That's me thinking I was whispering in it.

So what, so, and, and mine does too, which is useful actually.

Something like that, yeah, yeah, and I do a few of those, yeah, yeah, so I'll open this door and then our voices Ministry of supply come on sweetheart.

That's, I lost her this morning and I thought, oh God, you did what this morning? I lost the dog this morning.

I was busily writing you a note saying grubble, grubble, grovel, sorry, sorry, sorry. I've had to go out to look for the dog, but somebody brought her home. Uh, look, you've got a nice door open.

Oh.

Very wet dog.

I think that'll make the horse there.

Dad, do you suppose that's all working? I'm sure it is. Yes, it is.

But first of all, first of all, first of all, let me tell you, no, Dad. No, no, I just wondered if it might have been one of those.

No, because this is obviously in, I'm showing you, I'm showing you this for the tape, but this is obviously in the munitions factory, and it's the only picture I know that what date is it? I don't know. Right, I don't even know where it came from, but probably 1944, 194945.

Perhaps he wasn't there, she wasn't go in. She want, she wants to go in her bed. OK.

It's not really our bed, it's a sofa, but I've got, funnily enough, I've got a prayer mat on it from one of my previous lodges.

I don't know whether she'd approved of the dog I not. Well, it's probably a religious thing straight to hell.

What a lovely view. So, so for the tape, and the reason that I'm doing the tape is because eventually, long after we're all dead and gone, these will go to the records office. Oh, right, right, right, yes. So we're. Making history as immortality indeed. And so that means that I want to know that I'm Bill Laws and it's God, what is it? August? No, yes, August 7th. Is it the 7th? I don't know, it might be the 8th. No, no, it's the 7th 2025. The 10th and the 9th is on Saturday. Oh, is it Haiti? Yes, it is.

I don't think that's.

Well now, we'll speak quietly. And, and I am with, I only know you as Elizabeth, and I've never called you Liz. No, but I'm always known as Liz. OK, so you're Liz. What are you? Hughes. Hughes, and what were you? Rigby. Oh, that's right, yeah. And we are in, where are we? What's our address? 12 Key Street. OK, yeah. And I'm kind of asking that because when I get home, I will transcribe all this and all that we've said I will give you in a big printout.

Oh, how lovely, thank you. The children will like that. You can throw it away or and if it's children. Children would love that. And if they've got emails, I can actually send it to them digitally. That's lovely, yes. So that be great.

That sounds lovely, that's great. So you mentioned children, let's start in the middle then. So you married Terry. What was he called? Hughes.

Of course he was because you were called Hughes. In where and where had you met him and what did you have in the way of family? I don't know whether I want to tell you.

And you just tell me what you choose to. My parents were very religious.

And Terry was an evacuee and he should have gone to Charterhurst, but he didn't.

His mother wanted them to all die together. So he went to 14 different schools and was totally.

Illitterate woman by the end of it.

So he actually uh educated himself after he left school.

Got HND is it, or C? I don't know which one.

HND Higher National Diploma.

That's the one, yeah, by going to night school eventually. So where was he born? He was born at Purfleet in the garrison which overlooked the Thames, and the Thames was 1 mile wide there, and there used to be barges with red sails going by.

And they had their own, had their own key and the driver up to the garrison had walnut, French walnut trees on either side.

And in the hallway were two cannons.

So that can't be a bad place to be brought up, can it? Was it? Oh, it was a military, it was a military garrison.

His father was, his father actually wasn't in the army then, but he was obviously working for them. So I'm not quite sure what, I couldn't tell you. Do you know when was he born? 1929. And so he was evacuated in 1929, 1939.

He was evacuated then when he was about 1011. Yeah, something like that. I don't really know. this is guesswork. Yeah, yeah. And that didn't work out. What about you? Where had you been born? I was born at Exmouth. I lived at a Devon girl. Yeah, I lived at Claremont on Causeway in a super, super house because I've seen photographs of it and it really was lovely. I had stables and tennis courts and all that sort of thing. And then my father for some extraordinary reason, I think a bomb dropped on Exmouth decided to move us somewhere safe and we were sent to Bristol. Where we were actually bombed out by a doodle bug, which I actually saw flying over and said to Mummy, oh look at that little aeroplane, and we all rushed in, apparently we must have rushed in under the stairs, and mummy was reading Just William to us.

I remember that, stupid things, isn't it? And um then there was this almighty bang and I remember mummy said, there goes the chicken because apparently she had a chicken in the larder, you know, anyway, that's what she said, there goes the chicken. It's stupid I remember silly things and she just carried on reading, but we had to be dug out.

And I remember walking through with my brother, he was in a pram and my sister, I think we've both been on the pram as well, and my one of my brothers, I don't know where the other two were, I think they were probably at boarding school, but my other brother, he had his khaki shorts on top of his pyjamas.

Anyway, we walked through and we, we slept in a Methodist hall on the floor.

