Maldon 1982

A few years prior to this picture Elizabeth, seen here on the right with her friend Kate Lees, was swimming in the Caribbean. In Maldon, before the opening of the town's swimming pool, she did what generations of Maldon children had done before, swim in the muddy waters of the Chelmer & Blackwater canal.

David seems also to have gone in, though I can't believe he knew how to swim, but he may have become wet because just to his right in the picture is the model yacht we bought him. I kept it for years after he'd finished with it; its last resting place before being consigned to the rubbish tip two years ago was on the windowsill in the shed at Matenderere.

This picture was taken at Warwick End, where Gill's sister Pauline and her husband Gareth lived with their four children. Fortunately, the weather was warm. We used to rather dread visiting the family as in winter they kept their house at even lower temperatures than we kept ours. I remember sitting at lunch in their marble-floored kitchen and losing contact with my feet.

We have no recollection of this play but photographs never lie so Katy was, once, the star of a show. It was at All Saints, her primary school, and....

....we were obviously so impressed that we took another picture, of the whole cast.

Elizabeth was also a star, in this case by being chosen as Maldon's carnival queen. She's seen here being crowned by Canon Dunlop who ministered at All Saints church, just down the road from our house, where Elizabeth, Katy and David were all choristers in their turn. Lizzie built up a warm relationship with the Dunlops so, years later, she asked Arthur to officiate at her wedding in Cambridge.

1982 was the year in which Elizabeth who, with Katy, was at All Saints primary school just round the corner from our house, passed the 11+ exam and was allocated a place at Chelmsford High School. We seem to have made a point of taking pictures of our children on their first day at a new school but whoever took this one seems to have thought the uniform more important than Lizzie's head.

Going to the grammar school involved a very early start to catch a bus to Chelmsford and another from the town centre out to the school, and all sorts of extra problems getting home in the evening if she had to stay for any after-school activities, after which she had to do her homework, yet Lizzie never complained.