True Stories: Devon and Birmingham (1950)

This is the story of my grandparents, Bill and Jean. It all started when my grandmother and her friend decided to go on holiday to a little-known, but apparently popular, seaside town Devon for two weeks. They’d saved solidly for a year to go on this coach trip from the smoky climes of Birmingham to the sunnier and distinctly cleaner Devon sea breeze. The very first day they arrived they decided to take a stroll around the town’s “park” which constituted of a grassy open space enclosed by a road which ran around it and a brook running down one side. It was there that they met two local boys, on a motorcycle with a sidecar. It’s fair to say that these men pounced on the clearly out-of-town girls, especially as they had a “strange” accent. After the usual greetings the man on the motorcycle, my grandfather, asked my grandmother out that night, and in turn his friend asked her friend. My grandmother and her friend declined and went on their way. As they strolled around the park once more they found themselves coming face-to-face with the two annoying local boys. “How did you get there so fast?” my grandmother asked. They of course didn’t know at that point that a road ran around the edge of the park. After a few more times of declining and “bumping” into them again, my grandmother and her friend gave in and agreed to go out with them if they stopped following them. The rest, they say, is history. The two friends went back to Birmingham and my grandparents kept in contact by post, once a week, if not more. My grandmother then invited my grandfather to Birmingham to meet her friends and family. It was during that time that my grandfather decided that he didn’t like the hustle and bustle of a big city, something so far-removed from what he was used to “down South”. Because neither family had travelled much they found themselves with the predicament of trying to understand each other, so my grandmother acted as translator for her family, and later on my grandfather would have to do the same for her and his family. She decided to find a job in his town, which she did with great ease, and worked in a hotel with lodgings for a month. My grandfather would come and see her every night, and more often than not, help her to finish up her work so that she could leave. Her boss wasn’t the nicest person in the world and everyone agreed it would be better if she found another job, which she did, but this time without lodgings. So the question was, where would she sleep? With my grandfather? Well, she was allowed to stay at their house, but she had to share a room with her future sister-in-law and her daughter (born out of wedlock). The family couldn’t handle any more scandal! After three months of knowing each other my grandparents went out to a pub one evening and my grandfather sat down and said to my grandmother, “Well, I suppose we’d better get married”. How romantic was he?! She of course she agreed and they married within a few months, however, their friends didn’t survive the distance and found other partners soon enough; and closer to home. They had their first child within 15 months of marrying and went on to have five more and up until my grandfather’s death, they were married for 52 years. So there you have it, a 1950’s long distance relationship with no Internet, no phone, and not even a fast postal service, yet it still survived. And we think we have it tough!