Page 71 - It's a Rum Life Book One "In the Beginning 1947 to 1960"

the birth certificate! Grandmother, still living in Boston with her
lodgers and still supplementing my parent’s income from her
stalwart efforts, came to our rescue. After my parents had
moved out of Boston, I had continued to spend my weekly lunch
hours with grandmother and as well as being fed, I ensure that
any odd jobs she needed doing, were not left unattended.
This was when Grandmother produced my original birth
certificate and dropped the bombshell about my registered name
not being the one I had always thought it to be! Fortunately she
also had that all important “second” marriage certificate
positively connecting me to the family name.
I had to engage the efforts of our local Notary Public to
construct the papers for a change of name by “deed poll” and to
this day, this irreplaceable document is the one I have to
produce for anything and everything to do with official
documentation.
To conclude, let it be said we had the wedding we desired
and our small reception in our flat afterwards. Mother had
constructed her own as usual mammoth “spread” for her family
at the Swineshead Bridge House. Reconciliation was affected
and Ruth and I did managed to get the use of that Renault
Dauphine for our honeymoon; first night at Baden Powell House
in London (as both were warranted Scout leaders what else
could be more suitable); and then on to Porlock in Somerset.
The weeks of frustration and the not knowing whether this
or that would be possible was typical of the life inflicted on the
family by my mother. Now Ruth and I were starting our own
lives, I was determined that influence was at an end.

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