We were now into our fourth year in Telford and although we were on reasonably friendly terms with John and Nickie in Dub House 1, nothing was seen of the dubs in House 2. DH1 and DH2 were not communicating at all with each other. Apart from the odd isolated girlish protests reverberating through the walls, it was like living next to an empty house.
This was a bad time for my family. My Son was set for a senior school that was appalling, our 3 choices of school had counted for nothing. My employers had gone bust, so I had lost my employment and the company car that went with the job was taken back. I managed to find some alternative work, but my income dropped severely and I found myself struggling financially. I eventually took out a sizeable bank loan, but this only provided us with a temporary reprieve. Soon, the bank loan too became another millstone around our necks. Things began to look very bad indeed. I started to feel trapped. I felt like the filling in a sandwich.
One afternoon I was alone in the house and feeling very blue. The bank was pressing me for payment and I couldn’t even provide for our daily needs let alone repay the bank. In sheer frustration I yelled “God, get me out of here, please!” Her Ladyship came home and told me that she was sick of living in Telford and even sicker of living in-between JW’s. She wanted to move home. Soon!
A few days later, a series of events occurred that was to change our lives totally. Firstly, we learned that we had inherited some money from a distant relative. Wow, this was totally out of the blue, I had never realised that this relation had any money at all. Wonderful! Now I could pay the bank what I owed. Or maybe not…….! Hmm.
More things happened that week. An old friend came to visit, and I told him of my discontent with our place of abode. He asked me where I would like to live, back in Portsmouth, maybe? I said no, I didn’t want to go back to the city again. What I would really like to do would be to move back to my teenage haunt, back to Weston super Mare in the West Country. Sadly, I couldn’t see that being possible, seaside town don’t have much in the way of well-paid employment.
He was totally taken aback at this and informed me that he knew that his company, Anglian, were looking for a sales manager in WSM, go for it Mike!
Well, I went for the job and was taken on board the very next week. However, I now had some choices to make. I wanted to buy a house in Weston and needed a few thousand for a deposit, but if I paid off the bank that would be the end of our hopes of moving to WSM. What I needed was time to get established in my new job, earn lots of money and then pay off the bank. That was it! We would just disappear until I was solvent. Easy-peasy. Well, not quite.
The problem was that the people in Dub house 1, John and Nickie, knew my Mother very well, and anyone who came looking for me and knocking next door would be quickly directed to my Mothers house. Mum would feel impelled to give away my whereabouts – mustn’t upset the authorities! This was certainly going to be my downfall……. Then I came up with a master-stroke. I invoked an OT custom.
I waylayed John as soon as I could. After a few pleasantries, I tried out my JW tactics by saying: “Do you recall that in Israel, every 7th year was a jubilee year? When all debts were cancelled and people came out of slavery? John, I’m giving myself a jubilee year so that I can escape a creditor temporarily. I’m going missing for a year to another part of the country, I wont tell you where I am going so as not to compromise you. John, if a collector comes looking for me, please will you say that you know nothing , and, more importantly, do not re-direct them to my Mother?”
Straight away, he looked me in the eye, shook my hand and said that I had his word, he would divulge nothing. So, 3 months later, we moved on.
This is pretty well the end of the saga, we moved to WSM and prospered quite well. John kept his word, I learnt later that he had been approached several times and stayed schtum, and for that I applaud him. Radar has filled in the details of the girls in DH2, one pioneering, the noisy one DF’d, as expected. I don’t think that Becky or Craig ever returned to the fold.
When we bought our house in WSM, can you guess what was the very first thing that I did? That’s right, I checked to make sure that none of my neighbours was a JW! Gosh, it’s great living next door to normal people.
THE END.
Englishman.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be....