An occasional series in which I share some significant events from my past.

Our first flat was on the first floor of a large Victorian house. It consisted of two adjacent rooms with high ceilings and no interconnecting door. We had to go out on to a landing shared with a couple of other tenants in order to get from living room to bedroom. We shared the bathroom with the other tenants on that landing and had a kitchenette not much bigger than a wardrobe at the far end of the landing.

Both rooms had gas fires. There was no central heating; that was uncommon even in new houses in the 1960s. It was not unusual, as autumn gave way to winter, for us to go to bed early in order to keep warm. We would take our transistor radio with us and listen to Radio Luxemburg. I will never forget the night when programmes were interrupted to announce that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

By Christmas we had found a much better apartment at the same weekly rent. The whole ground floor of an Edwardian semi-detached house, it was almost self-contained, consisting of living room, bedroom, good sized kitchen and bathroom. We shared an entrance and hallway with the tenants who lived on the two upper floors. As the foot of the stairs was close to the front door this was never a problem. By a remarkable coincidence, both houses had the same number – 17 – although on different roads.

We got on famously with the landlady of number 17 St. James’ Road. She allowed us to bring in our own furniture as we acquired bits and pieces in readiness for the house we knew we would have one day. She was putting together a portfolio of similar houses which she converted into flats and bedsits. Freda, on her day off from work, would sometimes accompany her on trips to auction houses in search of the crockery and small appliances with which she equipped each flat. We acquired several items in this way. Freda would also assist with painting and decorating, for which she was paid.

We got to know the other tenants fairly well, especially David and Marie who lived on the first floor. David was a semi-professional singer who also claimed to be an expert at paper hanging. The landlady agreed that our kitchen needed re-decorating and allowed us to choose wall paper which David hung for us. When he had finished, quite late one evening, we were more than a little concerned to see the many wrinkles and bubbles adorning his handiwork.

“Don’t worry,” was David’s parting comment. “The paper will stretch as it dries and it will look fine in the morning.”

Needless to say, it was not “fine in the morning”. I tried slitting the bubbles with a razor blade in order to get the paper to lie flat but that didn’t help; if anything it made things worse. The land lady agreed with us that it was not a satisfactory job. I didn’t think that, after that experience, she’d be willing to let me have a go but she did. So I set about stripping and re-papering the walls myself, which I managed without a single bubble or wrinkle.

With my apprenticeship completed I was faced with a choice: continue with evening classes to enhance my engineering qualification or settle for the adequate qualification already obtained by part-time and evening study. I still had ambitions to become a writer so embarked instead on a correspondence course. A colleague loaned me a portable typewriter. I remember a short story and a radio play that I produced during this period but I never completed the course. Life, as they say, got in the way.

About this time our local authority was building houses for sale and several colleagues had bought semi-detached houses under this scheme. It was our ambition to do the same, although we knew it would be a while before we would be able to afford to do so. Then a block of terraced houses became available to purchase. The story was that, because the back gardens of these houses adjoined the gardens of some large detached houses whose occupants had objected to the prospect of council tenants in such close proximity, the council had compromised by agreeing to sell them.

Being priced lower than the standard semi-detached houses they were within our budget and so, in August of 1964 we signed up to purchase one. It was completed, and we moved in, in March of 1965. We had a 100% mortgage at a little above the standard rate of interest charged by banks and building societies at the time, financed through the government’s Public Works Loan Board, and repayable over 30 years. At £5/5s a week, including rates*, it cost around 1/3 of my weekly income.

Meanwhile a small flat on the top floor of 17 St. James’ Road became vacant and the landlady allowed us to take advantage of the lower rent and move upstairs for the 5 months whilst we waited for our house to be completed. It was there, sometime in December, that our son was conceived.

The six months between moving in to our new house and the arrival of our child were occupied with all the little jobs that need doing even in a new house – erecting shelves, constructing additional cupboards, preparing the smallest bedroom for its role as nursery. And there were the gardens at front and back to cultivate and plant.

Men – even husbands – were not permitted in the delivery room in those days. And there was no way of determining the gender of a child before its birth. Freda went into hospital several days before the birth, believing the child to be over-due. She went into labour in the early hours of Saturday morning, 11^th September. When she was moved to the delivery room, at around noon, the midwife told me to go for a walk and not come back for an hour or two.

By the time I did get back it was to find my mother-in-law also waiting in the corridor for news. I think I probably offered her a cigarette and we both stood there nervously smoking until someone came out to tell me “You have a son, Mr Parker.”

Freda remained in hospital for a further 4 or 5 days at the end of which my colleagues decided we must go out to ‘wet the baby’s head’. We had formed the habit of weekly nights out at the local football supporters’ club where we would consume a couple of drinks and enjoy a friendly game of darts. This particular evening, because a celebration seemed in order, the number of drinks consumed was rather more than usual.

I’m fairly certain that someone had the clever idea to lace my beer with spirits. Whatever the reason, I remember waking around 6am the following morning to feel my sheets and pillow sticky with what I quickly realised was vomit. The colleague who had brought me home had agreed to come and collect me in time for work the following morning. Before that happened I had to get busy washing sheets and pillow cases so that they were clean by the time wife and son arrived home later that day. I learned my lesson from that event and have never since got quite that drunk.

Freda was 20, I not yet 24, and we were parents and home-owners. I can’t help thinking how very fortunate we were. Very few people of that age today can afford either to own a home or to rent privately.

*Rates were a UK local government tax based on the notional value of the property, payable by all householders, now superceded by the Council Tax.