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Average Man
Chapter 2 - Family
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My Father

My father, Alfred William Johnson, was born on August 4th, 1910, in Hackney, East London, England.  He was known as Alf to everyone else, but to me was always Dad.   He was not well educated, having left school at 14, but he was certainly  smart.   Not only mentally, but also in his appearance.  A rare photograph of him around the age of 20 shows him with a group of friends, where he is the one sporting a neat Ronald Coleman moustache and wearing a natty jacket with a handkerchief in its top pocket.  This for a lad from East End Hackney in London UK, in the 30s!  He was the eldest boy in a family containing two other brothers and five sisters - in age sequence: Rosie, Alfred, Doris, Elsie, Stanley, Dennis, Doris and Sarah.  His mother was Rosina, and his father was James Alfred.  I never learned much about James, only that he was a stoker - not in the engine room of a ship, but in the basement of a block of flats - and that he had died.   Rosina married again and had one son, Pat, with someone named Glynn, who also died, leaving Pat as a half-brother to the other eight children.

Apart from Dad - who had moved to Edmonton - and Doris and Sarah, when I was old enough to visit them, all the siblings lived within a stone's throw of Rosina's house in Bocking Street (later Essex Street) in London Fields, Hackney, which she and Pat shared with Elsie.  Elsie was married to Alf Reynolds, an ex-sailor who always seemed to be wearing just a vest rather than a shirt when we visited, but which enabled me to admire his tattoos.  They had children, Roger and Barbara.   Further down the street, lived sister Rose - married to Joe Chapman - along with her children, June, Joseph and Brenda.   Brenda was the subject of a little scandal in her teens, when she became pregnant out of wedlock, something that would not even raise an eyebrow nowadays, but at the time was the subject of many whispered conversations upon which I eavesdropped. 

Dennis - married to Patricia - lived in a flat nearby, and was rather a little dandy, taken to wearing brightly coloured waistcoats, and also there was Stan - married to Gladys - who fascinated me because he had a droopy left eyelid.  This was the result of his being buried for some time under rubble following a bombing at North Weald aerodrome during the war, and it gave him a slightly sinister and gangsterish appearance.  In my teens Dad would sometimes take us up to Petticoat Lane market on a Sunday morning, and often, after parking our car and walking through the streets to Brick Lane we would encounter Stan, standing on a corner with some object, such as a bicycle, which he was offering for sale.   After going round the stalls and admiring the sales patter of marketeers selling wares such as crockery and fabrics, or the latest gadgets, children would enjoy some Sarsparilla, while our parents sampled Tubby Isaac's jellied eels.   On our way back to the car, we would probably encounter Stan again, this time holding a different object, such as a fishing rod, having already done a good deal on the bicycle.  Another sister was Doris - married to Alfred Weedon, with children Kenneth and Douglas - who lived in Hornsey, up the road from Turnpike Lane tube station.  Finally there was Sarah - married to Chris Someton (?) - who seemed to be something of the black sheep (ewe?) of the clan, and who was apparently only rarely in contact with the rest of the family.

After leaving school early, Dad worked for a while at a cabinetmakers shop, but then got a job at Billingsgate as a box boy, with the Forbes Stuart company, which had the third shop from the front entrance on the right hand side of the market building.  Being the smart lad he was, he soon got to be a salesman, and over the years worked his way up to chief salesman and finally became a director.  I sometimes visited the market on a Saturday morning, and was soon impressed by the deals he made on nothing more than a handshake, and saw how highly he was regarded by the other people in the market as being Straight as a die.  There was a cold cabinet in the shop in which he would often allow items to be stored for other market people, and as a result he would occasionally receive a sample of their products in return.  So, at home, as well as getting regular supplies of fish like haddock and plaice, we would often also enjoy prawns and the odd lobster or crab.  However, when my mother often offered a smoked salmon sandwich for Sunday afternoon tea my response would sometimes be: Not again!  Haven't you got any Spam? I would occasionally overhear Dad speaking on the 'phone to his senders, who were located at fishing ports, and who purchased fish to send on to London.   There were times when prices at the market failed to achieve the expected sums, but Dad always honoured the amounts agreed with his senders.  Conversely, however, if the sale prices vastly exceeded expectations, he would always share some of the bonus with the man on the dock.  My respect and admiration for my father grew greater and greater over the years.