And I remember being given an egg for breakfast and I wouldn't eat it, and mummy being very cross because it was the egg, you know, which was a great sacrifice, and I wouldn't eat it, but I don't remember what happened after that, it's all out of sync.

How old were you? About 3.5, so it's sort of my first memories, yeah. So I'm going to ask the terribly personal question of when, when were you born? What year? When's this going to be published? I don't want people to know how.

Oh, OK, let's leave that out then. We'll leave that out.

Give me your pen. Is this all on record? Oh, I don't want to say them.

But it was Exmouth, OK.

It was Exmouth, so you were just a young one in the war, and yet you remember being bombed. Well, how would I have been, you can say approximately, well, 5, 6, yes, I remember coming back from school.

This sounds like a tall story, but it was in the Exmouth Journal, and it used to be exhibited in the lifeboat shed.

They had a little lifeboat where you put money in and then the lifeboat went out over the sea and rescued someone and then brought it back and it was in the shed, this big newspaper article. Um, there'd been a raid on Exeter and um. A German plane must have got lost because it was a lone plane coming back.

And I was walking home from school and I know I had my black Lyle stockings on.

We used to have what's called a uh Liberty bodies which had suspenders on it, and then I was only a little girl, I had these black Lyle stockings on. And I saw this plane, it appeared to be coming down the road, you know, it's very, very low, and I remember standing there waving like a child, you know, like sort of opening and closing my fist, waving in the air.

And it shot at me.

And all these.

I can remember all these bullets coming down and I charged into my neighbor's hedge.

She was called Mrs. Faraday Giles, and I was very, very worried because I thought she'd come out and tell me off. And to make matters worse, I've made a hole in my stockings and I thought I'd get told off about that.

Anyway, I must, I don't remember getting up and going home, but it was only next door, and my father was running around the garden desperately looking for my younger brother. And then we watched um and I I wasn't told off, and then we er watched a a a British plane come up or an English plane come up and actually that went down into the sea and you everyone must have been watching cos you could hear this groan.

And then another plane came up and the German one came down in the sea.

I remember finding it very upsetting to think both of those people, I thought they'd be drowned, you know, I don't know whether they were, whether they were rescued or what, I couldn't tell you, yeah. It's trauma.

Well, it wasn't actually, I didn't take any notice because if you've been brought up like that, you know, if you've been brought up by the fact that. You you just, it's just normal.

I can remember mummy showing me a baker's shop and there was, I don't know what it would be plastic, but there was a loaf of bread in the window and she actually said, you know, before the war there used to be cakes and things in there and I thought oh gosh how lovely.

But no, it never occurred to me.

I was never frightened.

Well I must have been frightened, otherwise I wouldn't have hid. But I don't ever remember being. And in fact, when I went to sleep at night, if I couldn't hear the crump of guns, then I found it difficult to go to sleep because they were quite soothing, nice crumpy noise, a bit like a lawnmower noise, that type of noise, you know, just crump, crump, it's quite a soothing sound. Your mum and dad, what are their, what are their names? My mother had a frightful name, she was called Bessy.

And my father was called Ernest.

And what were their surnames? Rigby. Rigby, of course. And you, you mentioned brothers, sisters. I, I'm the middle one. I've got 3 older brothers and uh uh 2 younger sisters and a brother. Can you name them all? Yeah, John, Michael, Peter. My first name's Gillian, Gillian, Veronica, Ambrose, and Odette. It's a good sized family. And then they moved to Bristol.

Oh we've moved to Bristol, Daddy wasn't there.

I don't really, I think Daddy was in Hereford because he always loved Hereford, Bristol was, he was very interested in, he loved doing farming accounts. He was a countryman at heart really. He'd been in the First World War and he'd been wounded, and when I looked back, he obviously never got over it, but. At the time you don't take any notice, do you? No. And so do you know what he was in the First World War? Do you know what he, what he served as or No, no, I have no idea.

He was shot twice, once, I think he was shot in the groyne, and I'm not sure about the other one, but he always, he, he had a, not a limp, he used to slap his leg down. I think it was his right leg, and he couldn't drive a car because his leg used to get stuck on the accelerator.

So it must have been his right one, wasn't it? Is that the, which is the accelerator? No, it's on the on the right, is it? Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, that would be right. So he, he had this great fondness for Hereford.

Yes, yes, he loved Hereford and in the he was chairman of the Hereford Book Society at one time, but I don't know when. So he, he came, he was in service then.

I mean he was in, so what, what did, what was his military service that you understand? Oh, only in the 1418 war. Well, but again, in the Second World War. No, no, no, he was too old, yeah, but he, he was. How involved you say. No, not Daddy wasn't, no. Ammunition and no, no, it's my father-in-law you're getting muddled up. OK. Well, we'll move on to them then, but, but I'm just interested, you said about moving to Bristol and then that.

