Pat - the best next door neighbour you could ask for - born in 1930 (a good vintage)
I don’t know where to start when I think about Pat. She was such a part of my life for the best part of three decades, that there are so many memories - but they’re all entwined in the day to day melee of the children growing up, and us getting on with our lives. I guess I could start at the beginning. I was a teacher when we first moved here. I’d just had our third son, and we moved to Addiscombe to our house which needed major renovation, and I had six months maternity leave. The house to our left was divided into two flats, and the downstairs flat was empty and we had no expectation of it ever not being so - it was a wreck inside! At some point (after doing the essential structural stuff in the house), we moved onto the garden. The fences were rotten, and the next door garden was just an overgrown tangle of weeds and brambles. We decided to rip out all the fencing (I still have no idea which fence was officially ours!) and we piled everything in a huge heap and had ...