On my Saturday morning visits, I sometimes took over collecting the money for the sales that had been made that week.   I quickly became aware of the very distinctive smell of the ten shilling and pound notes that circulated in Billingsgate, a clinging odour which I will never forget.   I would also give out the Bobbin payments to the porters who carried the fish to and from the delivery lorries and carts outside the market, the fees for which were all penciled in columns in the downstairs ledger under each man's name.   Dad may not have been a mathematics wizard, but I've never seen anyone faster at casting such a tall column of figures to get a total which was invariably correct if I checked.  Dad's company was one of the few which sold fresh salmon, but he also dealt with white fish, including skate wings.  Like most fish, they came in large wooden crates, but as these fish had a thick natural body coating, a crate sitting on one of the special flat-topped leather hats on the head of a porter would have a viscous slimy thread dangling from each of the four bottom corners of the crate.   As the porter walked, these threads would sway backwards and forwards sinuously, in time with his steps, which was fascinating to see, but it was a very good idea to keep out of the porter's path to avoid being dribbled upon by the gooey slime. 
Sometimes on the way home from Billingsgate Dad and I would call in at the pub that was nearest to Bocking Street, where, within about ten minutes of our entering the bar, a host of Johnsons would appear, somehow alerted by a message circulated on the local bush telegraph that Alfie's in the Avelock.  It was amazing how quickly so many members of his family arrived, all eager to meet up again with their obviously very popular brother.  It was not until some years later that I learned that the pub was actually the Havelock Arms located in Westgate Street, but I suppose I should have expected a missing aspirate to be common in that area.  In earlier years I recall evenings spent sitting on the step outside the pub, with a glass of lemonade and an arrowroot biscuit, listening to Dad singing his favourite song, The Tail of the Green Cockatoo!
Dad became a member of The Piscatorials, the Billingsgate cricket team, and in my later school holidays I occasionally joined him at afternoon matches arranged at clubs around London.   Sometimes I acted as Scorer, but despite my eagerness to be included, was disappointed to never be asked to join the team if it was short of a player.   I was not aware at the time, that he also joined the Masons, but I later learned that he eventually became disillusioned with the group and ceased attending.  I believe that this was due to the fact that after he was involved in a nasty road accident and had to spend some weeks in hospital, my mother was never given any support from the members of his Lodge during that time.  Dad would never have asked for help, but he would have been extremely disappointed that none was offered from an organization which had Help for Brothers as one of its main principles.  I only learned of his earlier involvement with Masonry after my mother and he had both died and his apron was found at the bottom of a wardrobe.

I didn't see a great deal of Dad in my early years, as he volunteered to join the army very soon after the start of the war, even though at 30, he was well above the age of those being called up at that time.  I think he had in mind that by enrolling early he had more chance of rising through the ranks, thereby increasing his pay and being able to send more money home to his wife.  He enlisted in the Royal Artillery, and soon became a Sergeant, with the help of his Captain who was persuaded to help him learn how to manage the Predictor, a mechanical computer device used to aim a field gun, despite his poor knowledge of all but rudimentary arithmetic.  One of the few tales of his army life that he related to me in later years was about when he was in charge of an anti-aircraft gun in North Africa, and a yellow alert was in force.  No reports of friendly aircraft being in the area had been advised, so when a 'plane began circling overhead, Dad got his team to full alert, awaiting orders to open fire.  No such commands were received over the field telephone, which had however been rather unreliable for a few days.   Finally, using his own initiative, Dad ordered: Five rounds, rapid fire, begin!   Immediately, the previously silent field telephone  sprang into life, with shouted enquiries coming through like: Who the hell is firing that bloody gun?  It later transpired that Dad's action had nearly shot the tail off the unknown aircraft, but it turned out to be a Beaufighter, which, unfortunately for Dad, was a British 'plane.  However, because of the failure in communications about the errant aeroplane being in a battle zone, Dad narrowly avoided being Courts Martialled, and indeed, actually received a quiet word in his ear from his Captain along the lines of: Well done Sergeant! That'll show those cocky RAF bastards!     I only have fragmentary memories of Dad occasionally arriving home on leave, bringing with him exotic fruits and sweets from the far off lands that he had visited, and unusual presents for my mother.  I think Dad referred to himself as one of the first in, last out wartime soldiers since he was not demobbed until 1946, but he did achieve the rank of Sergeant Major for a short time during his final days in the army.

