How it all began... The Summer of '74

Lots of people have asked how Lurline and I met, especially our friends in the United States. I enjoy relating the story. It does take some time to read, but if you haven't got anything better to do right now, dear surfers, prepare to be mightily bored!! (you could always download it and read it later on I guess!)

It was August 1974. I had just returned to England from a tour of air force duty at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) at Mons, in Belgium. I'd been promoted, and sent back to the UK to fill a vacancy at 100 Squadron in Norfolk.

Some seven months earlier, my existing marriage had broken down and my wife, Angala, had left me and returned to England with our 16-month-old son, Derrick. It was a difficult time for me. I tried hard to persuade my wife to come back, but without success. She married again and is very happy as far as I know, according to Derrick, who I have only seen once since his mother and I parted. Derrick and I met up briefly in Germany in 1992. That was important to me. He had a lovely girl friend, and I think they are probably married by now. He told me his Mum was happy and that he was very close to his adopted father. That made me very glad. Time and relationships are precious things.

Update January 2001
I learned this last Christmas that Derrick did indeed marry Andrea. They have two children - a boy and a girl, which makes me a grandfather!

So back there in '74, I turned to music to keep my mind occupied on other matters. I began to write songs and performed with a folk band on the base. When notice of my promotion came through, I was sad at the thought of leaving Belgium a year early, but delighted that I had the promotion for which I'd been working for so long.

Having three weeks of leave at home in Yorkshire, and deciding not to visit my wife, I had some time on my hands. My sister, Joyce, solved that for me by introducing me to a young American lady that was staying with friends of hers. Lurline had been corresponding as a pen friend with this couple and it was her first trip outside the USA.

I'd made lots of friends in the US military during my time in Belgium with NATO. Since I'd enjoyed the warm hospitality of my American friends so often there, it seemed an ideal chance for me to return the compliment to one of their fellow-citizens who happened to be visiting England. So one evening, I went along with Joyce and her boyfriend (now husband) John to this other couple's home. It was there that I was introduced to this tall, stunningly gorgeous, leggy, sun-tanned Californian blonde called Lurline.

This girl was different to any I'd ever met before. Softly spoken and attentive, easy to be with and just unbelievably beautiful. She chatted amiably as we walked down to the local pub for a drink. The lounge bar was quite busy, but we found a table and the six of us in the party enjoyed ourselves very much.

Lurline asked me a lot of questions about the air force. It wasn't long before I was telling her about my marriage problems and she listened carefully, only commenting when I fell silent. People in such circumstances as mine need good listeners, and Lurline has always filled that role with alacrity. It was just so easy to let my feelings go.

The landlord called "last orders please", and we drank up and left the pub. Lurline's hosts invited us all to come back to their home for supper, and I had taken along my guitar, having promised to entertain them.

After we had eaten, we sat around the fire and I began to play. I'd done a couple of numbers, and then told everyone I was going to play one I'd written a few months before I left Belgium. It's a piece entitled "Summer Love" and is a kind of wistful piece of imagination that I wrote in the early hours of one morning in my lonely apartment. I had never before sung the song to anyone but myself.

I often sing with eyes closed. Somewhere about halfway through the first verse, I opened my eyes and looked across the room. There, bathed in the flickering orange of the fire's glow, I saw Lurline looking straight back at me, her lips mouthing the words of my song with me. I almost stopped playing! It was totally impossible that she could know the song. Sure enough, she was singing along - no question of it.

I fought to concentrate on my playing. Somehow I just couldn't look away from Lurline now - it was almost as if I had written the song just for her. All the pain of the last eight months suddenly blew away. Over the years, I had been used to playing to audiences of hundreds, but here, in this moment, there was just one person there - I didn't even notice anyone else in that room.

I finished the song and closed my eyes. The assembled company applauded and I knew I would have to look at the vision by the fireplace again. "That was really lovely" said Lurline.

Driving home that night, I sensed that something rather special had taken place. I hadn't asked to see Lurline again. Frankly, I never thought such a very lovely girl would want to have anything to do with a guy like me, married with a child and troubled. How wrong I was!

The next day, my sister telephoned me at home. She told me she had some news for me, and that I was to meet her for lunch at a pub near where she worked. She also instructed me that the news was so important that I would be paying for the lunch! (Joyce has always been very forthright).

Over lunch, Joyce told me she'd had a phone call from her friend. It turned out that Lurline had been very impressed by me and desperately wanted to see me again. "So what are you going to do about this?" asked Joyce, forking another piece of scampi into her mouth.

We decided that I should make some excuse to go back to see Lurline that evening. Memory fails me today as to what the excuse was, but anyway we did go back and this time I made a date with Lurline for the following day. I had been booked to play at a pub up on the moors at the village of Oxenhope.

The next evening, I picked Lurline up and we drove to the venue. Joyce and John were there, but after the performance, I said I would drive Lurline back to where she was staying and we left on our own. I decided to take the longer, more scenic route back. Then, up on the top of the moors, Lurline began to cry.

