1979 was the Year of change for us, Nathan finally came out of Hospital for good! but this did’nt happen until April, so we still had around 4 months of Hospital visits etc still to come!
This was a very testing time for us, we were both still only 20 years old and what with Nathan still not right and we were still living in a 1 room place! and not too much help off anybody!
One thing me and Susan can say is, we have never treated our Children , liked how we were ! even to this Day we treat our Kids, how we would have liked to have been treated ourselves!
I was still working at the same Hotel and going to College every week, but my 4 year Course was coming to an end, so I had to make my mind up what I wanted to do, work wise, do I stay as a Chef, working long and un-socialable hours or do I go into something different!
One funny event of early 1979 I remember was, My Father had a Volkswagon Van like the one in the picture above, and as we had sold my Car, the previous Year, any chance to Drive the Van was a welcome change!
So one Day we went to the local Town Centre and parked on the main Town Car Park, right in front of a Butchers Shop ( a few years later, I worked in this Shop) now I dont remember if we did this before we went round the Shops or after the Shops!
Anyway I remember I drove into a parking space next to another Car, and had to reverse back and forth to straighten the Van up, well on about the third movement I jammed the van into the Car next to us, the Volkswagon had these big door hinges on the side of it and we could’nt move forward or backward, and as I said we were in full view of the Butcher’s Shop and the people inside the shop!
Anyway to cut a long story short , the only way out of this spot, was to drive forward very quickly, but there were quite high concrete edgings to this Car Park, about 6inch high at least!
So we drive back as far as we could, scraping along side this parked car, then I stuck my toe has hard as I could!
We came out of the car park, like Starsky & Hutch, bumped up & down the car park edgings at about 30 mile an hour and off the car park, we were laughing so much, we forgot about the people watching in the Shop!
Luckily for us, the Old Mans Van was’nt damaged that much and he thought he had done the damage anyway, and nobody ever reported the incident the the Police either!
So we got away with it!
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