Part 2 (1966-1979) - 1974 - 1979 - Sophie

SOPHIE....

1975-1979

This was a Bright, Glittering, Intense time of life. And yet it was also a Dark time. This will be one of the most difficult chapters I have to tell. And there is so much to tell, but as I have promised throughout I shall not dwell on minutia – but tell it nevertheless I shall.

Sophie is a pseudonym – she yet lived at the time that this chapter was written. My current family, sons and others, know of her, but I will not draw the reader to find her in the age of the Internet and Social Media.  Sophie was my first great love, my first overwhelming passion, and ultimately my first wife. But Sophie and I were also ultimately not to be.

It was just over 5 years that Sophie and I shared our life. It seemed like a long long lifetime, but it was just over 5 years... It was a time of living on the edge, in the fast lane, of pushing the boundaries of acceptability. There were moments of bliss, and moments of the deepest regret and despair. By the time this chapter closed, in darkness at a cold wet Bus Stop, I was a very different and changed man.  But it all HAD to happen – it HAD to happen to make sure what would eventually follow would also happen ..... 

I struggled through 6^th Form at school, distracted by partying, flirting and having a good time. I failed all 3 of my A Levels, disappointing myself and my parents, and subsequently I left School and went to South Bank (London) Polytechnic to resit them. At College I would meet a whole new group of friends, and the bonds between the Wendy House gang began to weaken and fade as we, as a group of maturing young adults, all moved onto new things. 

It was here at College, in the Canteen on a lunchtime break, that I first saw Sophie. She was a year younger than me. She was short, a dark of Mediterranean complexion, with long dark hair and had flashing inviting eyes. We talked, we dated – it was a beginning. Sophie was 18 years old, living in a multi-occupied house two minutes walk from Golders Green Tube Station. Her Mother and Father were separated. Sophie was close with her mother, but mostly estranged from her father and his much younger partner.

Sophie and I spent increasingly more and more time together. She left her Golders Green house and moved into a house in Tooting, owned but not occupied by her Mother. It was a turning point – I moved in with her and we became a “couple”. 

Montana Road - Tooting Bec

I can remember the evening that I left Berkeley Square penthouse to “move in” with Sophie – my mother waving goodbye to me with tears in her eyes. But I would visit regularly – and I was always remained incredibly close with my parents.

I failed my A Levels again, and took a job as a laboratory technician with the multinational Beecham Products company – working with new formulas for Tooth Paste and Brylcreem. 

We quickly moved from Tooting to another multi-occupied house in Wimbledon. Our house mates were all of our own age, drama students - it was chaotic.

Sophie and I lived a dangerous relationship, entertaining and acceptant of other lovers and other complex relationships. It was exciting, challenging, different. We thought we were so grown up – sophisticated – and perhaps we were. But there were also so many risks.

We holidayed and travelled. We went to Hungary with Sophie’s best friend Suzie. By train across the Europe we crossed the border into the Communist Block. We visited Budapest and then on to the Balaton – that great inland lake. On the shores of the Balaton we got gloriously drunk one evening and sat on a rickety wooden pier, singing Beatle songs with young Russian troops. They couldn’t speak English but they knew the lyrics off by heart.

Sophie’s mother and her boyfriend lived at that time in the villages in the mountains outside Benidorm. We went on holiday several times to visit them, this interspersed with their visits back to the UK.  

Spanish Mountains

Then Sophie decided to train as a nurse, and became a Student Nurse at Kings College Hospital near Camberwell in South London.  I continued to work for Beechams, peddling an ancient bicycle down the South Circular everyday from Wimbledon to Ealing and back. The 20 mile round trip on a bicycle had me incredibly fit, and saved a fortune in beer money that otherwise would have been spent on Tube Fares. It is worth mentioning in passing that I commenced a BTech course in Bio-Chemistry – and left after 6 weeks. I clearly had no interest nor discipline for such study at that time.

Merton Hall Road - Wimbledon

We lived at the Wimbledon house for 18 months, and then Sophie and I moved to a flat in St John’s Wood – this arranged by my father via his varied business contacts. Charles Lane – it was a lovely flat in a North London Mews – and Sophie and I were happy. We had many friends, Martin a local policeman Steve a Barman from New Zealand, and local Nurses from the Wellington Hospital. We were in love and so happy – so it seemed.

The Charles Lane Flat (and Bleary the Cat)

Sophie’s training as a nurse progressed and she travelled endlessly between St Johns Wood and Camberwell to meet the demands of her clinical shifts and studies. Meanwhile I left Beechams, disenchanted with the career of laboratory technician, to work as a Barman in the Sir Isaac Newton Pub. The Publicans were Paul & Diane Thirgood, and were to become briefly good friends.  

The Issac Newton Pub - St Johns Wood

Then we got married!!!! Yes we did... It was planned, it was thought through. Friends and Family were invited. On a clear morning Sophie and I made our vows at Marylebone Registry office and our family and friends cheered us on in the subsequent reception. We honeymooned – and life felt good.

We had many friends, and we had many flings. “Flings” – a euphemism for affairs, and casual sex. We thought we could make it work, but of course we could not.

And then one day, after long reflection, Sophie realised she was Gay, and she told me in one of the most difficult discussions you can imagine. At first I hardly understood what she had said. I thought we could just be as we had been – Dave and Sophie together, with our lovers, and that nothing would change. But that of course was not to be.

Sophie qualified as a Staff Nurse. And I became a Hospital Porter at St Marys Hospital in Praed Street London, close to Paddington Station.

We left St Johns Wood and we briefly shared a flat in Croydon, flirting mutually with the “Gay Community”, still having many “affairs” and flings. But now we were unhappy and ultimately, as a couple, we were doomed to failure, and on a dark bleak night at a bus stop we parted, never to meet again. I was 24 years old.

Despite the pain, the overwhelming sense of loss, it was to be a whole new beginning – and now will shortly pass you onto the New Nightingale Chronicles and the start of the most important new phase of my life...

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BUT – before we move on I must update you on my family ......

My Mother and Father had grown older. By 1979 my father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was increasingly compromised in his cognitive and physical abilities. He and my mother left Berkeley Square House. Briefly my father held another property manager post in a building in the City - but soon had to retire on the grounds of ill health. They were placed in council accommodation, a flat in a large estate near the Barbican. The Golden Lane Estate was a 1950s council housing complex in the City of London. It was built on the northern edge of the City, in an area that had been devastated by bombing during World War II. 

All of this change, ill health and stress had devastating psychological and emotional effect on my parents. This was then further compounded by my mother’s deteriorating health. Diagnosed with bowel cancer, and following surgery that resulted in the formation of a colostomy, she struggled to care for my increasingly confused father.  

Sue was living with her husband Charles in the beautiful village of Ferryside outside Carmarthen. My sister Sue arranged for my parents to move to sheltered accommodation in Ferryside. They would spend the last years of their life there. By 1985 they had both passed away...........

In 1985 Susan also died - following a minor head injury that was exacerbated by her developing Leukaemia.... 

I was alone..... 

But by then there was someone new in my life - Janet (Jane).
And a little boy called Thomas

But more of that later....

And now it is 1980 – and the New Nightingales Chronicles begin.

BREATHE - BREATHE IN THE AIR