Oh well then we moved back to Exmouth then, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The era of the V2 and the V1, terrifying. No, I, I'm never frightened. I used to watch, I used to go out and watch all the German planes flying over. I used to find it fascinating to see all these planes flying over Expo. Oh look, look at all those planes, you know, yeah, yeah.

But your mum, was she anxious? No, they never showed any sign of anxiety at all, and we used to pray every night for the Germans because they must be good because most of them were Catholics, so obviously. They were, you know, quite good people. Yeah. So were they, were your family Catholics? Very much so, yeah. So church on Sunday, twice, mass, yes, yes, and prayers every night.

When you were bombed in Bristol.

Do you know whereabouts in Bristol you were? No idea whatsoever. It was a very small house. I do remember that. I remember being horrified at being in such a small house. Oh, I just thought we didn't go straight to Exmouth after being bombed out. We came to Hereford and we stayed and my father got a little tiny little council house and we stayed in this tiny little house. And we had treble bunks.

There were 6 of us in one bedroom. And the lavatory was at the top of the stairs because I remember my brother used to apparently, Michael, used to lean against the door and someone opened the door and he fell down the stairs and we had Now what was it, uh.

Chicken pox.

Chickenpox and something else.

My mother was looking after him, no, nothing like that. It wasn't measles because I had measles later on.

Scarlet fever. No, Terry had scarlet fever, no, I can't remember, it was chickenpox or something. And we're only in this tiny little house, I think it was in Henderson somewhere, and how he got the house, I have no idea. But we were only there for a very short time.

I'd forgotten that bit. Gosh, but it's all out of sync. Yeah, well, we, we'll, we'll, we're following it through bit by bit. So from this little house in Hunterton, you went back to Exmouth, yeah, and another house, big Victorian house with your dad. No, daddy, daddy stayed in Hereford. He had, he had an office and I think he owned the building. At the end of King Street on the right hand side, which has just recently been sold. End of King Street on the right hand side, before the orange tree, after the orange tree if you're going towards the main road right on that and it's a long thin building like that. And I know he illegally used to sleep there, he wasn't allowed to, but I know he did, yeah, yeah.

What, what was his, what was, was he working? Yes, he, he was an accountant, chartered accountant. I know he had a practise in Exeter. And he, perhaps he had a practise in Bristol, I don't know.

And he had one in Otter Saint Mary. So yeah, so this great fondness for Hereford and here we are on the banks of the Wye again.

Oh, he'd be delighted. He would really would be absolutely delighted. We lived in Castle Street, number 34. At what period would that be after? Oh, no, that was when I was a teenager, so I'm jumping now.

So you went back to Exmouth. You're obviously with your mum and dad. No, not my, my father spent most of his time in Hereford, used to come home occasionally at the weekends. So you are back and forth.

Are you at school mostly in Exmouth or I went to the convent of the Holy Family, of course, until I was about 11. And then I went to boarding school in Teignmouth, Notre Dame in Teignmouth. You didn't go to any of the Catholic schools here, the one in Berrington Street, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And then, so when did you end up in Harrow? Oh, I've just thought of something else. When we were bombed out, Bristol. Uh, I was a pretty obnoxious child.

I was sent to Belmont House, and it used to be a convent, convent school. And it was owned by the Chichester and there's a tie up later on, which is quite strange, but I went to Belmont Abbey and I know I was only 3.

Um, and I was there for a while, and I, I absolutely loved it.

I must have been spoilt rotten because I'd be a little girl and everyone would have petted me. And I remember walking through the woods with this very old lady who must have been at least 40.

Um, and she showed me fairy shoes.

What are fairy shoes? I don't know, just a little plant or something.

It's a tiny little. A tiny, it's sort of uh what you called it a stamen of a flat.

It looked a bit like a fairy aquilegia quite like that, yeah, it could have been.

I don't know what it was. What a delightful memory. Oh, it is, it's lovely, and she had a black Labrador dog, I remember that. So those would be those woods, presumably, the woods that are still there, yeah, yeah, because the ts that lived there, oh, well, they only sold it probably. 60s, 70s, no, 7, no, probably in the 80s, they probably got rid of it then.

And they were lovely people.

They acquired it maybe from the Wegg Prosser. Oh, they were the same family. Oh, it was the same because it was a Mr. Wegg Prosser who built. Chichester, yeah, yeah, OK, OK, so, no, you're, you've mentioned your other family, and, and we skirted over when you met your husband.

Well, we ran away and were married in Edinburgh.

Elizabeth, I can't believe that. I do. And uh because my mother, my mother was my mother died.

I in fact I can show you the room she died in because when you walk up Quay Street, I think of her every time. My mother died and then my father forbade me to have anything to do with Terry.

And so I, um, in fact, he said, I am the master of this house and you will do as I tell you.

Obviously you're living in Hereford by then. Yeah, yeah, I was living in 34 Castle Street. The garden ran right down to Well Cottage and there's big double gates, uh, garage gates, whatever you call, were the entrance to our stables.

