Leaving Ludlow 1973

My resignation from my post at Ludlow Grammar School was effective from the end of the summer term of 1973. We sold No 1 Temeside Gardens at a handsome profit - it was a time when house prices were going through the roof - and spent a few days in a flat in Weston-super-Mare owned by Gill's aunt Margaret, Don's sister. Tony and Hilary visited us there to say a final goodbye before we....

....went to Cranham to say our farewells to Gill's parents. As we had done when we went to Rhodesia, we asked them to come and visit us in our new home, though we weren't at all confident that they would do so.

In some ways it was harder to say our farewells to my parents at Little Heath. We knew that my mother, an inveterate traveller, would come and see us but we were much less sure of my father, but it was also that they had....

....watched the collapse of Richard's marriage to Mary and were worrying about the future for their little grand-daughter, Samantha. Then, at the beginning of 1973, Richard emigrated to Australia, settling in Perth.

We weren't going quite as far, only to the Caribbean. Teaching jobs in Commonwealth countries were still fairly easy to obtain through the Overseas Development Ministry but I have no recollection of why we chose Jamaica rather than try another country in Africa. Perhaps we, once again, had hopes of settling somewhere warm, but with beaches, though this time we were more cautious: we didn't take all our belongings with us, leaving many of them either with relatives or in store.

I went on an induction course run by the ODM to prepare me for my job in Brownsville, where I would teach Geology, only to be told after I had resigned from Ludlow that the job had fallen through, and the only alternative available was in Kingston, the capital.

Kingston did not have a good reputation.