I was just about to cook Vesta Chow Mein for the family. Aaahh! I loved that stuff, with the little rectangles of dehydrated chicken. A taste of The Orient ! I went in to the kitchen, and found Mr Visick kissing my mum. Big Shock.I burst into tears. " Mr Visick's asked me to marry him, and I've said yes. If that's O.K. with you." What could I say ? I didn't realise a Dad could be so quickly and easily replaced. He'd only been dead about a year and a half, and this was just a man who came to our house for his tea because his wife had died and my Mum looked after his kids after school as a job. I should have seen it coming.  They'd been out for dinner a couple of times. But even so, and he was bald as a boiled egg!

I was a pretty amenable child. Of course I said it would be fine, and thought about what I should call this new Dad. Papa, Pops, Daddio. My older brother, who knew his own mind, said, "I'm going to call you "Sir"." Which he did throughout the whole of their relationship, which came to a pretty abrupt end after the death of our Mother. The one bonus was that we were all allowed to choose a brand-new outfit for the occasion, and I chose a black and red gaucho style maxi-skirt, a frilly white blouse and a black and white checked coat with a wet-look collar, and matching wet-look shoes. I looked the proverbial dogs- dinner.

When they went off on their honeymoon, we were farmed off with various different relatives and family friends, only our family didn't have any relatives, so me and my younger brother stayed with an elderly lady called Mrs Black. It was weird, and kind of lonely. Then we all squeezed into our house until we were able to find a bigger place to accommodate all eight of us. For a while the two brothers called Stephen had to sleep in bunk beds in what passed or a conservatory in the seventies, but was actually more like a makeshift greenhouse stuck on to the back of the house More of which later.