And you remember the stables there. Well, I'm a teenager, I'm a teenager now. We didn't have any horses. I'm a teenager now. And the well, the well is actually there, you know, I mean. Yeah, yeah, the well is actually there. So they were our stables and the, the obviously that 60s house wasn't there, so it was a big, my father sold the land to pay for my younger sister's education and he got 500 pounds for it. Was the education worth it? Well, she, yes, actually it was. She went to Acton Bernal school. She was bored because mummy had died. And she had very peripatetic sort of Existence and the Chichester at Belmont actually pretty well took her over, they were so good to her, yeah, yeah. You, you've mentioned two awful traumas really, the the being bombed in Bristol, it wasn't a trauma though to me, no, you know, it was just normal. And, and your mum dying. Oh that was awful. What what happened? She had cancer.

Yeah, she, she always, she always had a cigarette in her mouth.

How old was she? 48. She was young. And I can remember thinking, oh, that's not so bad.

She's very old. Isn't that terrible? Gosh, and so that was a blow for him, for your father a terrible blow.

But again, you know, I was a teenager, a selfish teenager. You know, so I didn't really, I only thought, I was only ever thinking about Terry, I wasn't thinking about anything else.

So Terry popped in, he had he been evacuated to Hereford? He was actually a gas fitter's apprentice then. Oh no, he was a proper apprentice.

No, he was a proper, proper gas fitter then. For whom? Do you know? Yes, West Midlands. Let me think, West Hereford gas undertaking.

Oh, you're good. What a memory.

OK, so, and would you, would you like to tell me where you met him? Yes, I can say 34 Castle Street. I just, I just thought.

Gosh, so I plied him with bacon sandwiches and coffee.

And when he left, I put a nail through the gas pipe and I rang up the gas people and said that there was a nail, please please send the gas fitter back and they sent someone else.

I was mortified. And Terry got into trouble.

And I've done it, yeah.

Oh my word. So Elizabeth, romance is, is blossoming. You, you obviously got together with Terry again, and then, oh well, apparently he took a shine to me because he used to.

Uh, walk up and down Castle Street apparently, so he can bump into me, yeah.

And then, I mean, war is finished, times are still a bit tight.

It's it was 55, coal was still rationed in 1955. And I can remember queuing in High Town for two things. One was a barrow and the other was a comb. And I can remember joining a queue for those, queuing for a comb and, and a burrow.

Gosh, yeah, I mean people, I think tend to forget after VE and VJ Day that you think, ah, the war is over, everything is hunky dory, but it wasn't. It was, it was grim actually. It was really quite grim. And you didn't, I mean clothes were difficult.

I can remember mending and mending and uh and knitting um toes and heels for your stockings and everything was darned, my coat was darned. And and there weren't the charity shops around so you couldn't go out and buy nice, you know, couldn't buy clothes or anything like that.

I'm not sure. Were clothes still rationed? No, I think it was just coal was still rationed in '55.

I think you might be right, but I mean furniture it was difficult to get hold of and accommodation. Well, that sofa that's in there, that came from Greenland around about 1955, the sofa that Katie's sitting on now.

Katie the dog, yeah, naughty dog. OK, so here, um, and that's jumping, that's a huge that's OK, but, but going back to Terry's father, had he come up to Hereford and what was he doing? And what was his name again? John Reginald Hughes.

Heath, Hughes, Hughes, Hughes, sorry. Now, we have been told that it was Griffiths Hughes.

Uh, but his father didn't like having a double-barrelled surname, so he stopped the Griffiths, but I've never been able to find any proof of that.

So whether that's just, you know, Family tale or what have you.

And and he was involved somehow in the munitions and he was, yes, yes, and we don't know, so he's not in that photo that I brought, which is from inside the factory. This is, I think this is Somerset House, but oh, it is Somerset House. So we're looking at is, that is, where did I put, where's Dad? It'll be down here somewhere, won't it? Um, Tuesday, Tuesday. Oh, my eyesight's appalling. Is it right. He's in here somewhere.

Let me read you what it says, it says Ministry of Supply, Department of the Director General of Supply Services, Somerset House, CXDI Branch, May 1945.

CXDI, what does that mean? Don't know. I'll look that up. OK. Gosh, it's, there's I know he's in there somewhere, but I can't see it. Well maybe if I, at some point, I could copy this and we can.

Put it with the, the recording and so on.

There he is, there's Dad. Oh right, OK, so that's front row. Here we are, Monk House, is that, I think so. Front row, yeah, JR Hughes, John Reginald Hughes. So he's here at Somerset House 1945 in 194945, but he then came, was he, I don't what happened when he came.

Well, he obviously got a promotion. He was in charge of storing ammunition at Rotherworth's factory, and I know he became assistant superintendent because Midway House was actually the superintendent's house. Midway House, now Midway House, we've got a picture of it here on the Straight Mile.

So that's on the, is that on the left as you're going out of it's no longer exists, there's a great big block of flats there now. It's about 4 years ago. We're going past the half timbered cottage, aren't we? I don't know where the half timbered cottage is.

