The day that Norman finally returned home to Broadstairs, Teddy & I had spent at the station waiting for him, but he hadn’t arrived before it was time for me to go to bed. Just as Teddy was tucking me into bed there was a whistle through the letter box – it was Norman!
Eventually they both came into my bedroom with Norman wearing his uniform and carrying a black china doll for me that he had bought in Italy. I remember this moment very clearly and not many people can say that they remember seeing their father for the first time! I called the doll Dina, and had her for many years until I dropped her and broke her head.
There was never any strangeness between my father and I, mostly due to my mother who had always made my father a part of my life by sharing sweets with his photo, and saying good night to him etc. She was a great mother and so good with children too. The morning after Norman arrived home, I can clearly remember going to their bedroom and climbing into bed with both of them as if he had always been there. Some people never got on with their father after this sort of start to their life but I always was very close to my father.
My mother wrote on the back of this photo taken in 1946: “Our first family photo”
Daniels Estate Agents had not kept Norman’s job for him, although the firm carried on for many years more, so he then took a job working in Blackburns in York Street, selling furniture and doing the accounts for them.
They had two sons – Hugh Norman born on April 20th 1946 and Richard John born on 29th October 1947. Both boys were born at home at Chaucer Road as was the norm in those days. I clearly remember my mother pacing the kitchen when in labour with Richard and then being taken in to see the new baby the next morning.
I remember Norman learning to do shorthand at home, and I would test him by reading out the words for him to write down. Norman also took on other evening work to earn enough money to keep us. One job that he took was in the betting office at the Greyhound track at Dumpton and another was doing the accounts for Marchesi’s restaurant. The latter was when I was about 11 as he was doing it to raise money for extra coaching to help us pass our 11 plus exams, which all four of us did.
Norman then started to do funeral directing which was another part of Blackburns work and he went to classes to learn funeral directing, embalming and the hygiene side of things. I think that there were three qualifications that he could and did obtain. He later went on to teach embalming at Canterbury. I am not sure how much of the hygiene he kept to as recently I was talking to Philip Gore who said that they used to get rather worried when my father was doing embalming whilst still smoking his pipe! He was lucky not to set the place on fire! When I went into Gore Brothers many years later, I could still smell my father’s pipe. He would smoke it all the time and if customers came in he would stuff it into his pocket – still hot. I was often having to replace the pockets in his clothes for him.
Also to earn extra money, they took in holiday makers with Teddy doing bed, breakfast and evening meals. We had two families who came each year – the Holah’s who had two girls and the Chitty’s who had two boys.
The house was full to overflowing and we had a sofa bed in the dining room where my parents would sleep. As we had no bathroom at that stage, my mother would take jugs of hot water for them to wash in their bedroom. We had no washing machine either so the extra work must have been daunting for them. In fact, we only had gas lighting for many years and I remember electricity being put in. What excitement it was to flick a switch and have a light come on. After that my parents would rent a washing machine on a Saturday afternoon because then it would not be picked up until Monday. It was a single tub machine with a mangle on the side and my father would help my mother to do the washing as it must have been a huge task to do it once a week for the whole family.
I don’t know how my parents managed to do B&B as Cheryl and I were fortunate enough to look round 12 Chaucer Road a few years ago when it was being refurbished. I cannot believe that 6 of us lived there as it was so tiny. I think that the whole of the ground floor would have fitted into the lounge at North Goodwin House and that the lounge there was about the size of my present conservatory. I know that my parents had the front bedroom, Hugh and Richard shared the middle bedroom which had been mine for my first years and was where I first saw my father, while Cheryl and I shared the very small back bedroom when she was in a cot.
The back bedroom was being converted into a very nice bathroom when we looked round the house. The cupboard on the landing where my mother had kept her linen (and a tin with all the letters in that Dad wrote to her during the war) was still there. The house had a cellar where we used to go during an air raid and to keep the coal and which later my father used as a workroom particularly when he made me a dolls cot and the boys a wooden car. I remember my mother falling down the stairs to the cellar and having some very nasty bruising. I was shocked to see how tiny the stairs were when I went round the house with Cheryl. The treads were about half the size that are made nowadays.
My parents bought a beach hut the year after the war ended and the barbed wire was removed from the beach. We would spend all summer down on Viking Bay. The original beach hut had canvas walls and roof so was always needing repairs but, eventually it was given wooden sides and roof. Our pitch was close to the pier and under the windows of the toilets so was most convenient for all the facilities. There were several families who would all play cricket or rounders when the tide was out at the end of the day, meaning that often we would be on the beach from after breakfast until bedtime. I remember sitting in the beach hut in the pouring rain or swimming in the sea during thunder storms as the sea always seemed warmer then somehow. My Grandmother, Alice Maud, used to come to stay and she would happily sit in the beach hut with us all when it was raining.
