After several weeks Gill recovered from the morning sickness and thrived through the rest of the pregnancy, continuing to do supply teaching at Chalvedon almost up to the day David was born, on 21st March 1979. He arrived in our local hospital, Rochford, in crowded circumstances: the staff were terribly busy and the standards of care were, through no fault of theirs, rather poor, so it was good to get him home and into the care of his two big sisters.
David was my parents' first grandson - Gill's already had three.
He fitted in very quickly to our now rather crowded home, the girls making themselves very useful in looking after him. He seemed to have a relatively trouble-free start to life, perhaps helped by the fact that his early months were during the summer - this picture was taken in the garden at 10 Fountain Lane.
It wasn't long before we took him down to Hastings. At that time we had a Mini 850 to which we attached a roof rack, so fitting in the five of us was quite a squeeze. Gill's father wasn't very happy with this so helped us buy a brand new, very smart silver Ford Escort estate. It was a good car but it was what is known as a 'Friday car', coming off the assembly line last thing on a Friday when quality control wasn't at its best, so it leaked oil, a fault that the local garage didn't seem to be able to rectify.
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