You come under. The superintendent's house, if you're coming out of Hereford, was on the right hand side and it was a black and white farmhouse, and that's gone.

And then you carry on.

And now is it before the main entrance or after the main? It's a horrible looking place now, great big block of flat.

I think it's still called Midway House. I've got a letter here somewhere, it tucked in somewhere.

Which has got the address on it, which sort of proves that Interesting that interesting as well that you call him Daddy. I call him were fond of him. No, I call him Dad. So mum and dad were, I mean my parents would be horrified if I called them. Mum and Dad were Terry's parents. My parents were always mummy and daddy. So you were very fond of Terry.

I was, I, I loved him. I really loved him. What was his wife called? Kathleen, and she was called Kitty. So he and Kitty had come up here and they ended up in the superintendent's house, sorry, the It was the superintendent's house, but he was the assistant superintendent, yeah, and he, so he, I wonder what his work involved. Did he talk about it? No, no, he never did, but Terry did. He, because Terry said when he was in Merthyr Tydfil. There was a lot of ammunition being Stored in old coal mines and things like that, and there was a lot of bad feeling about it.

And so it was all being taken through the town and Dad put Terry on top of all the ammunition to prove how safe it was, yeah. So Terry apparently sat on top of the ammunition while it was all being trundled through a lorry lorry loads of ammunition all being trundled through Merthyr Tydfil. So a lot of Terry was actually evacuated to Merthyr Tydfil. So anyway, he was sitting on top of all this ammunition while it was being stored, presumably, but he stored it all over the place, and they also stored it in stately homes on the on the. Thought of the understanding that Hitler wanted to keep the stately homes and wouldn't bomb them. Yeah, so for instance, I know the one on the Ledbury Road had ammunition in it.

Barrington Hall. No, no, sorry, it's, the one on the Ledbury Road, the in town. No, as you're going towards Ledbury between Hereford and Ledbury, great big house on the right hand side, uh, Foley, Foley House, Foley, Lady Emily Foley. I don't know, but. Yeah, I think, I think it was burnt down at one. Was it burnt down eventually? I think it might have been. And there was talk about ammunition being stored at US Harold. It was, yeah, yeah, and you know those huge caves where they've now got, um, they're open to the public and they've got mammoths and dinosaurs and everything there. Is this the Forest of Dean? Yeah, yeah, they're all stored stored there in those caves, and Dad used to sleep in those caves. Um, and where, I think there was some store at Podryli somewhere.

Yes, that would be the US Har one, that's in Pontryli, yes.

I think that we've seen a photo of some women unpacking it, and it actually was a dangerous thing taking it apart. She, he, he was, sorry to interrupt, he, he was then still doing this at the end of the war, when, when the war finished because there were tonnes of munitions. Married in 1956 and Dad had only just retired because he'd had a heart attack. So he was definitely there in 1954, 1955, definitely. How interesting. So he was still, they were still having to deal with the munitions that were made at the factory. Yeah, yeah. So, I should, I can almost say definitely he was there 1953, 1954, 1955.

He was probably there before, but I can't swear to it. Because I saw, I, but I'd written it in 1947, so I've written that, so it may be wrong in one of these pictures here. Let's have a look.

Now you mentioned Terry and obviously you mentioned Terry and there's there's Dad on the back of.

He's on a horse.

Yeah, yeah, there's Dad. That's Terry, that's Midway House.

There's Mum and Dad outside Midway House, that's Midway House, um. That's Midway House.

That's Midway House. That's Ricky, the dog, more Midway House.

Now I wrote this in, so the dates might not be right. And do you, do you say at one at some point if you got married in '56, had you scandalously run away? Yeah, we had, yeah, to where? Uh, Scotland.

Gretna Green? No, no, no.

The thing was, mummy was ill and I went to renew the, I what would would it be the, would I be going to the post office to renew. You have to renew it all the time, tax disc or something or other.

Anyway, uh, she said, and it was in mummy's name because daddy couldn't drive and um and of course mummy was too ill to drive, so I went to renew it and and she said oh this is in your mother's name. I said well she can't drive, just stick it in my name, and they did. So the car was put in, it never occurred to me.

I didn't worry about insurance or anything like that. So the car was put in my name. And so when we ran away, we took the car.

But we left it at Worcester.

So that, my father had rung up the police to say that Terry had stolen the car. So the police were out looking for us, this stolen car, but by that time we'd left it at the garage at Worcester, and I telephoned my brother to say where I'd left the car, and we by then we were on a train to Scotland and we deliberately went to Edinburgh because we knew they'd be waiting for us at Gretna Green, which they were apparently.

Elizabeth. So did you get married in Edinburgh? Yes, we did.

Um, no regrets afterwards.

No, no, we were married 54 years. What a wonderful story.