My Mother
 
My mother, Ada Grace Childers - Mum - was born on March 14th 1910 at 1, Sidney Road, Wood Green, London, where her parents, John William and Caroline - née Lulham - ran a tobacconists shop.  The Schilders family - they dropped the initial S during the first war to avoid its Germanic associations - orginated in Belgium, where they may have been cigar manufacturers.   She had two brothers, William and Edward, and a pair of sisters, Dorothy and Mary.  Will, as he was known, had lost an arm in the first world war and lived on Canvey Island, near Southend, a slightly strange area that I very vaguely recall visiting as a small child.  In later years, Ted - married to another Mary - had a son named Derek, and also lived in Hackney, not far from the Johnsons, sharing a house with his parents.   Dorothy - married to Alfred Weedon - lived in Hornsey, just up the road from Turnpike Lane tube station, with their two sons, Kenneth and Douglas.  Mary, for whom I have no other details, lived at Maryland Point in the London area of Stratford.

Mum had an uncle, also called Will, who, at an early age moved from London to Middlesborough for some reason, where he met and married Joanna.   During the 30s depression, work was hard to find in that area, and a number of families were relocated to specially built estates in the South.  One of these was in Cobham, Surrey, where both Will and Joanna and their daughter, Sarah - married to Wiiliam (Billy) Foster - took up residence in homes in the newly-built Tartar Road. Sarah and Billy had sons Raymond and Eric, and a daughter Ann - who came to stay with us in Edmonton on many occasions and she and Mum became very close.   In their late 'teens, although the boys were far from a big city, on their evenings out they would dress in full Teddy Boy suits, with Ray sporting a mass of long hair swept back over his neck in the current D.A. style, the cause of many arguments with Billy.

We visited Cobham quite often, and our journeys would start with a 679 trolleybus ride to the Astoria, Finsbury Park, where we caught the Green Line coach that took us through London, Kingston-on-Thames and Esher, to alight at the stop outside The Tartar pub.  Initially I found Aunt Sarah somewhat frightening as she spoke very loudly and had rather large protruding teeth.  Billy was relatively quiet in comparison to his no-nonsense wife, who, possibly because of thrifty habits learned through hard times, was the only person I ever observed who, after buttering a slice of bread, appeared to end up with more on the butter knife than the amount with which she started.   My earliest recollection was of a visit made at a time just before Christmas where my brother and I were presented with large wooden model aeroplanes, constructed and painted by Billy and his boys.  My 'plane was almost bigger than I was, and I recall struggling through the snow with this enormous aircraft on the way to catch the Green Line coach home. Will's family in Cobham all had Geordie-like accents, but the broadest of these was Joanna's.  However, what really amazed and tickled me was the fact that their budgie mimicked Joanna exactly, being very loquacious, but speaking like a character from the later TV series When The Boat Comes In.

Besides family visits, I would also sometimes go to Cobham by myself during the summer school holidays.  There was a tree at the end of Tartar Road up which I loved to climb to the very top, to get a panoramic view, including that of the adjacent field where some local boys and I would play with the bales of straw left after harvesting.  The boys also access to trade bikes, the ones fitted with large metal basket frames at the front and back, in which some of us would ride to nearby Mizen Way en route to Mizen Close.  This cul-de-sac, lined with fruit trees on its verges, was locally referred to a Millionaire's Way, and our forays to grab the available apples, pears and cherries were exciting and productive adventures.  We also had great times on the banks of the River Mole where a rope had been attached to a branch of a tree so that it hung down near the middle of the river.   Swinging out over the water was a great experience, but if fully dressed, we had to be careful not to let our swings reduce in amplitude too much or we would be left suspended too far from the bank to get back without vigorous use of arms and legs to start swinging again.  This didn't matter if we had come prepared for swimming, when the object was to drop off the rope and splash into the water as far away from the bank as possible.  Someone else had to catch the rope with a long branch before it got out of reach, so that the next boy could have a go. 