We used to make traps by digging a hole in the sand, laying a towel over it and then covering it with a thin layer of sand to hide it before laying in wait for some unsuspecting person. One day my father came back to the hut carrying a tray of tea that he had just bought in Gays cafe when he stepped on the trap. He was definitely not amused when all the tea spilt as money was pretty tight in our household!
Hugh was born on April 20th 1946 and Richard was born 18 months after Hugh on 29th October 1947. I had always wanted a baby sister and every year, when I stirred the Christmas pudding mix, that was my wish. In 1955 my mother’s friend Dee Double was contacted by the Social Services to ask if she would consider fostering a five week old girl, who was in a foster home and the foster mother said she wanted her gone in 24 hours as she would not stop crying. Dee was running a boarding house in St Georges Road and, was too busy but my parents immediately said that they would look after her for a few weeks until a home could be found for the baby and to stop her being put in an orphanage. Cheryl arrived the very next morning and when I finished school at Clarendon House that day, I got off the bus at the Victoria Gardens and ran along the beach to our beach hut to see this baby. She was in a green pram that my mother had borrowed. She was so beautiful! My father’s first words when he saw her in her carrycot on our dining room table were “She will never leave us” and he was so right as when she was five years old we were allowed to adopt her. I was at college at the time and came home for the adoption on 17th March 1960 but was not allowed in the room at Pierremont Hall where the adoption hearing was held. When they came out Cheryl ran to give me a hug and said “Now I am really your sister” and she always has been!
They say that one door closes as another opened and how true that is. My Grandmother, Alice Maud, died the day before we adopted Cheryl. Before the adoption (which was free) Cheryl used to raid my father’s pockets and my mothers purse to collect the threepenny pieces to save up for her adoption.
My father had learned to drive when in the army so never took a driving test. He bought a Ford 8 (AFN 711) and kept it in a garage in the grounds of what is now 27a Grosvenor Road, Broadstairs, one house down from St Mildred’s School. The car was a luxury in those days and so was only used about once a week. My father often would take us down to Deal on a Sunday afternoon and, we would end up having tea at Lings cafe, which was opposite the Royal Hotel on Beach Street. If we went to see the Amphlett’s in Upton on Severn the drive would take all day and my father would get very worried about whether the car was powerful enough to get us up some of the Malvern Hills. The car had no boot but, the backrest of the back seat would lift up for bag storage. My father would prop it up with two pieces of wood and Hugh, Richard and I would then lie down and sleep on the back seat with our feet in the boot.
About 1955, I had flu rather badly and was off sick from school for about 3 weeks and, my mother was also very poorly but, of course she got up to look after me. Eventually it was realised that she had contracted polio from someone who worked with my father and this left her with one leg slightly thinner than the other. Fortunately things were not worse for her.
When I was 16 – in 1957 – we moved from number 12 to the flat above Blackburns. This was so exciting for me. The flat was so much larger than number 12. Hugh and Richard had a bedroom overlooking York Street, my parents had one behind them and Cheryl and I shared a large bedroom with a door out onto the roof garden. Our bedroom had one wall of fitted cupboards which in those days was a luxury. My parents bought a lot of new furniture and I remember we sat on the floor for a long time until the lounge suite arrived! My mother was not amused when her new bed arrived and, it was black!! As you can imagine, being married to a funeral director black was almost taboo in our house.
5 York Street,
The two lower windows were the lounge of our flat and the top left was the bedroom for the boys. The top right was the bathroom
On the roof garden of the flat at 5 York Street
My parents took us regularly to Holy Trinity Church and when my brothers were very young they joined the choir. They both had lovely voices. Hugh became head choirboy and Richard head soloist. As a result, at Christmas, a lot of the choir would come back to the flat after midnight mass and David Raven played the piano and the choir would sing. My mother always had made a sausage and onion pie and mince pies.
My father was made Church Warden so we always sat in the back left hand pew. I do remember going to midnight mass in 1959. I was at college and had invited Joy to stay with us for Christmas as she came from Barbados so would not be going home. As we were sitting at the back of the church we were the last two to take communion and as we walked back in the silence, one of us had a squeaking shoe so that by the time we reached the back of the church we were both so helpless with giggles that we had to go straight out of the door. I have never forgotten the look on my father’s face as we departed!
Edward Heath had lived in Broadstairs and he conducted the Broadstairs Carol Service each year. Both of my brothers would sing in it with Richard singing the solo of Once in Royal David’s City. They would go carol singing with them on Christmas Eve so that by the time they went to midnight mass they were often unwell (probably because of the drinks that they had all evening!!!) and had to keep leaving the church. Very often friends would return to the flat after midnight mass and David Raven would play the piano (sometimes with his labrador tied to the piano leg) and, we would sing carols (well I didn’t as I have never been able to sing in tune).
We lived in the flat from 1957 to January 1966. The entrance to the flat was from Buckingham Street. You walked up an alley way beside the Chapel of Rest, into a courtyard and up an iron staircase to the front door. Because it was a funeral directors ,the courtyard was where they laid the floral tributes so our garden was invariably full of colour.