What did who you call Dad, uh, think of all that? In other words, well, because we went when we first ran away, we went straight to Terry's parents' house, and Terry's mother tried to persuade us not to go away, and Dad just sat there smiling. And he didn't try to persuade us one way or another, he just said you ought to think about it seriously, blah blah blah, um.

And uh yeah so and when you came back as Mr.

and Mrs. did they were presumably they accepted you with open arms.

Mum and dad did, and dad, yeah, mum and dad did and your father? No, he wouldn't speak to me. And in fact I was excommunicated officially. I used to have a certificate to say I was excommunicated, but I no longer have it. It isn't, that's a terribly difficult thing for somebody who's had a good Catholic upbringing to have to do. Uh, well, I mean to have to deal with, sorry. Well, actually, it wasn't that big a deal because when I was about 14 or 15, I refused to take communion at school because of consubstantiation. Do you know what that is? I have heard about it. My father was a clergyman, body, body of blood, soul and divinity, and I thought how revolting, eating someone. So I point blank refused to take communion.

It caused a whole hoo-ha and in fact the bishop came over. And I was lectured at, but I still said no, I'm not doing it, and I was going to be thrown out of school, but they thought they thought they might be able to sort of, you know, come around, yes, so I was allowed to stay at school.

But I know my par my parents were called over and the bishop came over and and the headmistress and goodness knows.

OK, and at that stage too, I refused to be called Gillian.

I said I wanted to be called Elizabeth. I must have been such a stroppy, pig-headed, revolting teenager. When you came back with Terry and then moved into what how you call Mum and Dad, no, we didn't move in with Mum and Dad.

Oh, you didn't. Where did you move to? Well, first of all, we had a room in a house in Whitecross Road. And actually if you go up Whitecross Road, I don't know the number, it's the only white Victorian house, it's there on the left or on the right as you're going out of town.

Uh, and it was terrible.

We thought it was wonderful. It's terrible.

Was Terry still working for the gas? Yeah, yeah, Terry went back to work for the gas people anyway, and then we moved to what we called our castle. And there used to be, there was a tram line, um, I, I, I never saw the tram, but there was a ticket office by, what was the name of the people that had the Jordan Jordan's, Jordan's boatyard, it was next door to Jordan's boatyard, and there was a tram line there and there was a little ticket office, a little.

Octagonal ticket office with a castellated roof, had a mud floor and it belonged to a friend of Terrace called Rupert Thompson.

When I say a friend of Terrace, I hated the man, I think the horrible, horrible man. We'll remember that we've got the tape running, but that's fine because we are allowed to have whatever views we're allowed to have.

Well, you might want to cut this bit, but he tried to have his wicked way with me. And then I refused, and he said if I refused he'd throw us out, which he did. I do remember you telling me the story, being very impressed.

Yes, so, um, yes, but I never told Terry because I, I was ashamed. I thought he think, gosh, he thinks I'm a tart, you know, I was ashamed. Yeah. Were you working by then? I tried to get a job, it was very, very difficult to get a job if you're a young married woman, almost impossible. And then I, I was offered a job as an usherette and it was 1 pound 10 shillings a week. And even then that was absolutely pitiful, so I didn't take it.

I did get a job in the coal office, but it was only a seasonal job. Winter.

Yes, and then I applied to Mac Fisheries, which used to be on the end of Broad Street on the left hand side. If you're facing the church, Mac Fisheries used to be there. And I was offered this job, it was 8 pounds a week.

I was delighted. And then when I went to to start the job, they said, oh you're a woman, you only get 4 pounds a week. So I told them what to do with that job. That's Fisheries.

Mac Fisheries. Do you remember Fishy Gardiner used to be down King Street. The Fishy Gardener was lovely to me. He was such a kind, lovely man. Let's say who and where he was. Oh, Fishy Gardener had a fish shop down King Street, and he was always kind and sweet and pleasant to me. He used to belong to the rowing club as well.

So he was a friend of Terrace.

And you, you, here we are sitting in your front room looking out over in the dining room, dining room, dining room, and we're looking over the, over the river, in some ways you've not moved very far. No, I suppose not, no. But when I lived in Hereford, I didn't like it. I thought it was horrible. There was no sea here. I've been brought up by the sea, I thought it was terrible. Who wants to, who wants to look at a river, you know, when you could look at the sea, yeah.

So, back to, back to Terry's fortunes and you're being booted out of, uh, major, supposedly major. Dutton's property, although I'm not sure if he was actually a genuine major.

Who's, who are you talking about? The gentleman who owned the property that you were booted out of. Oh no, he wasn't, he didn't have a title at all. It was just Rupert Thompson. He used to own Bastion Mews, but he did give himself a title. Not that I know of, yeah. Yes, indeed, I'm sure he didn't, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, I mean, he also lost the boats and he took over Jordan's boat.