I can remember visiting uncle Ted's home, where his mother - Nanna - would give me a treat in the form of a slice of bread and butter which had sugar sprinkled on it and which may have been the origin of the ever-present sweet tooth that affected so many of my eating habits for the rest of my life.  In later years, I must have once been taken to call on Mum's sister Mary, since I took it into my head one day to take a train from Ponders End station by myself to visit her at Maryland Point.  I was about twelve at the time, and had often travelled up to London's Liverpool Street station collecting train numbers in the past, so it seemed only a little further than one of my usual excursions.  I received a - very surprised - but delighted reception when I arrived out of the blue, and was treated as a very special visitor.  However, when I made my way home, the train I had planned to take did not stop at Stratford, so I had to catch another to go up to Liverpool Street where I could get a different train back to Ponders End.   As a result of these diversions, I arrived home in the dark, much later that I had planned, to find that Dad had been out searching for me.  The result of causing distress to Mum and Dad was the application to my backside of several whacks with a stick - which I had to choose - from the woodpile outside the back door.

Going back to before I was born, Mum's family moved from Wood Green to London Fields, taking a newspaper and tobacconists shop in Westgate Street, opposite the aforementioned 'Avelock.  Mum developed her love of reading there as she had access to all the comics and papers that were sold in the shop, and later told me about sitting in a corner behind the counter, avidly scanning the latest arrivals.  The rear of the shop - which housed the kennel of a large Chow dog, Boy Boy, - backed onto the yard of Dad's home in Bocking Street, so it was no surprise that Alf and Ada soon became acquainted.   Part of the attraction for Alf must have been that Ada, as the daughter of the owner of his own business, was a cut above most of the other girls in the area, and Alf's smartness might have impressed Ada.  Inevitably, then, they married, setting up home together in a flat in nearby Pownall Road

Before her marriage, Mum had worked for Polikoffs, who  described themselves as Skirt Manufacturers, Ladies Costume and Blouse Manufacturers and Gentlemen’s Tailors, at their factory in Mare Street, along with a host of other female sewing machine operators.  From those days she recalled that the pressure of work resulted in several occasions when one of the girls got careless and ran their machine needles through their fingertips and fingernails!  Once children arrived, at Dad's insistence, she never worked again, apart from many years later she and Betty Evans from number 49 secretly took on cleaning jobs, well away from their locality, in Southgate or Barnet.   My brother and I were sworn to secrecy, and I don't think Dad ever found out about Mum's activities, which I think were undertaken for fun as much as to earn pin money. 

Mum was a very thrifty woman, especially whilst Dad was in the army, as the part of Dad's pay that she received was augmented by only a very small allowance from Dad's employers, Forbes Stuart.  When Dad wrote to ask if the amount could be increased a little, one of the current directors apparently queried whether Mrs Johnson was not a good manager.  When Mum heard about this, the director concerned was lucky that he was not nearby, as Mum was so incensed by the insult that she would probably have throttled him!   Whether this remark made her even more careful I cannot tell, but it was certainly true that when Dad finally came home, she presented him with an amount of money that she had saved that was enough to enable him to purchase a motor car - a Flying Standard.   My brother and I were extremely   impressed by this car, with blinds that could be pulled up over the rear windows by cords from the front, and with picnic trays that folded down from the backs of the front seats.  Many outings were made in this vehicle, including one I particularly remember which was to Southend-on-Sea.   Whilst proceeding along the Southend arterial road, steam began to emerge from under the front bonnet and Dad was forced to a halt.  Despite not being a member, he managed to persuade a passing AA patrol man to stop to investigate, which resulted in his being told that the thread on the thermostat screwed in the water jacket of the car's cooling system had stripped causing the device to be ejected by the internal pressure.  Most of the water in the system had therefore escaped through the hole that was left, causing the engine temperature to rise and boil the remainder.  We appeared to be stuck, as there was no way that the AA man would have a replacement thermostat in his kit of spares, let alone one specifically for that particular car.  No problem!, however, declared the AA man, who - with my help holding onto the selected branch of a bush beside the road - used a junior hacksaw to cut off a short length of an appropriate diameter.  This he hammered into the offending hole to plug it, before sending me off to a local farm to get a watering can full of water to refill the car's cooling system.  With the engine running quite happily again, Dad offered to pay for the AA man's help, but when this offer was declined, he promised to join the AA the very next day.   I think that the wooden plug remained in the car's engine for some years until it was eventually sold, but what really sticks in my mind was that, as promised, Dad did join a motoring organisation, but it was the RAC!

