I made many friends in my young days, but my best friend was called Claire Collingbourn.
Claire was in the same class as I was at school and we went everywhere together and did everything together as well.
We always sat next to each other in class and played together during the playtimes.
Claire came from a catholic family and lived just across from the school in a large Victorian detached house.
Claire had I believe two older brothers, one of these brothers was a priest and the other, called David, was also training to become a priest.
I spent many happy hours at Claire's house, playing an old wind up record player on which we played classical/ballet music. We used to dance around the room to this music. We also used to swap books on ballet. On my birthday I was given a book about Margot Fonteyn. This book had beautiful photographs of Margot Fonteyn. in her ballet costumes and we loved looking through this book.
I can also remember sitting in Claire's large kitchen of a Sunday afternoon, listening to the wireless. Our favourite shows to listen too were The Goons, The Navy Lark, Round the Horn, and Much Binding in the Marsh.
You don't seem to get shows like this anymore, especially now we have television. These shows were light-hearted and left you feeling good.
I lost touch with Claire many years ago only to meet her brother David when he attended my eldest brother's funeral. He told me Claire had become a missionary spending many years in Africa. Unfortunately she had died a few years earlier.
As I became a teenager, one of the other friends I had at that time was called Diana Bailey. Diana lived on an estate situated not far from Bremilham Terrace. I remember calling for Diana in the mornings so as we could go to school together. Diana's parents always had the wireless on in the mornings to listen to the news and this was tuned to BBC Radio 4.
Diana was very pretty and had gorgeous long red hair. When she left school she went to work in Swindon at a large store called Morse's. Diana I believe worked in the shoe department, and it was Diana who told me about this gorgeous boy who worked in Menswear. He was called Francis Bailey and had asked Diana for a date but she wasn't interested.
I was attending Swindon Technical College at this time and used to go and wait for Diana to finish work so as we could travel home to Malmesbury together on the bus. I used to sit on a small wall outside the staff entrance, and Diana pointed out this boy to me and said she would get me a date with him if I wanted it.
I said OK, not realising at that time that Francis and I would eventually get married. We have been happily married now for nearly 44 years.
