Page 32 - My Story (final)

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were closed on Sunday. OK, so we named the date as Tuesday, 29 March. We went home and
announced the date to my parents. My father said, “We won’t be there”. Ten days later my mother said,
“Daddy said what drinks do you need, and you can have whatever was left over from Jackie’s reception”.
Most of us would have got through that in a year but my parents were never big drinkers. Then my
mother said, “You and I should go shopping early Tuesday morning and buy food for the reception”.

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So on a gloriously sunny, breezy day on the 29 March, 1955 in the Town Hall in Wandsworth, I
became Mrs. Peter Lanzer witnessed by both my parents, Jackie and Peter, Auntie Fanny, Peter’s mother,
sister and Grandfather, Uncle Fred and Olwyn, my friend Avril and sundry other relatives and friends.
Peter and I were giggling throughout the ceremony because first we’d heard his mother complaining
loudly that the registrar was not wearing a white collar and then the clerk called out for the best man,
“Pogrady! Who is Pogrady?” meaning Phil O’Grady, so I’m afraid we neither of us really heard what
promises we agreed to.

We came out into the sunshine and climbed into the Rolls Royce that Peter had seen fit to order
and drove the short distance to our reception and the case of champagne that my classy husband had
bought. It was a pleasant, friendly reception and everyone left around five. An hour or so later our
friends arrived, and we partied late into the night.

I realise I haven’t talked about Fred Lanzer, Peter’s father, or his family. Relationships between
Peter and his father had always been strained and his father had stopped talking to him altogether at
some stage, while he was still at school. I think he had a major chip on his shoulder because he was an
intelligent man and had been denied a secondary education because his grandfather was German. Otto
Frederik had emigrated from the Kaiserslautern area of Germany as a young man. He was a clarinetist,
although we didn’t know this until after his death, but opened a millinery factory in London after marrying
and finding he had a family to support. He married a lady from Devon, some years older than he and they
had six children – Fred, Tillie, Ted, Albert, Doug and Bob. Fred was the first, born in 1904. When World
War I broke out in 1914 Grandpa was sent to an internment camp in the Isle of Mann where he stayed
until the war ended in 1918.

I believe only the two younger children were allowed a secondary education. Otto himself spoke
perfect English but with a strong German accent and was extremely well read. I remember he had a
complete set of Charles Dickens on his shelves, which after his death, to my horror was split between
various members of the family. But he had read them all and could quote from them. He was also a
great fan of Mark Twain. He encouraged Peter to read and bought him some two hundred books.

When the second World War started Otto was once more sent to the Isle of Mann and the factory was
given up.

So Fred, Ted and Albert had very mundane, blue collar jobs; Tillie married Ted Price and divorced
well and looked after her father; Ted married Alice and they had two children, Odette and John; Doug
married a lady from Devon, Kath, and went to live there in Stoke Fleming. They were very Christian. They
had a son, Alan, who is still there, and I believe less religious. Helen met him in a pub when she was about
eighteen and he begged her not to tell his parents they’d met in a pub! But that is her story. Bob went
to Pietermaritzberg in South Africa, married and had two daughters and became manager of a large
bookshop there. I met a man from there once who knew Bob Lanzer from the bookshop. Bob later
divorced and then married Cecilia, a nice lady whom we met when they came to England and then stayed
with in the nineties on a trip to South Africa. Sadly, Bob then had the beginnings of Alzheimers and got
hysterical about our leaving the safety of Pietermaritzberg for Durban, which I had wanted to visit. So, to
keep the peace, we stayed put! One of Bob’s daughters, Hazel, is in Johannesburg and the other has been
in Surrey, England, since 1979.

So here we were in 1955 married and living in Streatham. We had sold the Vespa in order to pay
for the wedding. It was bought by the heavy young man I worked with at the Coal Board. He was a big,
broad guy and he looked very funny weaving an unsteady course away from us, overlapping the saddle,
after the sale was completed. Peter thought we should look for a house to buy. This was a completely
foreign idea to me – my parents had always rented – but the Taylors always bought their houses and

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