Although Mum never worked, she was extremely good at knitting, and when the proprietors of the wool shop where she purchased her materials saw some of the baby clothes and other items she made, they asked her to take on commissions for customers who were not so adept.  This resulted in regular trips to the shop, which was in Hertford Road, Edmonton, a couple turnings along from Houndsfield Road where I went to school.  If I recall correctly, Westcotts was a laundry shop nearby where after completing her knitting shopping, Mum would take in Dad's used detachable shirt collars, which would be delivered by their lorry once they had been cleaned and starched.  I can easily remember evenings when, on my outstretched arms, I would hold hanks of wool as Mum rewound them to make more manageable round balls.  Sometimes I would even read out the abbreviated directions - like k1, p1, psso - to her when she was trying to learn a new pattern.   She would do her knitting whilst listening to the wireless, and later, whilst watching television, but she never seemed need to look at what she was doing, even though the needles clicked away at a very rapid pace.  On a holiday to Swanage in Dorset one year, the weather was not very warm so I needed an extra long sleeved pullover. Mum started and finished one - complete with cable knit front and back - before the end of our stay, and I proudly wore it when I went by myself to the pictures one evening.

As a result of her youthful employment, Mum was a skilled machinist, and used her Singer treadle sewing machine to great effect making dresses, curtains, and even clothes.  However, at the time when Dad came home on his first leave from training camp after joining the army, she mistakenly used her abilities to machine sew permanent creases into his uniform trousers to save him having to keep ironing them back at camp.  On his return, the eagle-eyed drill sergeant spotted the improvement straight away, and Dad was ordered to cut away all the tiny stiches with a razor blade.  The resulting cuts and nicks in the trousers meant that they were ruined, and Dad's pay was docked when he had to requisition a replacement pair.  As I grew up, I was always fascinated by Mum's use of paper sewing patterns, and liked to help with the cutting out.   Later, in my teens, I even took on the task of making myself a fancy waistcoat, using bright red material for the front, and the correct satin cloth for the back, which was completed with a proper buckled adjusting strap.  I did need guidance when creating the pockets, as everything had initially to be done sort of inside out, a procedure which took me a while to grasp, but the garment was eventually completed and did look pretty good.  Some years later, I added a motor and control pedal to replace the treadle on her machine, which she still used up to the end of her life.  

Mum was also a competent cook, and the thick suet pastry of her steak and kidney puddings was wonderful!  However, I've mentioned previously that I disliked cabbage, and it may have been because of the strange way she prepared that vegetable.   The leaves would be boiled for ages in a saucepan with the addition of a pinch of baking soda, after which they were poured out into colander.  The drained pale green and yellow contents of the colander would be squashed with the back of a saucer to drain any remaining water, and the resulting curved top mass turned out onto a plate, where it resembled the dome of the O2 arena that was created in later years.  A knife would then be used to cut the heap in two directions, to produce rounded top cubes ready to be served onto dinner plates - except mine!  More to my taste were her afters - spotted dick, with its slightly slimy coating where some water had penetrated the cloth wrapping used during boiling, treacle puddings, and trifles - with a custard or blancmange layer on top of jelly which usually contained the contents of a can of tinned fruit.   There were sometimes a few chunks of a yellow fruit in the mixture, which was too soft to be from a peach or melon, and which I always treated with some suspicion as it might have been something overripe.   It was not until many years later when dining whilst on a holiday in The Seychelles that I realised that the mystery items had been pieces of Mango - a fruit that never appeared in Grocery shops in the UK in previous decades. 

