John and Doreen<\/p>\n\n\n\n
17 year old Doreen and her 15 year old\nsister Barbara were the youngest of Fred and Emma Wilcox\u2019s 7 children. Born and\nraised in Lancaster they had been uprooted by their mother to help run a\nboarding house in Blackpool owned by Harry (H), whom Emma had suddenly \u2018taken\nup with\u2019, leaving their mild-mannered, aging father on his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two young girls hated \u2018H\u2019 and missed\ntheir kind, old dad. They hated being made to work in the boarding house. They\nhated the thought of giving up on their dreams. Barbra dreamed of dancing on the\nstage, Doreen of being a nurse. They were not being given the choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Worst of all, they didn\u2019t trust \u2018H\u2019. He\nalways seemed to be snooping around when they were in their bedroom, changing,\nor bathing in the cold bathroom. They took to putting a chair up against the\ndoor at night, and sharing a bath together. They couldn\u2019t tell their mother.\nShe was a hard woman, a disciplinarian rather than a warm mother figure. She\nknew they weren\u2019t happy working there and would think they were making up lies\nabout her new partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John was an 18 year old, on leave from\nhis National Service in the army, at a loose end in his hometown of Leeds. His old\nfriend from school days, Alf, was going to Blackpool for a week\u2019s holiday with\nhis parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDo come with me,\u201d Alf pleaded. \u201cCan you\nimagine what it will be like for me on holiday with just my mum and dad?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John had been to Egypt with the army but\napart from that had rarely been outside Leeds. His parents, Jim and Alice, did\nnot have money to spare for such things as holidays. He had nothing better to\ndo, he might as well join his pal. It was good of Mr and Mrs Cooper to invite\nhim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a long and uncomfortable ride in\nthe Cooper\u2019s Model T Ford they arrived in Blackpool quite late in the evening.\nThe landlady of the boarding house seemed quite severe, setting out the rules\nof the house as she showed them to their rooms. At least the beds were more\ncomfortable than the army\u2019s folding camp beds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At breakfast in the boarding house, John\nwas quite taken with the shy, young waitress with curly, dark hair. He\ndiscovered that her name was Doreen. Being quite shy himself, and prone to\nstammering when stressed, he persuaded his more confident friend to chat to her\nyounger sister, Barbara, so that he could talk to Doreen. After a couple of\ndays of chatting to them over breakfast they took to walking along the seafront,\narm in arm, in the evenings, when the girls had finished all their chores. John\nspent the long days just filling in time until the best part of his day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doreen, in particular, was sad to see\nthem go at the end of the week. Barbara was more outgoing and was never short\nof friends to go out with in their precious free time so wasn\u2019t that bothered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon, however, letters started arriving\nfrom abroad. John was back in Egypt, but the shy young girl he had met in\nBlackpool was always on his mind. Doreen looked forward to his letters and was\nto keep them for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, almost a year after their first\nmeeting, there was a knock on the door of the boarding house. Mrs Wilcox\nanswered the door, expecting a new guest, but there stood John, with a small\nbunch of flowers in his hand and a big smile on his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was the beginning of the end of\nDoreen\u2019s life in Blackpool. She found the courage to defy her mother and went\nto Leeds to live with Alice and Jim and started her nursing training at \u2018Jimmy\u2019s\u2019\n(St James\u2019 Hospital).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She and John married and had 3 children,\nthe youngest of which is me, now aged 60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If my mum had not been forced to work in\nthe boarding house, if dad had not been at a loose end when Alf was due to go\non holiday \u2026\u2026 then I wouldn\u2019t be here writing their story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John and Doreen 17 year old Doreen and her 15 year old sister Barbara were the youngest of Fred and Emma Wilcox\u2019s 7 children. Born and raised in Lancaster they had been uprooted by their mother to help run a boarding house in Blackpool owned by Harry (H), whom Emma had suddenly \u2018taken up with\u2019, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-464","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Carol","author_link":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/author\/admin\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":null,"rttpg_excerpt":"John and Doreen 17 year old Doreen and her 15 year old sister Barbara were the youngest of Fred and Emma Wilcox\u2019s 7 children. Born and raised in Lancaster they had been uprooted by their mother to help run a boarding house in Blackpool owned by Harry (H), whom Emma had suddenly \u2018taken up with\u2019,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465,"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/464\/revisions\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolbarton.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}