Spring in my step as our little family goes back to my root

As I left for work the morning after Marion and I had made the decision that I would give up the cinema life and return to the one job that I had always been proud of – that of a journalist – I felt a new spring in my step.

The previous day I could have told Tom Roberts that I would take the reporter’s job on Anglesey but that was not the way Marion and I operated. Big decisions affecting the family, which moving from Basildon to Anglesey certainly was, had to be considered together.

When I got to my office that morning I called Tom and said I would be delighted to accept the job as district reporter for the Chronicle, based in Holyhead. He took details of my address, and the telephone number at the cinema, and said he would send written details of the job but as far as he was concerned, and myself of course, it was all signed, sealed and dusted.

My next job was to call my area manager and give in my notice,

From then on everything was like a whirlwind,

I was still working but at the same time the house had to go on the market; we had to find a place to rent so we had somewhere to live initially before we found a house to buy; most of our furniture would have to be stored because our first accommodation would be furnished; and all the other things that needed to be done before our little family of four could head up to North Wales.

As it happened Marion’s parents and other relatives found room to take our furniture until we could arrange our permanent reaidence.

The next four weeks, well slightly less as I had leave owing from Rank, quickly passed and our departure from Basildon dawned and we headed to North Wales and a bungalow we had rented in Valley. The house had been sold but there was still all the legal niceties to be sorted out.

It was spring, 1977, and it was the start of a brand new life, home in my beloved Wales with my beloved Marion and our girls.

On the Monday I would be in the Holyhead office at a desk with a notebook, pencils, a typewriter and a phone – plus a stack of copy paper.

I was happy.