It's been a while since I had a chance to update the Davey family story. But here we are again, sitting with a cold drink and able to look through some of the notes I made a few months ago.
One of the first things I remember after moving to Manchester was dad getting ill. I don't remember exactly when it was as I was still little, so it could have been as early as 1976, but I think it was more likely the following couple of years. (Gareth )I think it was ’78 or ’79.. I was defo at St Paul’s. He’d have been 36/37 (Chris )agreed.
Dad was only in his mid to late thirties. I am hoping Gareth and Chris may know a little more detail. Dad had gotten ill quite quickly and I remember him spending a lot of time in bed and lots of visits from the doctor. He was diagnosed with Meningitis (Gareth he had Shingles at the same time which made it worse) and really was very ill. He spent quite a few weeks holed up in the back (Gareth) front bedroom at home as we went on with our normal lives, albeit whilst being quieter around the house so as not to disturb him.
(Gareth) He
did have his mucky mags to keep him company lol
He did get better but hardly drank any alcohol anymore after the illness and there were times when dad would have to step back from situations and go and have some time by himself as he would get quite stressed and suffered from headaches. (Chris) He used to take distalgesic tablets for the headaches which can make you very sleepy Sometimes you could actually see the veins in his forehead almost popping out. I remember one time in particular when on holiday, dad got very stressed with us kids, I think it was something to do with eating lunch and being in wet swimming trunks, (Gareth) Mum had asked how many poached eggs I wanted and because I asked for x3 he threw a massive wobbler and stormed out but dad lost his temper and drove off in the car. He came back a short while later and when I think about it now, I can remember how upset he actually was. I think he was as upset with himself as he was with us by this point. He just struggled sometimes to deal with situations like this. (Gareth) He said he’d driven at a telegraph pole to commit suicide but stopped ‘Just in time’ yeah right ... dramatic Dad-anory right there 😊
We are all thankful though that he survived the Meningitis/Shingles and had another 35 years with mum and us after getting better.
One of the things we did quite a lot of was going on Holiday. A year or two after arriving in Manchester mum and dad bought a 'Lunar Moonlight' caravan. I recall dad wanting to call it 'The Loony Van' and there was even talk about having that written in big letters on the front - Luckily it never happened!
The caravan cost £1000, which doesn't sound like much, but as it was only a couple of years after mum and dad had paid £9000 for the house it was a significant outlay. Parking and getting the caravan out of the garden became a family event. The caravan was parked between the garage and kitchen, leaving just a few feet to walk between. (Gareth) We had to move the shed as it was where the caravan was to be parked when it first arrived. But the driveway and gates were in front of the garage, so the caravan was pulled out forwards, then swung at an angle, passing within millimetres of the side of the garage and the kitchen, before being swung around again to sit straight in the driveway. The back gates were removed from their hinges and everyone took a corner of the van and slowly it inched out to be hooked up to the car which was parked on Winchester Road.
Here's a photo of the van in its later days, Chris sat on top giving it a clean and Gareth in the cool Sunglasses at the back. You can see it has been pulled forward from beside the garage and the gates we removed every time we took it out are in the photo too
The caravan was a 5 berth, with two double beds - One where the dining table was and one was a converted sofa at the back. The back of the sofa pulled up and became a single bunk, above the sofa which had been converted to a double bed. There was, amazingly, room for a small sink, tiny gas-powered fridge, fireplace and a bathroom with the world's smallest handwashing sink and a travel toilet portapotty that had to be emptied about once a week and was only really used for emergencies and during the night. It didn't happen often but when anyone needed to poo in there, they had no real privacy. The door might have been closed, but you could hear and smell everything and sometimes even feel the caravan shaking!