Oh, did he? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, because Jordan was in a mental hospital. He was at, at I didn't. Oh, what's the, we used to call it the loony bin. Yes, um, St. Mary's. No, I don't know if it's Saint Mary's, what's the name of the town? Something loony bins. Oh, well, Gloucester? No, it began bins with be come to me, not Bodenham. It'll come to me at home, Lacey, but that was it.

It's all been converted into lovely buildings now.

Actually, as you go towards Leinster, before you go up the steep hill, uh, at some time before that, perhaps 1 mile or so, it's on the right hand side. So what's that part? Going to Leinster, oh, on the, the hill, Dinmore Hill. Oh, Berghill. Berghill.

It was Saint Mary's. Hmm, yes, that's right. It has a peculiar feel to it, even though there's all these lovely houses now. I always find it's a bit odd, um, OK, so crikey. How did Terry, so Terry had to support you, and when did you start a family and what was your, I think.

I think we were married almost 8 years before the children came along, 7 years at least, yeah, yeah.

And do you want to tell us who they are? Yeah, uh, Madeleine.

62, John 64, Pippa 66, Toby 68.

Spot on.

You have got a very good memory. OK. And when, so when did you start your family? So 8 years after you were married, Something like that, 7 or 8, yeah. You'd by then obviously you'd left the, the old ticket office on the, on the riverside, and we'd left Hereford as well. Oh, where did you go? Well, I went, I, when I was about 21. Oh yeah, Daddy thought I'd left Terry, and he said he would pay for a secretarial course for me in London.

So I went to London and I lived in London for a year at the secretarial college in Lancaster Gate.

I lived in Shepherd's Bush. And I used to walk from Shepherd's bush to Lancaster Gate every day. It was a lovely walk, yeah, but I used to bus back and I used to go to Hyde Park and walk along there, but, and I used to walk through Notting Hill Gate. This is nothing to do with anything really, but I used to meet this really nice man, always used to tip his cap to me, hat to me, had had always wore, I think it was a bowler hat, I can't remember now, or is it a brown, and what, what are those brown hats called rilby, yeah.

Always used to, and always really nice, and for some reason I thought he must be something to do with Daddy, I have no idea why I thought that. Anyway, and he used to always, he was going in the other direction towards Shepherd's bush.

I was going towards Ancaster Gate, but he always used to turn around and walk with me for a couple of 100 yards and buy me a milky bar.

Anyway, I later found out it was Jack Hawkins.

Yeah, I thought he was really, really old, and when I see him in pictures now, he was actually quite gorgeous.

I thought he was this lovely old man who buys me a milky bottle.

So then did you get um 100 words a minute and I was a star pupil.

I worked really, I really, really, really worked hard.

I could do 160 words a minute and I could type at 60, 60 words a minute, and I was offered a job as a Hansard writer. Oh good heavens, you've got to be top of top of the class.

It's quite interesting, you only do 3 minutes at a time. And there's always someone overlapping you.

So did you do that? No, I didn't. No, but you do 1.5 minutes and somebody else takes over, but prior to that somebody was also doing the other 1.5 minutes. So, and it's whatever you've written down is law, you know, what it cannot be altered because you automatically do it. So you can't alter it. You can't say, oh no, I didn't say that, you did say that I've written it down because it's Hans. Yeah, well, no, because you've written it down in shorthand and you wouldn't be writing something down that wasn't actually being spoken. Yeah, but you didn't, you didn't do.

No, I didn't because I was offered a job. To teach shorthand and typing at a secretarial college in Oxford. Oh. And Terry was working in Hereford and we were seeing each other not very often at the weekends because I really did work really, really hard, so I used to say, sorry, I've got homework to do, you know, yeah, yeah.

So, so we got back together. Uh, so I was offered this job in Oxford, so, uh, Terry, uh, managed to land a job in, in, in Oxford, a gas fitter's job in Oxford, so we moved to Oxford, which I loved.

Whereabouts were you in Oxford? Well, we were in a rented flat in Richmond Street. People called the Dunns.

He was a barrister, but he'd given up doing that and he was buying property and making them into flats. I can't remember his Christian name.

Had a very nice wife, and they were a lovely couple, they really were. And we had this tiny little flat at the top of, um, top of this house, which I thought it was wonderful, terrible when I look back at it. So, so now we're into about the 60s and let me think, and you're starting your family let me think, I'm 21, 37.

57.

No, it was 1957 or 1958.

No, no, not, not no family there, 1957 it would be.

Right, so we lived in this lovely little house and then. Uh, we bought a house in Waltonwell Road. And there's a tale to that if you want to hear it.

I do. The house belonged to Saint John's and it was enormously exorbitantly priced at £1500. It was a massive great Victorian terraced house, huge, and it's got written in stone and it's still there, Barrington above it. And Barrington's were a big family in Oxford. In fact, he was the Bishop of Oxford. So it must have been something to do with them.

Anyway, um, I, I sold this house for sale, so I biked down on my bike.

I think I was wearing shorts at the time and said I wanted to buy this house and I was sort of disdainedly dismissed. So I was furious, so I biked down to Barclays Bank and I went in and I saw the bank manager sitting behind the counter.

