|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. I was born, in Hull, during the summer of 1947 - the first good summer after the war, so my mum used to say. "The war", to which she referred was, of course, the Second World War, during which she had born and begun the raising of my two elder brothers in trying circumstances. My father was the 'one and only' CJH - Cyril James Hawcroft, that was, and my mother was Martha [Meg] Warwick, from Leeds. My Yorkshire heritage was thereby irrevocably established, though the abrasive mix of Hull Hawcroft and Leeds Warwick stock may well explains my schitzophrenic character and subsequent unsettled life. After a miserable, though mercifully brief childhood, in 1963 I was able to extract myself from the schooling I'd hated since my first, frightening, experience of it in 1952. Little did I realise how ill prepared I was for life in the 'adult' world and for earning a living. Having emerged from Kingston High School as an academic failure, I had to set about finding a job. After attending some 60 or more interviews without obtaining a position, my brain finally woke to the notion that, in a time of full employment, I was virtually unemployable. After 11 years of schooling I had no marketable skills, two useless testimonials as to my 'good character', [joke!] and a report book displaying to all the world that the only area in which I had scored higher than other students was in the number of truancy days I had enjoyed. Desperate times call for desperate measures and so, spying a sign in a chemist's window which purported to seek a, 'junior photographic assistant', I nipped into a camera store along the road for a demonstration of some cameras and, armed with my new-found photographic expertise, I applied for the job. Of course I was taken on. Of course, because the job was really for a general dog's-body and gopher and paid only 35 bob a week - about $3.50 for those of you unacquainted with the British currency of the time. Most of my days were spent dusting, counting pills into packets, (yes, it was done by hand, then) or, when I was lucky, running errands for old Mr. Kirton, the tyrant who owned the place.. That was actually the best part of the job because the errands often took me through the docklands and there were always good sights, sounds and smells out there. So began what was to become a first and inauspicious career as a photographic and hi-fi salesman, punctuated along the way with periods as a process worker, bus-conductor, milkman, dog-trainer, RAF policeman, book & carpet salesman, chocolate factory worker, security guard, fruit picker, courier, hotel cleaner, and probably a few other things which I've forgotten. During the course of all this hustle and bustle I managed to spend whatever I managed to earn, (and usually a little more), to marry twice, to sire a couple of kids, to migrate to Australia, and in 1975 to arrive in Adelaide with a new wife and a new baby, an old car, no money, and a tent to live in.
2. Dianne, was my first wife; Dianne Dodds. She'd gone to Kingston, too, and was a cousin to Rayma [Croft], I think, who I'd been with at one stage before fixing her up with my mate Jim [Pearson] who fancied her terribly and who eventually married her. Dianne was a 'lean-Jean' sort of a girl, flat chested, but bonnie, and she turned me on. I'd noticed her while I was 'going out' with Rayma but it was afew years later, after I'd come out of the forces, that I actually took up with her. It was a disastrous relationship with some great love-making but little else to recommend it. I was as stupid as young men often are - chauvinist, aggressive, jealous, possessive. Dianne had a child, Steven, already, and I didn't know how to deal with that. I couldn't hold down a job and resented the fact that Dianne could, and did. It just didn't work and that was largely my fault. Bringing her to Australia was the final straw for her. On our first night here she told me that she was going back to England and within the year, she did. I think it was 17th March 1971 that we arrived in Sydney and 21st December the same year that she flew out of Kingsford Smith on her way back. Steven went with her of course, but then I'd given him no reason to want to stay with me.
|
This site , because only the best will do, is
R.Hawcroft (C) 1998,1999 All rights reserved
