain, to where, with our wives, we set off in his Morris Traveller. This car was kept in perfect condition by Laurie, who had all the necessary skills, as he was the mechanic in charge of the maintenance of the delivery lorries used by the local Co-Op biscuit factory. Initially the holiday went well, with Laurie and I enjoying dives off the coast around San Felieu de Guixols on the Costa Brava. On one excursion to nearby Tossa de Mar, we captured a small octopus, although it proved quite a task underwater to get the multi-legged creature into a sack. At the end of our search for other game, with our air tanks practically empty, as we snorkelled our way back to the beach, I felt a tug on one of my flippers. Laurie was pointing to an huge octopus he had spotted on a rock about ten metres below, and I reacted with a thumbs-up signal, indicating that it was certainly an enormous specimen. As I was about to turn back towards the beach however, I was surprised to see that Laurie had swapped back to his aqualung, and was diving down to the monster. As I watched, he hooked a metal rod - which he carried to get lobsters out of crevices - under the apron that joined the legs of the cephalopod, and the surprised creature was lifted up off the rock upon it had been basking. It seemed so disturbed by losing its perch, that it immediately reached for something else onto which it could attach itself. Unfortunately, that was Laurie, and it wrapped all its eight limbs around my friend's head, torso and legs, preventing any swimming, but also tending to crush the soft low pressure tubes of the single stage demand valve that we used in those days, decreasing the airflow from his almost empty tank.
I could just make out Laurie's eyes staring out of his facemask, seeking my help, so - hoping my remaining air would last long enough - I dived down to him, and managed to push him and his travelling companion up to the surface, where he was delighted to be able to heave in some gulps of fresh air. Unable to do much himself, he spluttered a request for me to get him to some projecting rocks conveniently nearby, which I did, pushing him up onto them, out of the water. It took a while to free my buddy, as the eight tentacles could only be released by gripping at their ends and pulling the tip up, like opening a zip. As fast as one or two came off and I moved to the next ones, those previously pulled away would try to attach themselves again, so it took quite a time to free Laurie. Afterwards, we managed to get the octopus into the sack, but when we later took our catches to the restaurant below the apartment where we were staying, the chef would only accept the small one to prepare for us. He explained that it would take longer than the week remaining of our holiday to successfully cook the tough larger brute, as otherwise it would not become chewable.
As the holiday progressed, Rita's behaviour became more and more anti-social, and eventually I said to June that I would have to talk to Laurie about it, as it was spoiling the atmosphere of the trip for all of us. After a long discussion during which she tried all sorts of arguments to dissuade me, I remained adamant that a protest was vital, so she finally revealed the root of the matter, which was that she and Laurie were in love, and Rita knew of it. Stunned, I left her and requested Rita to join just me on a trip into town for a meal. Over dinner, she explained that the situation about which had just learned had been known to her for some time, and how she had been persuaded to agree that its resolution should delayed until after the current holiday - which had been booked many months previously. She had reluctantly agreed to this, with the assurance that June and Laurie would conduct themselves sensibly, but her mood had gradually deteriorated when they behaved like a honeymoon couple when I was out of the way, ignoring her presence if she was not. I was appalled at the way Rita had been treated, and drank rather a lot of wine during the meal as more details were revealed, so only just about managed to drive safely back to our apartment afterwards. Rita and I were talking in my room when we heard the others return, and I asked Rita to close the door as there was no way I wanted to talk to either of them that evening, and we eventually fell asleep. Although we resumed normal sleeping arrangements for the rest of the holiday, the night of the revelation later proved to be a problem during the hearing of my divorce case.
The rest of the holiday proved rather strained, especially on the journey home when a cat fight between the two women developed in the back of the car on the road from Dover. I told June that she had to leave as soon as we arrived back in Harlow, which she did without much protest. I went with Rita to collect her children from Yorkshire where they had been staying with her sister, which again was not an enjoyable experience. Things settled down a bit, and as Laurie no longer came to the diving club, and the reason became known, my other friends revealed that his and June's behaviour had often been much as Rita had described when we were on holiday. They had mistakenly assumed that I was fully aware of the situation, and didn't care! A classic case of The husband is the last to know!
When my divorce case was heard in the following January, it was on the grounds of June's adultery that the separation was sought. Whilst waiting for the hearing to begin, I popped into the toilet, and when I came out found that the solicitors and Rita had gone into the courtroom during my absence. I had some vague recollection of witnesses not being allowed to be present until after they had given evidence, so dutifully sat outside until a harassed official came and found me. It was thus that I missed all the preliminaries and Rita's evidence, and was whisked, unprepared, straight into the witness box. My solicitor took me through the general details and then the events that had taken place on the holiday where I found out about my wife's previous infidelity, and then sat down to await the expected judgment. However, the judge was not quite as comfortable with the presented facts, and began to ask me questions himself. It should be explained that at the time, it was illegal for couples to collude - make some private agreement - to get a divorce, and only proved desertion or adultery by one partner were permitted grounds for a decree. It seemed that you could not have a divorce if you wanted one, but could if you didn't! My judge was obviously suspecting something dodgy, as he seemed unhappy that, unlike a proper Englishman, I had not immediately punched Laurie on the nose when I heard of his betrayal. He enquired if the other man was a lot bigger than me, and then if my wife was a large woman. I could only reply in the negative, but could not explain that I was rather drunk, and so incensed about how I had been fooled for so long, that a physical response seemed meaningless at that moment. In reality, that evening I had totally given up on my marriage, but could not say so as it would appear that I was condoning their being together. By the end of this interrogation I was feeling about four inches tall and was obviously so extremely embarrassed that I think he finally took pity on me, stopped his questions, and reluctantly granted the Decree Nisi.
I later learned that Laurie and June had got married, before emigrating to Australia, and I realised then that I no longer had any hard feelings towards either of them. I got to understand that I had been the wrong husband for June, being too logical and matter-of-fact, and not of a more romantic disposition that would have suited her better. Laurie obviously had this latter characteristic, and did in fact prove to be my best friend by freeing me to meet and marry my second wife, Avril, with whom I have enjoyed many happy years. Strangely enough, Rita also did not suffer for long, eventually marrying another diving club member, who also gained from the situation. His name was Roger, who I had known from the Edmonton diving club days, but who had a rather unprepossessing appearance, with a florid face and a dodgy leg that meant he did not have much success with girls. He was a brilliant engineer and did a lot of work with the air compressor and other equipment, when like me, he transferred to, and became a vital member of, the Harlow diving club. He worked a lot with Laurie, so naturally got to know Rita and their children, and was a great help to her when Laurie left her with three youngsters. Thus it was that a man who otherwise might never have met someone who could get to know his inner personality because of his strange appearance ended up with a wife and ready-made family.
When I received the Decree Absolute, I realised that there was one more benefit to me personally because of our divorce, which was that I no longer had any future responsibilities for the other members of June's family. At times during our marriage I had selfishly wondered about this prospect with some trepidation, so, on that day, I did rather feel as though a proverbial weight had been lifted from my shoulders.