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| Mum asleep on the main double bed - where the dining table normally was. It looks like a typical rainy day! |
The day before a holiday we would be given a drawer each from the 3 drawer cabinet and would fill it with our clothes for the holiday. Under the two double beds was storage which would be filled with everything we took away - clothes, toys, games, food, bedclothes and dishes. The floor space was left for bikes, and bigger items like the awning, maybe a spare tent, sun loungers deckchairs and once we even took Gareth's moped, drained of fuel and wheels removed so that it fitted inside the caravan! Mum and dad were really good at filling the caravan with everything we needed and lots of things we didn't!
This is Gareth on his moped on holiday after putting it back together after it travelled in the van! Gran and Aunty Brenda came along on this holiday by the looks of it as you can see them mellowing out!
Dad didn't want to sit in traffic all day on the way to a holiday, so the night before we went away was really exciting. Everything would be packed and we would head to bed early, knowing we would be woken up to go on holiday really early the next morning.
Sometimes, we would be up at 4am and after a cup of tea whilst the last items were packed, the caravan would be hooked up to the car and we would be on the road before 6. A holiday in Scarborough, Filey, Skegness or Sutton on Sea would take between 4 and 5 hours to drive to with the caravan, and so around 7.30 or 8am we would routinely pullover on a layby (Gareth) always at the same place near Pontefract in between Ferrybridge Power Station and where about 5 train lines converged at Knottingley so he could watch the trains. and mum and dad would take a break to make Bacon Butties and another cup of tea, as well as Rascal, getting time for a run about and a pee. This routinely marked the start of our summer holidays and just thinking about this brings back so many great happy memories.
When Gareth was older and able to he would help dad with the driving too (Gareth help my arse… I had to drive every bloody mile once I'd passed my test !!) - I remember once Gareth aged about 17, driving the car and caravan through the tight turns in the town of Louth in Lincolnshire whilst dad sat and helped with directions. (Gareth) I was always a better driver than him lol
This is a photo of a Bacon Butty stop!
We would normally have a two-week holiday during the School summer holidays and most of these were taken on the east coast. We revisited a great Caravan club site in Sutton on Sea for at least 2 or 3 years. Filey and Scarborough were also great destinations, sometimes with Catherine and Nan or Brenda and Gran joining us for a week by hiring one of the semi-permanent larger caravans on the same campsite.
We all loved the family holidays - days spent wanking (Gareth) NOT ME!! (Chris) NOR ME – I Never wanked in the country (Rick) - Haahaa yeah this was a spelling error that just had to be left in) WALKING in the countryside and playing cricket on the beach at Sandilands as the tide came in. Sometimes stopping in a pub beer garden while mum and dad had a small beer each and we would sometimes be lucky enough to get a cider!
We played with other kids on the campsites, we played as brothers (Chris) and fought- ha ha too and in the evenings we would play as a family. Sometimes board games or more often card games. I am sure we played a lot of Whist, although I admit I have never played it since. But the memories of it are all so good.
Here's me and mum playing a game in the van.
In the caravan, we also had a small black and white TV. Dad had wired up a car battery for power and with the huge TV aerial we took away with us, we could sometimes sit back and watch a bit of TV together before bed. Quite often this ran down the car/caravan battery and the picture on the TV screen would actually shrink as the power got less and less until we were staring at just a small white dot and listening to the TV like it was a radio. The next day dad would haul the battery into the back of the car and it would be hooked up to charge while we had a day out - driving to charge the battery as much as driving to go somewhere different.
In the UK, the schools also have a week or two off at Christmas and the same around Easter, depending on when Easter falls in the year. We never went away in winter, but at Easter, one of our favourite places was a campsite dad discovered in the Forest of Dean, just on the edge of the Welsh Border near Chepstow. (Gareth) It was a Civil Service Motoring Association Only Caravan Park called Whitemead Park near Coleford/Parkend (https://www.whitemead.co.uk/) This was a wonderful campsite on the edge of the forest, with rolling hills and lots of things to do including a swimming pool and playground.
