7 Love Lane Cottages, Wakering Road, Shoeburyness, Essex
On a cold late December morning, Victor Silvester with his Ballroom Orchestra were on the BBC Light Program playing through a pre-war bakelite radio in the front room of
7 Love Lane Cottages belonging to Mr and Mrs James McClintoch Fry, who were soon to become my grandparents, as I fought like fury to keep my little body of 9lbs 2oz well inside the warmth of my mothers womb. This wasn't to be and at a little after midday I was born.
I was the first child of Dennis and Jean, well of Jean anyway. It would be over 30 years before I became somewhat aware of the truth.
Jean, or more accurately Louisa Jean Fry was the eldest child of career soldier James and Teresa Fry. They had two further children, Rodney and Diane, alas Teresa was to die shortly after giving birth to Diane in 1939. James, along with many other regular soldiers was sent to war, not returning home permanently until 1946.
War in the garrison town of Shoebury was not a place for children and both Jean and Rodney were evacuated to Derbyshire, Castleton in fact. Diane remained at home with her aunt, Teresa's sister Louie Monk, Aunty Lou or Lulu to me. By the time James had come home Louie had become the mother to Diane and indeed to Jean and Rodney too, although whether she was motherly to the latter pair is open to conjecture as she tended to rule by the copper stick and rolling pin as her patience ran quite thin. She had had a couple of accidents in her youth that had left her partly disabled, meaning she had to walk with a stick. This probably affected her temperament greatly has she would look with jealously at her own sisters and their children.
Is wasn't too long after James' return that they got married and in 1949 they had a little girl Marilyn.
Love Lane Cottages...to be continued