I stopped the car, and asked what the matter was. She then told me that her host's husband had been making passes at her. As a guest in their home, she was afraid of what could happen. She didn't want to cause a rift between the couple and had no interest in the husband at all.

Obviously a delicate situation. I told Lurline not to worry, and that I would take care of it by coming to pick her up every day and take her out with me. Since I was on vacation anyway, it was a very suitable arrangement. I planned some trips that we could make, and since her hosts did not have a car themselves, it would give Lurline an opportunity to see some of the countryside.

We spent three weeks together that summer. I suppose I did most of the talking, as is still the case. In my battered old white Singer Gazelle saloon car, we travelled the highways and byways of Northern England. We visited the Roman city of York, strolled along the cliffs on the coast at Whitby, went up and down all the Yorkshire Dales. We sailed a motor boat across Lake Windermere and generally just talked for hours and hours.

It all came to an end when I left to take up my new post with 100 Squadron at the end of August. A couple of days later, Lurline flew back to California. It had been a rather momentous summer, but I still had a lot on my mind. Then the letters began arriving. Every week, Lurline would send me a letter - sometimes two. One day three letters arrived in the same delivery. I didn't respond to her letters but never did she mention the lack of news from me. Sometimes she would call me on the telephone. At one stage I even told my work colleagues that if anyone called from California, they were to say that I had been sent on a secret mission to the Far East!

Eventually, I conceded defeat over my marriage. My wife was determined she was not coming back, having set up home with her new lover. I instituted divorce proceedings in November 1974. It was the final chapter of a story that started in 1969. Still, I hadn't written back to Lurline.

In December of 1974, one of the familiar envelopes with the red and blue borders dropped out of the mail sack I had collected from the base Post Office. I put it to one side, and began sorting the mail for the troops on the Squadron. Then I opened Lurline's letter. It was the usual chronicle of what she had been doing recently, but this one was different. It had a P.S.

She said she was considering joining the US Air Force. Something snapped in my brain. "No", I screamed silently - "this girl's not cut out for military service - I don't want her associating with those guys!" but then there was another P.S.

Lurline wrote "I'm a little disappointed that I haven't heard from you". What an understatement! After over three months without a single word back from me, she was "a little disappointed". Have you ever had the feeling that you are the most miserable, heartless, self-centred s.o.b. on God's earth?

I looked out of my office window. The crews were just taking off on a sortie over the North Sea, so I had a bit of time free. I grabbed a piece of paper and slammed it into my typewriter. Furiously I began typing. All the events, feelings and frustrations of the last three months went into that letter. I told her how sorry I was that I had ignored her. It was the best I could do.

That letter arrived in her mailbox in Modesto on Christmas Eve. She wrote me that it was the best letter she'd ever received. From that point onwards, the traffic was really two-way! Then came the eleventh of February 1975.

February 11th, 1975 was an incredibly awful day for the weather. Fog and low cloud had prevented any flying and the aircrews were wandering around the place feeling thoroughly miserable. Someone came into my office and asked if the mail had arrived yet. I said it hadn't, but I was just about to go get it. I drove over to the base Post Office and collected the mail. It was pouring with rain as I ran back to the Land Rover and jumped inside.

Returning to the airfield, I poured out the contents of the mail sack onto my desk, and began to sort it. There was a package from Lurline. I ignored the rest of the mail and opened it. It contained a letter, a Valentine card and a book. I began to read. Suddenly, a ray of sunlight passed over my desk and I looked out of the window. To my amazement, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and steam was already rising from the tarmac as the sun began drying up the water on the dispersal.

The Boss came bounding into the office, grabbed his flying helmet and said "can't believe this change in the weather - tell everyone I've gone flying!" and headed off towards his Canberra bomber. I returned to my reading. Then I looked outside once more. The message was so obvious that I couldn't ignore what was going on. They say God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. Well, He certainly worked a few that morning, because I saw the sudden change to bright sunny weather as a signpost of what was to happen with my life from that point on.

I wrote to Lurline and proposed that we should get married the following year. My divorce was about to become final, and I knew that this was the only right thing to do. For her part Lurline accepted my proposal. We were all set for a wedding in California in September. Then, everything changed yet again.

In April 1975 I was notified that I was to be posted to Germany that September. It was a posting that I had long desired. Problem was that it would alter our wedding plans. It wouldn't be possible to go to the USA. I called Lurline and said the only alternative was for her to come to England and for us to get married before I left for Germany. I knew it would disrupt all her plans and that, due to her father's ill-health, her parents wouldn't be able to come to the wedding. I told her to think it over carefully and let me know in a couple of days' time, after she'd discussed the plans with her Mom and Dad.

Sure enough, two days later the telephone rang, and Lurline told me she had booked her flight to England! The next three months practically flew by. My diary entry for Sunday, July 27th 1975 reads simply "MY LOVE ARRIVES!!!"

The following Saturday, August 2nd, the weather was hot and sunny as we walked arm in arm down the aisle of the Station Church at Royal Air Force West Raynham.

That's how it all began. The end of the beginning became the beginning of the story that has been running now for 30 years, and has brought us three sons and a daughter.