I remember going swimming one chilly morning with dad, Gareth and Chris and dad actually breaking the thin layer of ice off the water in the pool. There were so many cool and interesting places to visit and see down there - from the Severn Bridge to lovely villages like Symonds Yat and all the wonderful trails and walks. We would love the fresh air down there and we visited a number of times. (Gareth) There was also a Nuns retirement house down there near Whitchurch where we used to visit Sister Emelda, who used to live a little way along Moss Vale Road. lol
Sometimes we would even go away for a weekend or a 3 or 4-day trip closer to home. One place we would visit was a small site called 'Gravestones Farm'. It took a couple of trips there and a couple of games of cricket to realise it was called Gravestones Farm because we were actually pitching the caravan in what was on the old Graveyard!
This was near the small village of Pickmere - a small lake and village just half an hour away from home - Yep, you really don't need to go far to have a good holiday! At the time Pickmere, the lake had a small fun fair at one end with a little old-fashioned arcade, dodgem cars, a couple of kids rides and small motorboats that you could hire and drive around the lake, We had some wonderful days down on and near that lake when we were kids.
One of my favourite places to go for a few days was Southport. It used to be a lovely little seaside town with the flattest largest beach you could ever imagine and again only an hour's drive from home! It's not nice clean sand though, it's mainly squidgy brown mud and quite dangerous when the tide comes in.
But staying in a little caravan site by the beach and visiting the little arcades and cafes with mum and dad and Gareth and Chris as well as nights in the caravan, often while the rain fell on the metal roof brings back some of the best memories I have of being a kid. (Chris we saw a massive thunderstorm over Blackpool from the sandhills once, and got flooded out the next day),
We were really lucky that we all got on pretty well and we were given time to play and discover things by ourselves as well as being able to go away so often for what were really cheap holidays. I would guess that in the 10 years or so between getting the Caravan and when I joined the army in 1987, we probably went away in it at least 25 times, maybe more!
Here's mum outside the caravan in the rain in Southport. You can see the big TV aerial we used to take with us. On this holiday Rascal found a ten-pound note whilst running crazily on the beach and dad hung it out to dry - It got nicked off the line!! (Gareth) That’s the closest I've ever been to Liverpool lol
We did a lot of other things during the holidays too - Playing with mates obviously and sitting at home watching the crap Children's TV that ran from about 9am to noon every day.
One of the cool things we did get to do during the school holidays, was going to work with dad every now and then. Sometimes we would just hang around in his office and go through the old cabinets of photos that were taken when new roads were built so that the surveyors had photographic proof of where checkpoints or trig points were located. We always used to dig out the photos of Norwich Road and the house that Grand and Aunty Brenda lived in. It was really interesting to see the old photos of it and the surrounding areas.
Dad would often go out of the office and do some actual surveying - finding and checking trig points or making changes to maps when roads were widened or rerouted. One of my favourite days out with dad was when we went to St Margaret's Church just outside Altrincham in Cheshire. For some reason, dad had to get onto the church tower roof (Gareth) often there was trigonometry points up there with a known height and position the public couldn’t play with so you could see and therefore map the local area-- so he took me up with him. I think I was probably about 11 or 12 and I loved being up there - so high, but also somewhere where you aren't really supposed to be able to go. It was so exciting and I felt sorry for normal people with normal jobs, who just spent their days sitting at desks.
Dad had a cool job and got to go to all kinds of places you don't normally get to! This is the church we climbed on top of as it looks now -
I think mum and dad really enjoyed their few years living back in Manchester. We were growing up and they had mum and dad's family all living close by. We often went to Nan's flat on the 9th floor of Empress Court. Nan had a budgie called Joey - Which I am sure was 'replaced' a number of times over the years. Catherine still lived with Nan when we moved to Manchester but by the time I left to join the army, Catherine had married Andrew (in 1986) and moved out to a house in Stretford where they still live! We spent lots of time at Aunties' and Uncles' houses and visiting friends that dad worked with or who they knew from some other place.
