Edna Carr Green - Just Keep a Bag Packed

JUST KEEP
A BAG
PACKED

A Memoir

Edna Carr Green

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2013 by Edna Carr Green. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 01/21/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8196-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8197-8 (e)

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Contents

I am dedicating this book to the two people who said they would buy it if I wrote it, Deb Krebsbach and Michael Bourdeaux with many thanks.

1960

I THINK I have t o make it clear here that the 1960s compared to today were rather like the Middle Ages. There were no mobile phones and most people though twice about using the phone because it was expensive. Telephone calls went through an operator who would frequently listen in. There was no way of communicating other than by phone or letter and most people wrote letters which could take some time to be delivered if it was Continent to Continent. There was no internet available to everyone. I have to say this because if I was reading my memoirs I would perhaps think why didnt they just sent an email or telephone. So please try to believe in a world where people were cut-off from each other to a much greater extent.

It all began when I got married; actually, it all began when I thought about getting married. I was never sure marriage was a good idea, and the more I thought about it the less I liked it, but it was 1960 and there was a lot of pressure. Living together was still living in sin and frowned on. God or fate or something read my mind and laughed. From the moment I tied the knot thunderbolts were thrown. I went into marriage thinking that if it didnt work out there was always divorce. But for the next thirty years there was always a crisis that moved that possibility to the back burner.

The Chinese curse May you live in interesting times rumbled through my brain on a regular basis.

I was born and grew up in that usually derided and overlooked pocket of the British Isles known as Northumberland. I also grew up in the 1950s, when the whole of the UK was pretty drear, and the North the dreariest of all. Even potatoes were rationedthats how bad it was. Consumers were trying to buy potatoes, not the latest fashion item or some new piece of software. It was not like Russia, but close.

So in 1956 I moved to London, shared a mews flat in Regents Park, and really enjoyed my life there.

London was enormous fun and a million miles from the gloom of the North. However, towards the end of 1959, the company I worked for was taken over, the lease on the flat was up, and the girl I shared with was getting married, so it was time to go home, where my mother was always pleased to see me. A nice break for Christmas, then come back to London in the new year, look for a job and a flatmate, and start afresh.

While I was at home another escapee from the North, who had managed to escape farther than I hadto Singapore and Baghdad among other exotic placescame home.

We had known each other for ten years and had been part of the same group, although I was quite a bit younger.

There was really no talk of marriage, and I cant claim wild, impassioned love on either side, but we liked each other and had been friends for years. Neville needed a wife, and I was between jobs. Also, he agreed to my kind of wedding. In later years I constantly met men who admitted that after a three- or four-year posting overseas in some remote area of the world, they came home on long leave determined to find a wife. This accounts for some of the strange marriages we encountered, but most of them lasted a lifetime.

I knew that if I had to go through the whole white wedding business it would never happen. I had experienced my sisters wedding and wanted none of it. So we agreed to go on holiday to Spain and marry by special license; and that was really the start of it all.

Our parents, of course, did not believe we would really do it. The thought of anyone marrying abroad was beyond their comprehension. My sister had married in church, in white, with all the usual trimmings.

We drove off on a cold February morning in a 1960s Ford Consul convertible and the colour was sunburst yellow. It rained all the way down the A1 from Newcastle to the first stop just north of London the first day, and it drizzled all the way across the Channel to France. We crossed the Pyrenees in blinding snow, a condition for which the Consul convertible was not suited, and we slithered very close to the edge of the road on many occasions. We also bickered all the way to Spain, our final destination.

In 1960 the roads in Europe were not crowded. We rarely saw a British number plate; in fact we rarely saw another car outside the cities.

We checked into the Hotel Inglaterra on the Paseo de Gracias in Barcelona and then went to the British Consul and asked him to perform a marriage ceremony. A voice from the back room said, And why do you want to get married? It seemed like a rather rude question until the questioner appeared and turned out to be John, a friend of Nevilles, recently posted to Barcelona.

It turned out that they did not dish out special licenses on demand no matter what Neville thought. We were going to have to spend three weeks in the Districts of Barcelona while notices were published. So we spent a few days in Barcelona while John showed us all the best restaurants. Then we decided, for economic reasons, to move out to the Costa Brava. Unfortunately, in those days the Costa Brava closed down between November and March. Even the post office boxes shut up shop, which proved to be something of a problem.

Eventually we found a small hotel run by a family who were bored and offered to open up for a couple of weeks. So we explored the area, practised our Spanish, learned all about tourist Spanish food, and killed time. We spent quite a bit of time searching for English Marmalade because breakfast was unendurable for Neville without Marmalade. Fortunately we found a version, of course the Spanish invented the original. During our whole three weeks we never saw another English person to speak to. Occasionally we saw a British number plate and occasionally parked next to one but, a smile from me produced the same result as that of an axe murderer, so we made no contact. This is not the only time I have had this reaction from Brits abroad.

After three weeks we returned from the coast and checked into the Hotel Inglaterra again. I made a quick visit to the hairdresser, then we took a taxi to the British Consulnot without difficulty, because the taxi driver first had to find out where it was. Eventually we were led up to the Consuls office where a pleasant if disapproving man greeted us. His first words after hello were to the effect that he had paid for the flowers on his desk himself. Then he asked if his daughter could be present because she was off to do this sort of thing next week in Mexico, and he wanted her to see it for herself. Ten minutes later it was all over, and as my husband has repeatedly pointed out over the years, I did not even take off my white leather coat. And so we went to lunch with John and one of the Consulate secretaries, which took around four hours.