And so I just marched around the counter, which you wouldn't be able to do now, and I grabbed hold of this manager and I said, they won't take any notice of me, please will you come and tell them that I want to buy the house because you'll lend me the money, won't you? So I grabbed his hand and we marched up the high hand in hand.

Went into the estate agent and oh Mr.

so and so, you know, and we got the house and he lent us some money and mom and dad lent us £600 as well. So we bought the house and about 20 years ago it was sold for 2 million quid.

At some point you come back to Hereford.

Uh, no, no, where do we go from there? Right, so, uh, so I, I, I'm working at the, the Marlborough, it's directly opposite Brasners. Uh, and I loved it.

I really, really loved. I'm teaching shorthand and typing and accounts and.

The accounts I was about one chapter in front of the class and then they said they wanted to have RSA 2 accounts.

So again I was one chapter in front of the class, but I had the reputation of being a brilliant bookkeeping teacher because I fell into all the traps that the children would fall into, so I was able to explain very clearly, you know how you get out of these traps. A big mistake to learn accounts.

Anyway, um. Then I moved to the Oxford and County secretarial.

I was paid £8 a week. And then the Oxford and County Secretarial College offered me 16 pounds a week.

So I moved there.

And for about probably, I probably worked there for about 18 months and then Madeleine came on the way.

So we started Madeleine.

And that was it for your working for a while, for a while, yeah, for a while, yeah, while the children were little.

Yeah.

So while the children were little, I taught at night school.

When the children were little to get some, you know, get a bit of cash in because you're always so hard up.

It was hard as well. It was very, very hard up, yeah. I mean just being, just your gender meant that everything was sort of against you, stuck like as you say with the bank manager. The worst example of that is donkeys years later and it would be. 70s, I think, early 70s.

I went for, by this time I, I've got, you know, lots of certificates and things, teaching certificates. I don't think I got my MA by then, but I'd had lots of qualifications by then. And I was also teaching at A level economics by then so I was at least 2 chapters in front. Um, but I went for an interview for Couriers for the whole of Birmingham, big job, and I did a bloody brilliant interview.

I was so damn pleased with myself, I thought it was in the bag. Anyway, I, because I've been on other interviews and thought oh that's bloody awful, I'm not going to get that job, blah blah blah.

Anyway, got home and I didn't get the job. So I was absolutely astonished, so I rang up and said please could you tell me what I need to do if by any chance the job comes up again, uh, because I was surprised because I thought I did a good interview.

And they said, well yes, you did a brilliant interview, we were very impressed and. You know, you sounded absolutely fantastic. I said well why didn't I get the job? They said 1, you're female, 2, you're middle class, 3, you're middle aged, uh, 4, you're white, 5, you've got an Oxford accent, 6, you're not black, and 7, you're not male. Oh we wouldn't dare say that nowadays we certainly wouldn't, yeah, yeah.

Good heavens. You mentioned AMA and I'm watching.

Oh, that's gone off, has it? Oh, what a shame. Wow, that's terrible. It must, it's run out. Oh yes, it's gone off because it's, what time does it run out? I don't know, but I've got the other one going as well. Yeah.

I mean you're jumping enormous gaps.

Yes, well, actually, it's also. Do you want to come back again? I do.

Well, we haven't been up in the roof, have we? We haven't.

I, I was a bit scared about going up into the roof. Well, it's a good job we haven't because poor Miriam, we'd have to be so quiet. OK, that fortunately, the phone is still recording us. Oh good, good, good. So I'm just going to round this off with you mentioned an MA. Oh, that's not for donkey's years later, so that that's jumping too far ahead. So how did you end up here in, in this lovely place overlooking. Well, Terry and I sold our house. In Warwickshire because of the motorway.

Oh yes, so you went from Oxfordshire to Warwickshire. Uh, no, we went from Oxfordshire to Solihull, which is another hideous place. It's, we lived on a very nice estate with various people. I hated it, absolutely bloody hated it, you know, coffee mornings and, and nice children, you know, and, and, uh. Oh, I loathed it, absolutely loathed it.

It was like a square peg in a round hole or the other way around. Um And uh so you went from there then one day it was, this was the last straw, and I again I'm jumping the gun.

I've given the children the the old prom to make a go-kart out of it. And there were the older children, Toby was in the garden leaping up and down in raged because he couldn't get out. They were going up and down the road in this go-kart, and my neighbour came around to say, to complain about the children being in the go-kart, and she said, it's not even a proper go-kart.

So anyway, I was so bloody angry.

I went down to, we were 1 mile and a half mile from the town, put all the children in the pram, went down to, uh, sorry Hull and put the house on the market, and Terry came home and said, Have you done anything interesting today? I said, well, I've put the house on the market.

And he went, 00, all right. Wonderful.

Uh, OK, we're gonna leave it there.

I'm gonna turn this off now.