- How J got there (thrown out of teacher training college after first year)
- she was thrown out of the University of Birmingham too (our joint foolishness)
- how I got there (briefly)
- how we got to know one another during my final year, which was and her first and only year
- her parents were L & M U, living in Bradford, Yorkshire
- three daughters: J, J, S
- Leslie was a typographical designer. I don’t know of any part-time jobs that Margaret might have had. Leslie was an outspoken little man, he could be sarcastic or tactless
- Margaret was the mother chicken, but I don’t remember seeing her without tears in her eyes. I didn’t think much of it at the time, assumed she just had watery eyes
- J and I first lived together some time in early 1964
- I’d got a teaching job at Winson Green Primary School in Birmingham. I arrived on 16th December 1963 near the end of term, with no teaching certificate or experience
- it was a so-called remedial class of 12 boys and girls with varied learning difficulties. Their departing teacher spent till the end of term letting me sit in and copy the way she maintained order enough to teach them something
- I resigned after 2 terms losing the monthly pay due over the summer holiday. I didn’t feel I was doing these children any good
- I was staying at my old lodgings at 57 Goldsmith Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham. The bus ride to Winson Green took an hour
- After the end of term at University in 1963 J got a job at Butlins holiday camp in Clacton-on-sea
- I got a job there a couple of weeks later at the Lyons ice cream concession
- J was annoyed about it. She was there with her friend Myrtle (nickname).
- J and I had spent most of our summer term at Uni together, ignoring our studies (though I was due to sit for finals in June)
- I’d spent 24 hours with Christina in Bromsgrove, where we lost our virginity and said goodbye. I’ve written this up elsewhere
- After our encounter in Clacton, I’ve no idea what happened to Judi. I guess we were still friends but went our separate ways
- In January 1964 I got a telegram from Judi at Goldsmith Road. It said something like “please come, I love you”, with an address in Earls Court. I went immediately and saw it was very unsatisfactory accommodation for her, sharing a large flat with assorted neurotics arguing weeping, suicidal etc.
- I took her back on the train, ignoring her protests
- She had to stay that night at Goldsmith Road, but we had to find a place nearer my teaching job
- It was an awful room in a weird house. The bed sagged, not good for the spine and creaked when we made love. It was our first time!
- She had a friend with a nice little flat in a posh detached house. He was going away, so he told the landlord he would be handing it over to us.
- The landlord was not happy. Even less happy when my cheque for £50 monthly rent bounced threw us out immediately.
- We found a room in 9 Stanmore Road, Edgbaston
- J and I got married on 9th May 1965: her family were all at our wedding in Birmingham registry office on 9th May 1965.
A very strange thing happened on morning of the wedding. Christina, who could always find out my telephone number from me mother, came to the door and begged me not to marry J. It would be a terrible mistake. She’d written a letter before, which I’d agreed with J to tear into shreds.
It was not till we’d been married that J revealed her epilepsy, which was kept in check with phenobarbitone. It was many years after her suicide that I discovered that this condition is most likely triggered through childhood sexual abuse.