I liked the house at Scapegoat Hill. I had lots of friends my own age, and the neighbours were very good to Mum and me during the war. I would say that from the dozen or so houses I have lived in, this and my first house after John I got married are my favourites. Dad returned home after his demob in 1946. I was four years old and didn’t know who he was nor why he was staying in our house.
There were quite a few lads and girls meeting up at Scape and playing games like tin can squash, skipping and hoola hoop, which left me with a lovely slim waist. When I went to grammar school I played tennis, netball and rounders, which I liked, but we also played hockey which I didn’t like.The hockey stick and the hard ball were always wrapping my ankles. I didn’t like running games – I wasn’t built for running – and I couldn’t climb a rope or stand on my hands against a wall nor keep my balance on the beam. Most of all I hated getting undressed in front of everybody.
A new house and a TV to be proud of
However, when we moved to 76, Longfield Avenue, Golcar, I didn’t have friends to meet up with and lost that interaction that comes with growing up in a mixed gang, which probably made me very naive. On the bright side, we thought the house in Golcar was a palace: hot and cold running water, inside toilet and bathroom, a living room and sitting room, although the sitting room was only to be used on special occasions not just Sundays. I was 12 years old when we moved into that house. On my 14th birthday (1956) Dad bought us our first television, a 14-inch black and white Stella. We were so proud that it was two inches bigger than Uncle Frank’s (Mum’s brother).
About three years previously we had watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth at Uncle Philip’s house at Paddock, just up the road from Granddad and Grandma Norcliffe’s. The television was a tall free-standing one with only a 12-inch black and white screen. Their sitting room was crammed with people because not many homes had a TV.
School is left behind and job success follows
I did very well for the first year at school at Royds Hall but after that I hated it and left at 15. The teaching methods just didn’t seem to fit in with my needs. There was one exam in my final year when I got 3 out of 100 in maths, and yet I eventually went on to be the chief wages clerk at Brook Motors, so something must have gone wrong, or right. I remember that we used to buy French buns from the tuck shop during our break.
Mum got me a job at RL Shaw, the local photographic printers at Town End, Golcar. I enjoyed that but as I was getting involved with paperwork and office work, I decided to look for an office job. It was great growing up in the 50s, as jobs were easy to come by. If you got fed up with one job you could give your notice and find another the following week. I somehow got to know about a job at Hirst and Mallinson’s mill which set me on as receptionist and sent me to technical college for shorthand and typing, so I got some qualifications. Another plus was that it was less smelly than Shaw’s photography.
A blind date with a future husband
On my 15th birthday on Friday 8 March 1957, I didn’t meet up with my friend Marjorie to go roller skating at the Albany Hall as we normally did. I must have decided to celebrate my birthday a different way. But Marjorie did go skating and met Alan Vautry a friend of John’s, and Alan asked her out to the Clough Chapel social evening the following Saturday. She said, “I can’t, because I’m going out with mi friend Rhondda,” and he said, “Well, bring her with ya – I’ll find a partner”.
So we went along and Alan introduced me to John on a blind date. The first impression of John was to be thankful that he wore glasses, as I did, too. When I was 14, my form teacher stood me up in front of my classmates and said, “Girls who wear glasses don’t get passes,” which I took to heart. The fact that John’s glasses were like thick bottle bottoms didn’t seem to faze me at all. So I was 15 and one week when I met John Weatherby, my future husband, from whom I received my first grown-up kiss. I remember it well.
John has faced a lifelong battle to keep his sight. He was born in 1940 and wore glasses from the age of three. His lenses and frames came from Germany during the war via Switzerland, and were made by Zeiss lenses who are still going today. They used to take six months to arrive. Anyway, as I said, I wasn’t at all put off.
Teenage anxieties and betrayals
John’s sister Joyce and I were bothered about having big boobs, but John’s brother Robert said, “Throw your shoulders back and stick your chest out and show off your assets”. I wouldn’t wear a bra; I was really odd about it. It was a combination of the lads at school catcalling me about my breasts wobbling up and down and my mum that eventually persuaded me to wear a bra. I think it was because I didn’t want to grow up.
I left Royds Hall in the Easter of that year but in April I went with the school to Germany and visited a pen friend named Christa at an equivalent grammar school in Sinsheim. I met a boy there named Jürgen Müller, who was very handsome. He used to sit with me on the bus with his arm round me and hold hands while we were looking at sights and scenery. A reciprocal trip was arranged for the following August but I was working then and not at school so I couldn’t have time off work to be with Christa. She met my cousin David McInnes, who is a year or so older than me and lived on the same estate, and he looked after her for a day or two. But then I got styes around my eyes which grew so much my boss said not to come into work.
When they were coming to us from Germany, I thought, “Oh! Jürgen”. I said, “John I’m finishing with ya because Jürgen’s coming over”. He stayed with Mum’s cousin Graham Boothroyd down Golcar Mill Lane. We were all set up to meet at the first party at my friend Margery Hepworth’s house. She lived down Yew Green Road, Lockwood, and we were in the same class at school.
We had quite a few parties those two weeks they were here. When Jürgen turned up to one of these, he was hand in hand with another girl and I sobbed my heart out. How embarrassing. So I had left John and I also left Jürgen. The other girl was somebody who would give a lot more than I would … She was expelled from school for having relations in class with a boy during school time, but if that did really go on, I can honestly say that I never heard of it at the time. As I said, I was very naive.
Back together with John – and this time it sticks
Six months after finishing with John, I went to a social evening at Clough Head Chapel, and John Willis and David Bakon, who were friends of John Weatherby, came to this social evening and told me that John had had an accident while they were building a lift shaft. He had been knocked off the scaffolding and fell 40 feet. They were sure he’d like to see me, and I thought, do I, don’t I.
I talked to my friend Carol Hirst whose sister became my brother’s wife many years later. I first met Carol when I was working at RL Shaw’s, and she also came with me to Hirst and Mallinson. She was on the next desk to me in the same finishing room we became good friends. I asked Carol if she would you go with me to see John and she said yes.
We knocked on the door at Flathouse, Linthwaite and asked if John was in. We were told he was down at Linthwaite Methodist Chapel, so we went down there, and found him still on his crutches.
John and I got back together again and continued courting until we were married on 9 December 1961, at St. John’s Church, Golcar. I was 19 years old and John was 21.
It’s amazing how things work out sometimes.
