MISFORTUNE IN THE 1980s
9152 Basingstoke 2 - Basingstoke Life
Before our move to Basingstoke, we had been living in East Molesey for nearly 15 years; so I had to adjust to a totally new life in North Waltham. My working life at IBM didn't change too much, except that the commute to work was now down to 10 minutes rather than three-quarters of an hour. However our social life was completely different. Being a fairly typical country village in the Home Counties, social life tended to revolve around the church. I'm not certain that this meant anyone was religious, but this was a useful focus for the life there.
Pat joined the choir in the church, and this became the way of making social contacts; at which, like most women, she is much better than I am. It did, though, mean that she had to sing every Sunday morning. It also meant that we had to at least put on the pretence of being God-fearing -- but I didn't find this was particularly troublesome since, being Church of England, it didn't require much in the way of actual effort.
The vicar himself was a cheery old soul, but we were warned not to feed him too much alcohol -- which seems to be a problem of many Church of England vicars. It also meant that I had to visit the church for the main festivals, especially Christmas. On the other hand, this had a certain sense of continuity with the past and it meant that Christmas became rather more meaningful.
As I say, Pat sang in the choir, and this made for some interesting events. Once each year they used to sing in one of the local churches in the village where Princess Margaret went for a holiday. Pat usually found herself singing immediately opposite Princess Margaret, who had commented on her singing. Fortunately, for Pat, the princess was very tactful.
The most interesting event, though, happened one Sunday when the choir had to attend a special service for a christening. Everyone was rather upset about this, especially as it was arranged at the last-minute. However when Pat was making her way there she suddenly realized there were lots of plain clothes policemen wandering around. It turned out that the godparents were Charles and Diana. It became even more interesting, for the baby was the child of Sarah Ferguson's mother. It was, indeed, the first time that Sarah Ferguson had appeared with the royal family in public. This was just before her wedding and was the first test of her nerve. Pat's only comment was that, when this was a quite cold day, Diana was only wearing a thin dress; seemingly even then she felt it necessary to be a fashion model.
The most amazing aspect of it, though, was that the local reporter for the Basingstoke newspaper hadn't bothered to turn out. Thus she missed the biggest scoop of her life. Worse still, even when she knew what had happened, she tried to keep it from the newspaper itself. Thus the Basingstoke News, which potentially had one the biggest scoops of the year, found itself incredibly embarrassed by not knowing anything about it.
As I said, activities revolved around the church. Thus, I remember a residents’ evening at the local pub, which had its own nine pin in bowling alley. It was great fun – but, interestingly, I also met a local businessman there who was to feature in my later job at Mentor.
Another enjoyable event was a ‘rolling’ dinner party which started in one house, with the first course, then moved to another for the main course and then on to another for the desserts. It was very enjoyable, but it turned out that we had to provide a sit-down meal for 40 people at the same time. Amazingly, by borrowing just a few chairs, we actually managed to get 40 people sitting down in the house; which was essential since - being in the depths of winter - there was no way we could do it outside. The cooking was not too much of problem, since I just cooked very large pans of coq au vin and curry with rice.
So, all in all, we found ourselves having quite a good social life in our new home.
Pat even used to go the country dancing, and I initially accompanied her there until I realised that I had two left feet. Pat had two left feet as well, but she chose not to recognize it.
She and a friend also started up a small singing group, called Triangle, for which - as their most notable achievement - they all had necklaces with silver triangles on. That was, though, the height of their achievement; for the actual singing -- they only ever had one concert -- was diabolical. Since then Pat has sung in reasonable choirs and has become very good in the chorus; even singing in the chorus to 30,000 people at the MK Bowl. At that time, though, the group were really appalling. Pat was probably was the only one who could sing in tune.
We settled into a routine, therefore, with the church events and contact with just a few of our local neighbours. On Saturday we used to go into local Sainsbury’s, to do our weekly shopping and pick up fish and chips for our lunch at home. In summer we might vary this by going to local fruit farms and picking strawberries and raspberries. Life was pleasant, but I was still traveling around the country. Of course not long afterwards I moved into the marketing head office, which was just one floor away from where I previously was in the Basingstoke head office of GSD.
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