 
My Brother

My Brother, Alan Alfred Johnson, was born on February 7th 1910, in Hackney, East London, England, but apart from my parents and I, or at school, he was usually called Johnny.   Although he was probably not pleased with my arrival four years later, causing his treatment of me to often be rather unkind, he did become a choirboy, and later passed his eleven-plus exam to be eligible to go to the rather prestigious Edmonton Latymer Grammar School.  It would have pleased Dad enormously that he was doing so well, but this pride was deflated completely when a letter was received from Alan's headmaster stating that if Dad would withdraw him, Alan would not be expelled!   Apparently, Alan had become bored with the rather academic curriculum, and played truant constantly, enjoying fishing expeditions with a pal as an alternative.   His relationship with Dad soured from that time, as Dad could not understand how Alan had wasted the opportunity to complete a proper education that Dad himself had missed.   In retrospect, it was a shame that Alan did not hear about the technical school that I later attended, as this would - as it did for me - have greatly suited his more technical leanings.  For the next couple of years, as he was soon to be called up for National Service, he was not offered anything other than temporary jobs, which included operating a Hoffman steam press at a laundry near Shackewell Lane in Hackney, back close to his family's roots. 

Despite not embarking on a recognised career, Alan still seemed to earn good money, and somehow managed to buy an old Armstrong Siddely car.  These had a pre-selector gear change lever attached on the steering wheel column, so he even let me have a go at driving it - with the driver's seat pushed all the way forward so that I could just reach the pedals.  He was actually working at a wood merchants yard on the Angel Colony, Edmonton, when he came home one day to announce that - to pre-empt his inevitable call-up - he had volunteered to join the forces, but in the RAF rather than the army, which again may have seemed like a snub to Dad.

Eventually, Alan - or Johnny - went off to his basic training camp, where within a very short time he broke his wrist during unarmed combat practice.   He therefore came home again for some weeks, with his damaged arm in plaster, returning for a while to his previous regular night-time forays to local pubs with other local lads.  Whilst helping him to stagger upstairs to his bedroom one night, I was rather impressed to learn that he had downed eight pints of Guinness that evening.  One bonus of his enforced absence from basic training was that he avoided all the drill sessions, so never learned how to march properly, or how to perform the correct movements with a rifle.   Apparently all through his RAF career, he used this excuse to avoid formal parades, but got out of the church versions as well, by claiming that he was of the Orthodox Greek faith!   The RAF suited Johnny's technical bent, and he rose through the Technician ranks of Junior, Corporal, and Senior, to eventually become a Chief Technician.  With his increasing rank, and wide knowledge of electronics and other technical matters, Alan's attitude to Dad was rather patronising when he occasionally came home on leave, and in later years I regretted that he had never been present to see Dad in his business environment at Billingsgate where he was so respected.  Perhaps if he had observed his father in the way that I was privileged to see him, his attitude may have improved, and they would have had a better relationship.

One of his early placements was at Wahn, in Germany, and when he came home on a leave from there, I noticed purple blotches under his eyes.  He initially claimed that this was due to working on electronic equipment such as teleprinters during excessive night duty.  Later he confessed to me that his lack of sleep was actually due to his leaving camp each evening, to spend his nights with an accommodating German woman, where he performed entirely different duties.   I don't think he was in one of the classes taught German at Latymer, but he became so proficient speaking the language that he was often taken for a native of that country.  It may have been on that leave that he presented me with a copy of the then banned book Lady Chatterly's Lover, which although coverless, grubby and dog-eared by the hands of so many previous readers, was still an exciting present to a prurient sixteen-year-old.

