GARY in the SEVENTIES continued . . .

Excuse the fingers at the left side of the photo!! I didn't notice them till just now - oops :) Sorry!

BROXBOURNE, HERTFORDSHIRE

-about 1976/77.

Lucy, Gary, me and Wee Annie who lived across the street. We're totally absorbed in a Ladybird book. The publisher of the day for little children. Anybody who had children at this time possessed a library of these little books.

I think we lost ours at the time of the fire :(

Gary, you were the world's nuttiest reader. You would have had me read to you every waking hour and you got so familiar with all your little books, you would stop me immediately if I tried to leave any thing out!

I got to know them so well that I didn't need the book. I could recite them while my mind was busy elsewhere. Mind you, on reflection, was that why you started getting me to read them from back to front!!

The big bug glasses are still a feature - they're awful, aren't they. I will never buy 'up to the minute fashion statements' in glasses ever again!!

BENODET, BRITTANY

1978

Look at that lovely blue sky! I think we had booked the holiday with Eurocamp. Camping in France was all the rage when we were young and because we were living in the South East of England, France was just a hop skip and a jump away.

Do you remember this holiday at all, Gary? You would have been just turning three then. Lucy talks about remembering the journey across on the overnight ferry. Was that Southhampton to St Malo?

My memory is of croissants for breakfast on the ferry with a view of France bathed in sunshine layed out before us. Lucy's memory is of devastation and tears when she thought we weren't going to get onto the ferry when the queue for the ferry started moving forward . . . but Granda Stewart's car refused to start!!

We were pushed out of the line to let the rest of the cars drive onto the ferry and a mechanic was called.

Relief . . . the car started and we finally joined the other cars on the car deck but despair again when we had to be pushed off at the other side? Am I remembering correctly, Ian.

The car managed to get going again but we had to take it to a little country garage and use your higher french to explain what the problem was.

It was a lovely holiday.




Here we are sitting in a cafe enjoying the traditional fare of the region - crepes! Yum yum :)
I was on a diet as usual and regret refusing to eat more than one crepe at a serving. I'm sure everyone else would have but were put off by my reluctance :(

Eight and a half stone. . . and I still felt fat :(
Pathetic isn't it.

BROXBOURNE 

1979

And here we are at the end of the decade . . .you're almost four, Gary, and there's wee Kelly with the familiar glakit look of the newly born.
Those are pyjamas, by the way, that you're wearing. We certainly got our money's worth from them - they just kept stretching as you grew!!

This photo was taken in the May of 1979 and by the September, we were settled in our house in Edinburgh.