To Be A Pilgrim

"My parents had married after a whirlwind romance over my fathers offal counter at Dutton’s the Butchers in Swindon and chilly nights waiting around the stage door of the Swindon Empire Theatre.  Where, apart from catching a severe bout of flu, my father also caught, wooed and married my mother, a dancer in the front row, second from the left in the local panto’ somehow enticing her from a potentially glittering and star studded life on the stage into a nest of domesticity.  My mother had originated from the depths of Wiltshire and by the most incredible succession of coincidences had got a job as one of Robin Hood’s Merry Men.  My father, an ordinary steady young chap, had been swept off his feet by the enchanting sight of her coming on stage for the panto’s grand finale, dressed in green tights, and immediately recognised her when she came into the shop the next day.  They moved to Oxford and I was born the following year.

Sadie, who was more like a sister to me than a cousin, and her mother Aunt Deb, my mother’s sister, had come to live with us after Uncle Fred had died,  I remember him vaguely as a kind man who used to give me piggy-back rides.  Aunt Deb was younger than mother but mother’s stronger personality often made Aunt Deb seem more like an older sister.  Before they came to live with us I was the centre of everything but their arrival brought a change in the pecking order, that I didn’t like, in fact there were times when I felt as if I was forgotten altogether – and not without cause!"