Open Writing

Having found some old diaries of 1974 and 1975, and harking back to 1974, when during the miners’ strikes we had the three-day week to save power, there were several bombs set off in January in London’s Earls Court Boat Show and at Madame Tussaud’s, but no one was hurt.
Tanks and armed soldiers were placed at Heathrow to guard against a possible I.R.A. terrorist threat, and later on in May at the airport there was a car bomb.
After the Christmas break, Les had been working all day in a freezing office, and by January had developed a very bad attack of ‘flu, keeping him off work for two weeks.
There was a demonstration about London’s homeless with an occupation of the 18-storey Centre Point building near Tottenham Court Road.

At the end of January there were letter bombs in Chelsea, and train drivers were threatening strikes. In February an I.R.A. bomb exploded in the boot of a coach returning soldiers to Catterick Camp, killing eleven men.

At the start of 1974 my weekly shopping bill in Sainsburys came to around £6.75 whereas previously it had been in the region of £3. A large loaf was 14p, and milk was 15 pence a pint. Petrol had gone up to 50 pence a gallon. A first class stamp cost 4p.

That spring we bought a Black and Decker lawn-mower from Woolworths for £18.50, and I bought three summer dresses at C. & A. for £11.40 – (£3.80 each). A bra was £1.25.

Our daughter Cathy had never lacked for boy friends since her Art College days. She had been working for Ealing libraries and living in a South Ealing flat, but by now was working for the borough of Harrow Library’s Housebound Readers’ Service, where the staff canteen served midday meals for 12p, as I discovered when I went out with her on her rounds one August day. I was employed at Kingsway College for term-time only. Her friend Judith was Librarian-in-charge of the Housebound Service, and when she married in 1974 Cathy was there, and thirty-five years later they have remained friends.

While at Ealing Cathy had met Geoff Parr who was in charge of Ealing Central Library, and later that year they became engaged, and began house-hunting.

In addition to our jobs and all the housework I needed to do in the evenings and at weekends, and with Les on the D.I.Y. front, painting and decorating and double-glazing windows and building cupboards, I was attending a Health Education course held in a classroom at the London School of Tropical Medicine on Tuesday evenings, where we had several lectures on the benefits of relaxing properly. At the same time I was going to the South Bank Polytechnic on Weds afternoons on a 30 week course for Applied Psychology, while Les was attending the City Literary Institute on Weds. evenings to learn Dutch.

Films we saw that year included ‘Sleuth’ with Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier and ‘The Sting’ with Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

Our son Val and his wife Anne Marie flew to Newfoundland on July 18th and shortly after began sending us tape-recordings describing their new life at the Grenfell Medical Mission Hospital in Port Saunders, where he was the doctor in charge and she was a nurse.

In July an I.R.A. bomb went off among the tourists at the Tower of London, resulting in seventeen badly injured including some who lost limbs, some were blinded.

We forgot the troubles and managed to have a wonderful summer holiday that year. Starting with a week at Exmouth in South Devon, we then drove north to the Somerset coast and stayed at Minehead. We then drove round to the Severn bridge, crossing into Wales to go on to Swansea and the Gower coast.
Ending the holiday we returned over the Severn bridge and went on to the Forest of Dean where we stayed in the Speech House, formerly the headquarters and Meeting House of the Forest Verderers and Foresters.
At each location we had taken the advantage of having the car to visit many places of beauty and history that we had heard about earlier in our lives, like the long and wide beach of Rhossili Bay, made famous by Dylan Thomas in his story ‘Extraordinary Little Cough’.

We heard the news that Cyprus had been invaded by Turkey. By September this caused an influx of Greek Cypriots wanting to come to Kingsway College.

In early October an I.R.A. bomb was set off in a Surrey pub where fifty were injured and four killed. Later on bombs went off in London, Harrow and Birmingham with no casualties.
Petrol had gone up to 64p and went up again to 75p by Christmas.

Quite often we went to London’s Aldwych Theatre to see R.S.C. productions including Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ and Tom Stoppard’s ‘Travesties’. The Old Vic was another favourite venue, where we saw Arnold Wesker’s ‘Roots’ among other things, and we were often accompanied by John Alden (our local home beat policeman) and his wife Jean.

We had a sugar shortage and Anne Marie’s mother sent us some from her home in Belgium. By January 1975 the price of sugar was to go up to 9p for a 2lb bag – an increase of 200%.
At November’s end a series of I.R.A. bombs in Birmingham caused the death of nineteen. Bombs were ‘posted’ in letterboxes, which meant they were sealed off and mail had to be handed in over the Post Office counter.

To save further power the government reduced the speed limit to 50.m.p.h. and no shop lighting was allowed.

At Christmas 1974 both my mother and Leslie’s mother stayed with us, and on Boxing Day we took them up to the Festival Hall on London’s South Bank to see a production of ‘The Nutcracker’ ballet. This was a real tonic to us all after the worrying times that year.

Returning to work at Kingsway College in January 1975 I found the price of a three monthly season ticket from Perivale to Kings Cross had gone up to £21.75 and a further increase was to come by March to £30.40. Compared to today’s fares it was minimal.