Back at Canvey Doreen's mum was getting to like me better and life was good, one thing about Doreen's mum is that she was a fantastic cook and I have never tasted such nice Yorkshire puddings as she made. One day we went up to the west end of London to see the stage show
West Side Story" in 1959 and had seats in the front row of the dress circle and we ate sweets with rustling paper (what a memory).Doreen was 18 on the 16th October 1960 and we had a quiet wedding at Grays registrar office on Friday October 21st 1960, Harry and Val were there and my mum and Rosie and after the marriage ceremony we drove back to the Blinking Owl cafe on the Southend Arterial Road and had a chicken dinner.
On the Saturday we had a reception at the Lobster Smack pub down Haven Road Canvey, now this is an old smugglers pub dating back to the 17th century with big oak beams we had the reception upstairs and had a good time so this was the end of my roving days and the start of my responsible job of raising a family and being a good boy.
I borrowed a car from one of the Regent drivers for a week (it was a ford consul) and that was our weeks honeymoon.
Looking back on my bachelor days I can honestly say I enjoyed myself, I had done things I should not have done, seen things I should not have seen, and said things I should not have said and told a few “porkies" but this is all a part of life. But l never did anything that I am ashamed of and as I have said the fifties was a wonderful decade and I have many happy memories. Although we got into a quite a few scraps never once did we resort to the use of knives or boots, we more than likely upset a few of the older generation with some of our antics but once again it was, to us, all a bit of fun and we never used violence.
If there is one regret looking back in hindsight it is that I had more beers than women and if I could live my life again I would reverse that as you can always have another beer later but not so another woman.
After we were married we stayed with Doreen’s parents (who lived in the Parkway) for a while, now they only had a small place and we lived in the front room with a fold down divan and there was not much room.
At this time the Canvey Council had a scheme going in which (if you could manage the repayments) gave you a 100% mortgage so all the money you had to find was the stamp duty and solicitors fees.
The criterion used to determine how much they would lend you was that the repayments did not exceed 25% of your net wage, and as I had a good job they lent me all of the 2400 pounds to buy a house.
This worked out at sixteen pounds a month which we could afford so we had a local builder called Charlie Fisk build us a chalet type two bedroom house(with garage)at 266 Thisselt Road which was on a fairly large corner block that overlooked the lake, on the next block to us they built a pair of semi-detached chalets.
Now the estate agent we used to buy the house was also a counselor who sat on the committee for loan applications (so you can see the logic in going to him) his name was Sid Alterman a small Jewish man who also built Canvey Island's first shopping arcade and he was a nice guy.
So within a very short time since our marriage we had moved into our own home with very very little furniture and fittings but room to move around and this also gave the room we were using back to Doreen's parents. As I have said this house had a fairly big garden so I devoted a lot of my time in making a very nice garden plenty of flowers and a nice weeping cherry in the middle of the lawn, I also built a cedar wood and glass lean-to on the back to give us more space to put things.