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Harry: part 4

Follows after the cut

After leaving Oxfordshire. As Harry went to Germany, the family had been allocated a house on the new Clifton Estate. At the time in was built it was the biggest council estate in Europe. When they came back to the UK it was to here that they returned.
However, my grandfather didn’t join them. His next posting was at Bestwood Lodge in Arnold, which was the base for Military Electrical Engineering. He went on a 3 month course to use computers “which were as big as rooms”. Coincidentally at about the same time Olive was working in the computer room of the engineering department of players.
Whilst he was posted in Germany he had met another woman (whose name I don’t know-she is not much spoken of) and lived with her in a caravan near Bestwood.

Next he began working at the recruitment office in Nottingham. Though no where near as exciting as some of his previous posts he certainly seemed to enjoy this job a lot. (It, like much of his career doesn’t sit comfortably in my world view, however, this is his story and he enjoyed it).

It was during this time that he got together with the woman who was to become his second wife, Catherine. After his long term girlfriend sadly killed herself. My mother never made any secret of her disapproval, Cate was (and still is!) a month younger than my mother.

After 13 years of work in the recruitment office my grandfather retired. I was four (and a bit) at the time. There were special blinds in the offices that were apparently bomb proof. We had some of the chain material, that they fixed onto them, at home, and quite honestly I think it’d barely withstand a firework.

“Not being one to stay still” my grandfather’s retirement was less of a retirement and more a career change. He took up gardening, and at one stage seemed to be landscaping every garden in West Bridgford.