4.Selling up Again

Well after a lot of correspondence back and forth Mum decided she wanted to go back to England where all her friends where. I know Uncle David advised her against selling her house.
About this time the incident with the wall occurred. Mum had built a nice wall between the back and front garden with an arch and nice gate.

The People who owned the plot 12 Warragoon Crescent had put it on the market. He had had a stroke and they wanted to sell the block. After having it surveyed they found that Mum had encroached on their block when building her nice feature wall between the front and back garden and she would have to knock down the wall. Well instead of asking nicely they were very aggressive aided by the real estate agent. The wife of the couple came round to me very abusive saying that all I would be interested in was collecting life insurance if anything happened to Ian.To make it worse they were members of Bicton church. Bruce Fraser did eventually get her to apologise but It was something we did not need. Olwen did not need much to make her decide not to stay in Australia and return to England yet again!

We eventually moved on getting the wall rebuilt on the correct boundary but it is ironic that in fact Ian did die un expectedly when he was 35. Did she have the gift of seeing the future that in fact Ian was going to die and the family did benefit from a life insurance policy but of course it was not all we were interested in. It was very upsetting at the time and a very nasty thing to say.

Anyway Mum sold up anyway to return to England yet again.There was nothing I could do to stop her. It was then I discovered that one of her manipulative ploys was saying that someone had told her that is what she ought to do, someone whose opinion she thought I would value. Usually they had not said anything of the sort. In this case she said her brother David thought she ought to go back to England. He did not. So off she went back to England again, selling the house to the first offer she got .Anyway off she set getting lodging with a lady called Bertha in Freshfield road and bought a flat in Old Town Lane. Her furniture was on its way she had a bed a chair and a T.V. and this is how she spent Christmas.

1980 was the year of our 15 year reunion and I was very keen to go. Bob had established his orthopaedic practice which was going quite well but he needed someone to hold it together. Our friends had done a practice exchange in Canada which seemed to work quite well so we attempted to do it too and we made contact with an orthopaedic surgeon from Scarborough. We gave him accommodation in our granny flat but first he blotted his copy book by making a pass at our friends wife which did not go down well and then he got gastroenteritis but also we realised he was an alcoholic.

So we had to hastily despatch him back to England and Bob had to make arrangements for his patients, if they had any problems to go back to their general practioners as he was not in a group of surgeons and did not have a partner.Anyway we managed to accomplish all that and in September got on a plane to Athens for a stop over on the way to England.

We had a couple of nights in Athens climbing up to the Parthenon on a boiling hot day and then embarked on a four day coach tour of classical Greece. Well the children were VERY good despite Don dropping his camera into the Corinth Springs and nearly getting on the wrong tour bus. Ian nearly drowned in the hotel pool at Nafplion and also left his beloved bag of cars on the ferry over at Pattraikos. Bob and I took it in turns to visit the points of interest and I certainly remember it as being fun but then I am prepared to put up with little setbacks in the pursuit of travel!

We had been told by our travel agents that it was easy to get a cheap flight to London from Athens. Well it wasn't! However Bob managed it I,m not quite sure how and I can't remember which airline it was, but I do know the plane felt very old and was on its way to London from Africa and most of the occupants were black. There were no seats together and we were scattered throughout the plane. I thought our end had come. It has to go down as my worse travel experiences and Bob was not too popular! Our children aged from 5 to 12 all coped admirably.

However we made it to London safely and picked up our camper van at Heathrow and set off, first stop Cambridge where we awoke to the early morning bird song. Then on to Sherwood Forest before visiting George and Rhiannon and quite a few of their grandchildren and then up to Edinburgh. Although the reunion was my main reason for going I do not remember much about it other than we camped in Lucilles drive and visited Rab Milnes lovely house and garden nearby. I was very anxious to show off my Aussie husband and children.

I think Amanda, Bob's niece joined us in Edinburgh, seven in a camper van was abit of a squash.Then it was off to Fort William where it absolutely poured, after all it does have the highest rainfall in U.K. We actually camped in mud but then we set off for my beloved Skye and had a magical view of the Cuillins as the sun came out. Then down to the Lake District and then to a caravan park at Formby point,very windy I remember . On our visit to Pleasureland at Southport Don ran off to play the machines with Ian following, only problem was Don did not know that Ian was following with the result that Ian got lost and ended in the lost property office like Paddington bear!

At Formby we must have picked up Mum to go to Wales so now we were eight. First night was Conway. Mum checked into the local trust house and we camped.Then on to Festiniog for a train ride which Mum did not want to do. (she'd done it all before)! Anyway at Aberystwyth I think we parted company with Amanda and Mum who stayed at Machynlleth to see Vera. We then went on to Dover, a hovercraft ride to France and then Winchester where we had a nice swim in the local pool and lost Bob in the Cathedral. Then we visited Doug and Libby at Dorset and found them in the midst of all sorts of family problems as well. That is what you realise as you get older problems of one kind or another are universal.

Well as you would have realised we had fitted a huge amount in so we were ready to get home but not before we had camped at a wild life park at Windsor where monkeys climbed all over the van. Was it worth it? I will never know! It was for me, to introduce my family to my beloved England. I wonder how much they have remembered and if they thought it was worth it.