Always something to learn …

My parents got together immediately after 2^nd World War in Essex where they both lived.  My father recently out of the Merchant Navy was keen to continue his boat building skills. With some like-minded souls he towed some boats including his own little sailing boat around the east coast of England to the Solent particularly the Hamble River. Here, the yachting industry that was flourishing before the war needed investment and skilled workers.  It was an arduous journey. My dad lost his boat, tools and all his belongings he survived, and they continued with a ‘fleet’ to be converted into homes or sailing vessels. This story was documented among others in a book called Black Water Men by Arthur and Michael Emmett [page 81]

My dad arrived with no tools and the clothes he stood in; my mum joined him later. She proved no less resourceful and helped him make a home for me to come their first child in 1950. Between them they built at least 3 houseboats the first a Motor Torpedo Boat (MTB) called Heron and the last a converted Landing Craft (LCA) called Miscellany. During these early days my dad bought home a Singer sewing machine, from the scrap man, for my mum which she made good use of for many years. She taught me dressmaking and embroidery giving me independence and joy and more recently a successful further education and now a flourishing career in textiles.  My mum was scholar before the war and continued to write and educate not only in the school nearby but at home.  Reading and writing was actively encouraged.  Very early in my parents’ relationship my dad came home after one of his sorties into town with used 35mm camera I can remember it clearly it was never far from my mother’s hand. A beautiful thing that had a distinctive click and whir as she used it daily to record and document river life, boat building, sailing and our growth in all the senses of the word. There were no mod cons on the houseboat, but she did make herself a makeshift dark room where she could develop the films, printing them was not an option. I remember clearly going on the bus with the negatives to be printed, in a camera shop called Parkers in Woolston. It was a stone’s through away from the floating bridge across the Itchen to Southampton. A week or so later we returned to collect them so that they could be stuck in a black photograph album with tiny hinges and narration added with a fountain pen with white ink.  I was given a camera of my own in due course from the same source I assume which gave me immense joy along with the passion of writing. 

Again, I can look back through the mist of dissatisfaction and see that opportunities were there albeit somewhat clumsy. Now I honour their diligence and foresight.