67

For some reason when I accidentally touched the keyboard, I wrote 67 – which immediately made me think of the bungalow next to the Dolphin in the village because it was next door. Our family moved from Cambridge to the west country when there was a re-organisation with the lab where my dad worked as a scientific analyst, splitting what was the Low Temperature Research Station, into two facilities at other sides of the country from each other. There was what became the Food Research Institute, the director of which was my dad’s brother, the other was the Meat Research Institute in Langford, and this was where dad worked. It would have been a bit awkward for his boss to be his brother, but in fact it was because of Dad’s expertise and knowledge of elastin, proteins and lipids.

We moved from Cambridge into a split level bungalow and we all thought it comical that it was on Bleadon Hill – what simple things amused us in those days. Our new home was Number 5, and we lived there happily for several years, my sister and I attending the local school, and then I went to Manchester to the brand new Polytechnic there, and my sister went to the local college.

Our lives were shattered when my sister was involved in a shocking accident, which she was lucky to survive, although it changed her life, and ours forever. For the rest of her life she was in a wheelchair, and my parents moved to the bungalow, #67, here in Uphill next to the Dolphin, so she was able to come home at weekends. I would come home from Manchester where I was now teaching every other weekend, and longer during the holidays. When my parents died, I kept the bungalow and still came home every other weekend – now with my husband and two children, so 67 was our home for a while.

We moved from 67 – it only had two bedrooms and our son and daughter needed their own rooms, and also the bungalow was quite small. So here we are now in 45, but we walk past the bungalow every time we go to the pub – and now there are just the two of us again, we think how perfect it would be to downsize back to No, 67!!

If we ever were lucky enough to move there. Sadly my sister is no longer with us, but I’m sure if we were in 67 her spirit would be there too! My featured image shows the view of our neighbour, the Dolphin!