A little later, when stationed at Compton Basset in Wiltshire, Johnny met, and married a WAAF, Thelma Rose Culkin, born on July 18th 1938, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, and they had three children, Dawn Leslie, Gary Alan, and Lisa Carol-Ann.   Thelma grew up in Sutton-on-Sea, near Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire, where her father was the Mayor - a man we found rather pompous and self-important when we visited for Dawn's christening.  From her birth, on May 21st 1959, Dawn required lots of attention from her parents.  She suffered from a rare skin condition - possibly Discoid eczema, also known as nummular or discoid dermatitis - which is a long-term (chronic) skin condition that causes skin to become itchy, swollen and cracked in circular or oval patches.  Besides needing nightly applications of ointments and creams, she also had to have her hands bandaged and gloved to prevent her scratching affected areas.  It may have been the condition or as a result of one of the many treatments that were tried to eradicate it, but she lost the sight of one eye, which, in later years, was replaced by a glass version.   Despite her problems Dawn remained a largely cheerful person, and on October 10th 1979 she married Christopher Hurst, one of the RAF lads that Chiefy Johnny was training when he was stationed at Stanbridge, near Leyton Buzzard.  This marriage only lasted a very short time, as after about a fortnight, Chris went home to mum, and Dawn took up with another of Johnny's RAF trainees, Patrick Alan Drury, whom in 1983 she married, in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Two children resulted from the new union, Sean Alan, born on April 4th 1987, and Kim Elish, born  on February 11th 1993, but sadly, Dawn died from a massive stroke during the night of September 11th 1995, leaving Pat to cope with two little 'uns.

Gary, who had been born on January 6th 1963, in Wegburg, Germany, where Johnny was stationed at the time, got married a total of three times, to  Wendy Susan Dykes, Mandy Glover, and Joy Sanders, gaining two children in the process - Ann Rachel and Claire Elizabeth.   Lastly, Lisa, also born in Wegberg, on 22nd June 1964, married Paul James Griffin in 1964, but I have no details of children.

During his RAF career of over twenty-five years, Johnny and his family were stationed in many places, including Malta, where he had an active role as steward in one of the service clubs there.  Back in the UK, he served for a time in an underground communications centre, servicing teleprinters dealing with NATO messages. His final posting was that at Stanbridge, near Leyton Buzzard, and it was from the last married quarters that they occupied there that he left the RAF, moving to a house that was purchased in the nearby town.   Possibly because of his experience with teleprinters, he somehow obtained a job with a small branch of the Foreign Office that dealt with the purchasing and maintenance of that type of equipment.   He claimed that the establishment was very hush-hush, but he rarely missed an opportunity to accidentally reveal his F.O. Identity Card, when finding some reason to open his wallet.

On the civilian side of his life, Johnny was heavily involved with the Boy Scouts organisation, and was awarded their Silver Acorn for over twenty year's service.  He also was a member of The Lions, publishing magazines for both those groups for some years.  In his retirement, he enjoyed a spell working for a company that arranged holidays in hired barges on the nearby Grand Union Canal.  His role was to show visitors the ropes, and guide them for the initial part of their trip, to and through, the first lock.  Another part time occupation was as a room guide at Woburn Abbey, but a slight received from the Marchioness - formerly Henrietta Tiarks - about some missing car park proceeds, resulted in his leaving in high dudgeon. The nobility's mantra of Never apologise, never explain, may have been the reason why no letter of contrition or explanation was ever received.  He was an avid collector of lots of things, including a huge number of Dinky toys, all complete with the original boxes.  His office was a masterpiece of tidiness, with computers, printers - with associated papers of a vast range of types, all sorts of office devices, and maps or charts, all arranged with mathematical precision on pinboards, myriad shelves and in cupboards in what was a very tiny room.

Despite all the positive points mentioned previously, on the occasions when our families met, we were often appalled at the way Alan treated his wife and children.   If they were perceived by him to have erred in even a small way, his loud vicious remarks to them literally astonished us, and we realised that he remained the bully that I had known when growing up as his small brother.  Another facet of his character was that although he had an extremely comprehensive wardrobe - for example, containing at least six of the latest style leather jackets, and countless pairs of smart shoes - his wife Thelma was always dressed in slightly inappropriate and unfashionable clothes, which were actually chosen for her Alan himself.  It was with this background in our minds that when he died at the age of 83, my family and I attended his funeral with some trepidation.  However, we were surprised to see that a very large group of people were attending the event, and that all the people that spoke heaped so much high praise on him for his community work and social character.  For some moments we wondered if we were at the right cremation, but on the way home we concluded that some people could have a personality that presented an entirely different aspect in public to their private persona.