Dad's Bureau: A Wedding Present for Life - Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt  features a man sitting at a desk.  It immediately brought back memories of my father, sitting at his bureau - a wedding present from my mother in 1938.  It remained with them through all their many house moves.

This is not a great quality photograph (taken off a slide) 

but it is the only one I have of Dad at his bureau, c.1961. 

I can date this photograph to around 1961, as it was in our new home in Edinburgh,   shortly after we moved there from the north of England.   My aunt (Dad's sister in law)  died of lung cancer.  Dad, who had been a regular smoker for over 20 years,  immediately stopped smoking and never touched a cigarette again.   

Dad - John P. Weston (1912-2003) was born in Bilston, Staffordshire,  in the heart of the industrial Midlands,  the third child of Albert Ernert Weston and Mary Barbara Matthews.   Shortly afterwards, his family moved to Broseley, near Ironbridge in Shropshire.  Dad was always very proud to have grown up in this  historical centre of England's Industrial Revolution.

 River Severn flowing between Broseley and Ironbridge

 

 The famous 100 feet span of the Ironbridge, linking Broseley  and Ironbridge, completed in 1779.   My grandfather Albert Ernest Weston had a 35 minute walk (one way), crossing the bridge to Coalbrookdale where he worked in the Power House.   

 

Dad's work in sales eventually took him to Blackpool, Lancashire where he met my mother in the  famous Tower Ballroom and they married 18th April 1938. 

The bureau wedding present  became an important part of the furniture.  Dad  had left school at 14  years old to work in a local grocer's shop.   Like many of his generation, he continued his education in a "self taught" manner.  He also  had an interest in journalism and it was a familiar sight to see him seated at the small typewriter on his bureau.  He was either ploughing through the paperwork of his job (now a commercial traveller)  or keeping in touch with his widowed mother, sister and brothers  by letter. 

   

We moved around with my father's work from Blackpool to York and then Edinburgh,  with he and Mum retiring back to St. Anne's, Lancashire. Wherever  we lived, Dad threw himself into the local community - he was a people person, a "joiner" and  an organizer of fetes and festivities in the church and village - so out came the typewriter again for "to do" lists and press releases.   

In later life Dad was a regular contributor of  letters to local newspapers - my mother was not too happy about this,  as he could get,  in return,  political brickbats from people of divergent views.   He also prepared talks on a variety of topics  to present  to local societies and I have the originals of his typed scripts. 

Dad often talked about his boyhood and also of  his war-time  experiences and I am afraid it did provoke the reaction “Not the war again, Dad”. We also used to joke about him being in the Intelligence Branch.  It was only later that we came to realise what a life-defining period it was and  I persuaded him to write (type) his memoirs. 
 

 A page from Dad's typing of his early life

A memory of entering France shortly after D Day  in 1944.  

"On the Monday morning we zig-zagged our way across the Channel  (to avoid enemy submarines)  and arrived off the beach at around 11pm, some distance off our landing point.  Sporadic  bombing went on during the night from high level German bombers. We slept where we could on the craft.  Just as dawn was breaking,  at 04.00am the captain started up the engines (there was quite a roar) and we moved in  fast to the beach.  The ramp was dropped, we drove off  - and we were in France!"  

 

I am so pleased I have these now, as they, with the correspondence between my parents (discovered after their deaths),   formed the basis of two narratives I have written  based on Dad's memories.

My parents - a photograph taken 1965 on the day of my graduation from university.

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Mum and Dad  with the telegram from the Queen to mark their 60th wedding anniversary in  1998.  Sadly my mother died shortly afterwards.  

But Dad's bureau remained a potent symbol of  their marriage and the happy family life they created for my brother and myself and I have Dad's memories recorded on his little typewriter.  

 

 Our family in 1965, taken just before I set off for a year in the USA.

 

 Dad died in 2003 a the age of 91.   He would love to have  experienced the world of blogging and I like to think I have inherited his interest in writing and recording our memories.   Thank you, Dad.

 

1971 - A proud Dad and a proud daughter 

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