I started my job with Rockware Glass in September 1976 with a couple of weeks management training and then projects at their various factories and the finally a proper job, but in St Helens. Not exactly where I’d planned to end up – a grotty northern town, but hey ho! I found a horrid little flat and had my first very cold winter there. I was up and down to Guildford regularly, then my car died, and I had to use the train. I was very naughty and left early to catch the train from Lime St station in Liverpool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I bought my first house 82 Waterdale Crescent and also bought a Triumph Spitfire. I proposed to Sue in November 1976 with a view to getting married when she finished Uni. A weekend relationship was not easy for us, especially as I was missing Uni life. Work was a chore<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sue graduated and we married on September 8th 1979 in Leicester. She got a job in Ormskirk as a dietitian. We bought a house together in Ormskirk and moved just before Christmas 1979. We enjoyed our life together and joined Rotaract Club and I joined Ormskirk Cycling Club. Rotaract was junior Rotary and we did charitable things with a good social life and made some friends. I started racing again and did quite well in some events, but eventually had to stop when I knocked my front teeth out when I skidded on ice. I met Ron who was starting out with Triathlons and we trained together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A year after our honeymoon we had a lovely holiday in Crete, but when I came back I was made redundant. (Thanks Maggie Thatcher). I did meals on wheels while looking for a job and was only out of work 4 weeks before I got an R&D job at Turners Asbestos factory in Widnes developing non asbestos re-inforced cement. I never understood the job properly but muddled along with no career plan in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sue got involved with some guys from Southport who wanted someone to run a health food shop in Preston as a franchise. Stupidly we took it on along with loads of debt and anxious parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anthony came along. I remember the moment when I couldn’t be bothered to get a condom, knowing the risk, and being delighted when Sue was pregnant. I was not sure she was so pleased. She applied for and got a District Dietitians post in Lancaster. We moved on my birthday when Ant was 6 months old. Sue was still on mat leave but was also postnatally depressed so delayed her start date whilst we found a nanny for Ant. The move gave me plenty to do with getting the house ice and running a business. We opened a cafe as well behind the shop and I employed 7 part time staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I started my job with Rockware Glass in September 1976 with a couple of weeks management training and then projects at their various factories and the finally a proper job, but in St Helens. Not exactly where I’d planned to end up – a grotty northern town, but hey ho! I found a horrid little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4iQp0-47","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}