The pool at Rosewood.

At the present moment, I am 79, Reg is 75 and Frank is 72. I have gone in front in my story, and I forgot to say that Reg did marry, but unfortunately it only lasted about twelve months. He took his wife to her mother's when he was going to work, when he went to pick her up, her mother came to the door and said that she was not going back with him and she would never know what a good man she had given up. He never married again but he would have made a fantastic father, my children treated him like one.

Mary and I were fifty years old when we left the newsagents. We let the shop and business out to a big store, Dixon's, then started to visit caravan parks. One weekend we travelled to two caravan sites on the South coast. One was on the East coast at Cromer.

We liked this one, but when I rang the owner at Cheltenham, where he lived, he said the price was wrong in the paper and it was £5,000 more. I told him he could keep it. There was one left on the list, in Wales. Mary said she did not like Wales but in the end we decided to go and see it. When I rang the owner he said there was a force ten gale blowing and suggested that we leave it to another day. Little did he know that these were the sort of conditions I liked to view property. The reason being, if I like it then, I will love it when it's nice and sunny.

The place we arrived at was about 4-5 miles outside Aberystwyth, Clarach. Before we went up to the park we had lunch in the car park below. The wind was howling, the rain was coming down in buckets, but I looked at that site and said to Mary, 'that's the one'. She said that we hadn't even been in there yet, how did I know. I said I had that feeling, and I was right.

In 1974 we arrived in Clarach at the Black and White. The gentleman who had owned it had not run the site himself. He had got two final year students to run it and they lived in the bungalow, so we let them stop in one of the caravans units until they had finished their exams. They were a big help on the site as they knew all the do's and don'ts. The one sad thing was that George, one of the students, got a position as an engineer and his girlfriend was going to join him. One night after work he was playing squash and had a heart attack. His girlfriend was devastated.

The bungalow was a timber structure with asbestos sheets on the outside of the roof. Nigel's horse, Firecraker, was in the country at Homestead. We used the horsebox to bring windows down from the Midlands. One week after we arrived, I took all the windows out, bar one in the big bedroom, and we all slept on the same room.

To say that I took on these jobs without much experience was amusing. Next to the bungalow was an old wooden building. It was called the Black and White restaurant and shop. Mary said we would repair it and open it. I said I would do it up but when it was finished I would not put my foot inside. She asked what we should do with it then, and I said we should let it deteriorate and then get planning permission for two bungalows. It took 18 months to get permission. There were thirty caravans on the land and the people staying were mainly from the midlands. The rents for the year, that was March until October, were £67. Today they are over £1,000. The site cost us £30,000. Today the same site would cost about £350,000. The owners consisted of retired people and they were fantastic, all from different backgrounds. In the summer they would come and ask me if they could mow the lawn. Old Harry Fisher would go mad when he stopped for dinner and I would knock on the door of his caravan and ask if there was anything wrong with the mower.

At the caravan park with friends.

Mrs Harford would help to clean the two caravans we owned. If I wanted something to go round the site quickly, I would say to her, 'I am telling you this, don't tell anyone else'. Within half an hour everyone else at the site would know. Nobby Clarke was the oldest commercial traveller in Birmingham. He was 80 years old and played everybody up. He would bring tools he was selling, show them to me and say have one and I would say "Thank-you". When he showed them to Mary she would ask how much she owed him. Silly girl.

We got permission for the bungalows, so now how to build them? I had never done any bricklaying before so I went down to my next-door neighbour who was a builder. I called at Peter Jones and asked him if he would do it for me. His reply was very sharp; "No, I'm not going to build your bungalows". I thanked him anyway, and then he turned round and said I was going to build them myself. He knew I had never done anything like that before, so I asked him how. To cut a long story short, every morning he came and showed Mary and myself what he wanted doing? Mary called it "blood, sweat and tears". Bar the roof tiles, we completed the lot. Gary, Nigel and Reg also helped a lot taking the old place down. The site was in a lovely spot overlooking the sea and it is very nice to go down and look at what we built.

Gary had taken his 'O' levels at the boarding school and decided to come home and take his 'A' levels in Aberystwyth. He also wanted to start mixing with the Welsh boys and girls. We had a great benefit with Gary at boarding school because they had to do their homework straight after lessons and when he came home he carried on the same practice. Nigel followed Gary and did the same, so we never had any problems getting them to study. The lads got on well with the Welsh boys and girls and they still keep in touch.

