Whilst the events described happened, the dialogue is not always a clear memory and when writing from my wife's point of view this is as I remember her telling me as she isn't interested in talking about this part of our lives anymore. Names and some places have been changed to ensure privacy of those mentioned.
Although each story is written to stand alone, they are in chronological order and best read in that order. If you haven't read previous, then these may make little sense.
There is no sex described in this story just answers to questions raised; any hint of sex does not involve anyone under the age of 18.
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A number of questions have been asked and I am happy to answer them in this my final submission. If Carol should decide to open up again about her experiences, I'll encourage her to write them here although I don't think that is very likely, so I'll answer that question first.
Q Why won't Carol talk about these times?
I think she would if she wanted to, but she has gone back to her church. Carol was brought up in a strict catholic family so maybe part of her enjoyment and enthusiasm in our early days was a 'stuff you' to that upbringing, who knows?
Now she goes every Sunday, sometimes midweek as well and just won't discuss what we did to survive when younger. Mind you she did smile before her first confession when I suggested that she asked the priest to book the whole day for her!
Q A mortgage at that age?
Having a mortgage at our age in 1973 was not unusual if you both had steady jobs and a good % as a deposit, many of our friends did same.
What I didn't mention was that we both left school at 16 and had worked for over two years with a decent amount of savings as both our parents almost strong armed us into saving 50% of our wages. This meant that our deposit was almost 40% of the purchase price. It was also a house that needed extensive modernisation, so prices were reasonable and affordable.
Basically, the risk to the building society was low should we default which all helped to secure what we needed.
Q Blockbusters didn't exist in the years I referred to them.
It was John who worked in a TV rental shop and was able to 'borrow' one of their VHS players when he locked up on a Saturday night along with any demo film tapes. He returned it on the Monday when he opened up the shop.
I was using 'Blockbusters' as a shorthand description as thought that was easier than going into a long-winded explanation. Later a local corner shop started to rent VHS and was very popular, but he suffered when Blockbusters launched a few years later.
Q Bit vague in places