As the end of the 1975-76 school year approached we accepted I was 'stuck' with Chalvedon so we started looking for a house to buy. We had money in a building society from selling our house in Ludlow, we had a gratuity of 10% of my salary over the two years in Jamaica, and we could get a mortgage, so we had a good choice of houses.
We settled on a small, semidetached dormer-bungalow, 10 Fountain Lane in Hockley, situated in a narrow one-way lane tucked away off the main Hockley-Rayleigh road. The approach at the front may not have been very special but....
....someone had built a clever extension along the back which joined the very comfortable, wood-panelled sitting room to the kitchen, creating a U-shaped room which had room for a dining area and gave the whole living area a feeling of space. There was a utility room on the side with a small toilet, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.
At the back lay a very safe, secluded garden with plenty of room for the girls - so they had a see-saw and a swing - and we had a small vegetable garden and a good-sized lawn. The small village of Hockley was a short walk away, as was a primary school for Elizabeth, and across the main road lay miles of walking in Hockley Woods. The nearest metropolis was Southend.
One down-side was that I had a half-hour commute to work but the roads weren't too bad - except when it snowed, as it did the first winter we were there - and it was good to live out of the school's catchment area.
So we settled in to an Essex life.
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