Leaving the North

Time for another blog. This is all that happened when we took the sudden decision to leave the North and go “South” with my new hubby who had hailed from down there.

Hubby’s stepfather had suddenly died about a month before we married and the main problem was “how will his mum cope?” It was decided that as we (me and future hubby) would take on the house, pay the rent etc and his mum could use her pension as she wished.

So that is what we used to do. Every Friday we would go to the rent office and pay the rent, go to the supermarket and then go home. I always felt that his mum was not happy with me being there and since then hubby has told me she used to say that she wished I wasn’t there and there was just him.

one Friday evening after we had done the rent and the shopping after we had eaten we got our weeks washing together to take to the launderette…his mum didn’t like us to use the washing machine….so that was always part of Friday evening.

This particular Friday we were sitting in the pub while the washing whirled around in the launderette. Sat there I gave out what could only be called a big sigh….and I said” I wish we could pack a case and just disappear” and hubby said “Do you really mean that”…and when I said yes…..that is what we did.

We went back to the house and packed all we could carry….went up to my home and told my dad what we were doing…..my dad said “Good luck son and look after her”. My mum was out at the bingo with her sister and I honestly think that if she was there we would have been talked out of it….and what a different life we would have had.

We told his mum what we were doing and she waved us away. We caught the last bus to Sunderland…then the train to Kings X.

I burst into tears and wailed” what shall we do “I can see me still sat on that station surrounded by all our bits when hubby went to find cups of tea.

We decided to catch a train to Basingstoke…Hubby’s eldest sister and the family lived in a village outside Basingstoke. Stored our luggage and wandered around the town trying to work out what to do…..we decided that as his sister had a young family it would not be fair so we decided to get the train to Newbury near to where his other sister lived so after booking in for one night at a B/B we got a taxi out to hubby’s youngest sister. We knocked on her door and when she answered she looked at us and said “I have just put the kettle…come in “In her mind, she was probably thinking “What the hell!!”

I broke down in tears as Hubby explained…she said we could stay there until we got sorted. Went back to the B/B……lost the money we had put down. Stayed with sister in law and hubby for two weeks on a “pretend holiday”….as they lived in a tied cottage so couldn’t have lodgers. In two weeks Hubby found a gardener with an elderly couple in a big house and I found a job as a cashier clerk in a television rental shop. Thus started our life in the South