I was invited out by a young man who did not know my father’s occupation. He came to the front door of the flat and rang the bell and before I could open the door, my father came up the alley way with a coffin on his shoulders. The chap who was taking me out was so shocked that we had to give him a large brandy and for some unknown reason he never asked me out again!
Another amusing story involved Hugh mending the puncture on his bicycle. He was doing so in the courtyard when it started to rain. Hugh just opened the door of the chapel, propped his bike up against a coffin and continued to mend his tyre. He was caught in there and told off in no uncertain terms!
Christmas dinner in the kitchen of the flat
Christmas in the lounge of the flat and it looks as if it is before we had a lounge suite!
We lived at the flat over Blackburns until early January 1966. My father then took a job at Gore Brothers in Margate and he bought a brand new house at 92 Pierremont Avenue and the family moved in there on the day that I went off for my supernumerary flight with BOAC so I missed the first night in the new home. I once scanned all the photos of my time with BOAC and posted them on flickr site where you are able to see them. Here is one of me in my uniform
BOAC 1965-1968
My parents bought a caravan and thoroughly enjoyed it. They kept it out at Chislet and would often go there just for a weekend. They would have Andrew and Helen to stay there with them sometimes and the children loved it. They adored my parents as both were so good with all children.
We did not have many holidays when I was a child as money was so tight and living by the beach we had a great time every summer. However, we did go to Somerset camping with Chick, John and family in about 1950 and, again we went camping to Italy in 1958 when my father borrowed Alfred Amphlett’s dormobile. We visited the Italian family that Norman and Alfred had met during the war. Unfortunately as Cheryl was at that stage only being fostered, we did not have a passport for her, nor would we have been allowed to take her out of the country. She stayed with Wilf and Bertha at Headcorn. We bought her a lovely tricycle back and I remember the customs officer at Dover being so touched by the story of who it was for that he would not charge any import duty on it.
Another holiday that we had was when I was about 20 when we all went to Holywell Bay in Cornwall camping
In 1965 I joined BOAC as an air stewardess and one of the perks was to be allowed to take one relative a year on a flight for 10% of the air fare. I waited two years and then in October 1967 I took my parents to San Fransisco for a few days where we stayed with my friend Joy. Then we flew back to New York to stay with Norman’s brother, Alfred, with my leaving them there to fly home and back to work. They were then going onto Bermuda for a few days and then to Barbados. In those days all one was allowed to take out of the country was £30 each but fortunately I was able to leave them some money with my Joy in San Fransisco. Whilst we were crossing the Atlantic ocean they devalued the pound so we must have been flying on 18th November 1967.
It was my parents very first time in an aircraft and my mother was very nervous and my father extremely excited. At Heathrow airport I bumped into a stewardess that I had trained with, who proceeded to tell us the story of how she had just flown into Trinidad on GAPFH (all aircraft have their own registration numbers) and the landing gear would not come down into position so, they had to circle the runway with someone standing underneath with binoculars to see if it was down. My parents faces were quite a study by this time.
All went well though, but as we boarded I realised that we were on the same aircraft. They enjoyed the flight and as we were about to go down into New York, en route for San Fransisco, I explained that the loud noise they were about to hear was just the undercarriage coming down and nothing to be worried about. They were fine but I was as white as a sheet when we got off the aircraft and I went straight into a bar. They did not know that the undercarriage had gone up and down five times as the pilots tried to get it to lock into position. It later turned out to be a faulty light!
By pure chance, I was rostered to arrive in Bermuda the day that they did and actually fly them to Barbados. As the plane was full I could not manage to have them upgraded to first class but did supply them with free drinks for the flight. I can tell you that my father flowed down the aircraft steps into Barbados. There they met up with Joy’s parents, Arthur and Katherine Newsam.
I carried on down to South America and on my way back we were stopping in transit in Barbados when the aircraft broke down so, we were forced to spend the night at the Barbados Hilton. I met up with my parents for dinner and my father kept saying how he had gone on his second honeymoon only to have his daughter tag along!
This trip gave them a love of travel and encouraged them to go on more holidays abroad and also on cruises. One holiday they took was with Bunty and Alfred as seen in this photo.
My father did well at Gore Brothers and became a partner there, working there until he retired in the early 1980’s. By that time my mother was beginning to lose her memory having been poorly since about 1970 with Parkinsons and slowly getting worse. Towards the end, my father found it difficult to cope with her and, then he was found to be ill with bowel cancer rather soon after retiring . He developed secondaries in the brain and died at home at Pierremont Avenue on June 2nd 1985.
We found it almost impossible to look after my mother ourselves as we all had young families and she always made it clear that she did not want to live with us. So she moved into the Nathaniel Carter Nursing Home in Dumpton Park Drive, where she was very well looked after and I could take her out for a walk etc. as often as I wanted to. She stayed there until her death on August 14th 1989 (on Nicholas’ birthday).
Millar Family (Teddy’s family)