| Chapter 1: | Revisiting Fred Ball: Reminisces on One of The Damned |
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Dad hung him over the side of the pier by his collar and threatened to let him go if he did not behave! My mum was an easygoing woman and a pillar of strength to the family. Dad used to say she should have been the next Chancellor of the Exchequer due to her great skill in making the money go wherever it should. She was a stickler for routine and order and even Dad knew when to tow the line. We were a very close-knit family, but the war changed all that. I was evacuated, and my mother and elder brother went to Bath, Somerset. She duly picked me up from Hertfordshire where I was with the school and took me back to Bath to stay with her and my brother. We came back to Hastings in 1942 where we were met by “Doodlebugs” ( flying bombs). This was the end of my education. After that I was educated by a retired lady schoolteacher in one of the bedrooms of her bungalow. As she was elderly (a very sweet lady), we, being about nine in total, used to tease her and pretend a doodlebug was on its way, whereby we would all run to the shelter for cover until the lesson was due to finish. The old lady was never any the wiser due to her poor hearing.
In 1945, the war ended and so did my education. My parents were aware of my lack of skills in so many areas and decided to send me to a secretarial college to learn shorthand and typing. During this period I realised my own lack of experience in English so I decided that I should take myself off to night school, which was only five shillings for the winter term, and I attended twice a week for the pleasure. On finishing these courses I got myself a job as a shorthand typist at the Gas Board where I stayed for sixteen years. It was here I met Fred Ball at the age of twenty-one.
Collaboration and Partnership
My father went on to produce his first biography of Robert Noonan, Tressell of Mugsborough. It was during a rewrite of one of the chapters that he gave the handwritten copy to my mother and asked if she would be willing to type it for him.