We even had a magician Uncle called Uncle Bunny - He wasn't really an uncle and I have no idea where mum and dad knew him and his family from, (Gareth) One of the neighbours in Skegness used to run a B and B in their house for talent that was playing in the Embassy or Caravan parks to stay in. Dad met Bunny through them., but for a couple of years at least we saw him and his wife and kid a number of times! They were good times.
(Gareth) I remember Bunny from when we lived in Skegness (we left in ’73) and then he lived in Clyde Rd in Chorlton / Didsbury for a while when we first moved to Manchester. He went to live in the West Indies after marrying Nikki (his glamorous assistant) in the early 80s. The photo below is from when he came back to visit.
He was on a few tv shows too… Bunny Neill, here's a webpage all about him! Article - Bunny Neill (magicweek.co.uk)
Dad was always pottering with something - I have lost count of the times he decorated the house, scraping paint off the doors or putting up wallpaper. The garage was full of spare bits of cars he had owned and he was always playing with whatever car we had - The Hunter, the Cortina (Gareth Bought off my school teacher Mr Cunningham) or later the Mini Metro.
Then when we got old enough to have cars he would show us how to fix and maintain them too. If I remember right he once towed Chris in a car back from somewhere on the south coast - maybe Chris can elaborate on that story? (Gareth) He towed ‘our’ Polo back with me Tracey and Michael in once from Corley Services near Coventry after my camshaft went. (I fixed it obviously lol )
(Chris) He never towed me – but when I wrote my mini off he bought me a Morris minor and I went to meet him in Southampton to collect it – staying at Gareth’s in Windsor on the way – we also rebuilt the mini in skeg when the engine mounts failed
The garage at home was small and full of stuff - Dad would reverse the car in and then have to clamber over the passenger seat to get out of the passenger door, but that was all just normal to dad and to us when we were kids. This was the inside of the garage - It's remarkable how much stuff dad got in there and it's cool how similar my garage looks today at my house in Winnipeg!
One last thing I want to mention in this post is the most controversial and annoying thing that ever happened to our little family - New Bikes.
Sometime around 1978 or 1979, mum and dad bought us all new bikes. But they didn't know how much hassle it would cause in the next 40 years - we still argue about it today!
Chris was given a wonderfully cool, tough-looking boys' bike - a bright orange Commando - what could be wrong with that - A COMMANDO - It sounds and looks so cool. (Chris)– it still hurts doesn’t it .. ha ha ha (Rick and Gareth) yeah it does Chris! haha)
But for reasons, we will never determine Gareth and I were not so lucky. At least my new bike was gold - even though it was a Raleigh 18 - essentially a girl's bike complete with a little shopping basket holder on the back.
Gareth had it even rougher - as the oldest kid, he was given a Blue Raleigh 14 (Gareth, actually a Raleigh 20) - another girl's bike! We never discovered why these girls' bikes were chosen (Gareth )Mine was so that I could share it with Mum… I would use it for Papers then Mum would use it for work/shopping. or why Chris got the cool bike, and I am joking about it now, but we were really happy at the time to have brand new bikes (Gareth) I bloody WAS NOT!)- But it is just one of those mysteries that will never be solved - Why did Chris get a Commando!?!? (Chris) Wish I knew too.
(Gareth) I saved up and bought myself a 10-speed racer after Dad said no… hahaha
Here we are on that fateful day riding our new bikes!
Gareth's bike looked like this but was blue.
He eventually bought himself this bike to replace it.
Ricks Looked like this..
and this was Chris's Commando with twistgrip gear change and everything!
That's it for this update. I will finish at that controversial point for now. I expect there will be one or two more posts to complete the story. I have a load of unused photos to look through and a couple of pages of notes, so I hope to get the next one posted in a month or so!
Thanks as ever to Chris and Gareth for the help and notes!
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