One of the reasons we decided to go into caravans was because it would give us more free time. The site was closed October to March so we could go abroad. We made the most of this time by going to Spain, Greece, cruising etc. We missed most of the winter months and headed for the sun. If I was thinking of going into business again it would be caravans, as the owner you held all the aces. If somebody wanted to leave, you would ask them how much they wanted for their caravan, if they say £6,000, you say £4,000 because you know they can not put a 25ft caravan in their back garden. As we were in it for semi-retirement we tended not to be too hard on people.

In 1986 my brother Reg decided to retire from Wesson's, the steel company in Wednesbury. As he was not married, he came to Clarach to live with us. This gave Mary and I more time to do other things, including more holidays. One day I said to Mary that I was going to go out and find an acre of land to grow a few crops, as by the sea the salt killed things off. This was the only time I did something and never asked Mary what she thought. On returning she asked if I had seen anything and I told her I had put a deposit on 5 acres of tip and the foundations of a house. She was not very pleased at the time.

The lady who was selling the ground was only a young girl with a baby daughter. Her husband was a builder who had left her for another lady and gone to Africa. The ground was an old lead mine but I had seen a lad clearing a site not far away so I asked him if he would tip it onto my ground. What luck!

As I have said, the reason for taking on a caravan park was that we had the winter months from October until March free. So work started on the site as soon as we finished at the caravan park. Reg and the lads, Gary and Nigel, were a big help, but if ever the house is taken down, Gary's name will be on quite a few of the breeze blocks. Mary kept an account of every thing we bought.

Sunnyside Villa, March 1986.

I had the ground levelled then spread the soil over the top. I would think it made a covering of about 4 to 5 inches, so then we had to decide what to do with it. Mary had the brainwave of seeding it with grass and making a small golf course. We never put in for planning permission, because it was only approximately five acres, but on today's Ordinance Survey map it is down as a golf course.

The grass took very well but I wouldn't risk livestock on it. After a time, 3 or 4 years, we decided to apply for another house. Glenys and Bryan were retiring from the local post office and they were people who we knew. It is very nice when you can choose your neighbours. They became friends and remain so to this day. When we had completed the bungalow, Mary and myself moved down to Old Goginan and Reg stayed in the bungalow on the caravan park at Clarach. After a few years of semi retirement we started to think of something else, so we sold the house we had built. Mary said she had had enough labouring so we had a local builder, Mr Weston, build the new one. The plans of the bungalow came from a design from Spain.

The small golf course had nine holes. They were approximately 100 yards apart, so it was quite a reasonable distance for a small course. This was the time we made a big mistake. We sold the caravan park when we should have kept it and let my brother run it. You win some and lose some. That's life.

The bungalow had a garage attached, but we converted it into a flat for Reg and built a separate garage. Reg made himself useful by building the septic tank outside. He must have made a good job of it because to this day it has not been emptied.

Mary and myself went on a good many holidays, especially to Spain on the Costa Del Sol. My brother Frank and his wife Doreen bought a timeshare off Barratts with us. We had four weeks between us. At that time, being in Wales, we were only about thirty miles from a Barratts resort and we could use the facilities free of charge. There was a steam bath, sauna, Jacuzzi, and indoor and outdoor swimming pools.

The lads had settled down and were happily married. Gary had two children and Nigel had two. They were both doing well in their jobs. Gary likes working for a firm but Nigel is more like me and after a few years decided to set up his own business. They were both down in the London area. Nigel worked for a small private firm, but after a few years his boss was killed in a horse riding accident. After a few years with a large firm in London, he set up on his own. He acquired some premises and, as Mary and myself were retired, we went down to do some alterations with him. He took over the name of his old firm, Barnes, Kirkwood and Woolf, and I am pleased to say that he seems to be doing very well.

The boys were settled and we were enjoying ourselves, but life is not always predictable. We went to Rome and Athens and sold the timeshare in Spain and bought one in Lymington. Mary was 74 years old when I said to her that she was losing weight. She went to the doctors and she thought she had glandular trouble, but it was more serious than that. Then came the most distressing news that she had cancer of the bowels. She had an operation and treatment but within a year she passed away, on the 13th October 1998. It was the saddest day of my life. As I say to young folk, you enjoy life while you have got one another. I am glad we did.

My life is still going on and I try to fill it, but it takes some doing as you will understand, on reading this story. I am closing this chapter down. This is 12th October, 2005.