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HOW TOM GOT MARRIED

An additional story from Thomas Brommell

I first saw my wife when she was 9 years old, because we were together on the same farm, and when my future Father-in-Law got to know we were courting he was not very well pleased, and he warned me off several times!!

When she got to the age of 17 or 18 years I asked him if we could get married, and he said ‘no she’s too young’. Anyway I asked once again when she was nearly 20 years old, and he agreed that we could get married, but he laid down one condition that if were going to get married, that we should have somewhere of our own to live. Well it was harder in those days to get flats or houses than it is today. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t leave the area, because of my job, and so I picked up the evening paper and looked in the advertisements, and there in the scrap yard at Worcester was an old bus and it was a bus that had belonged to the circus people some time before.

When I went to look at it the outside was completely broken up, but inside it was immaculate. The furniture was made from mahogany wood and there was a separate bedroom with a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, and in the living area there was still the long back seat of the bus and there was a cooking range and a table and a couple of dining chairs.

I bought the bus for £30, but I hadn’t, passed a driving test at that time, so I had to get someone to drive it home for me, and as we came home I sat in the passenger seat looking in the exterior mirror watching a lot of the outside pieces falling off.

We got it back home and parked it on the farmer’s land at Harltebury and we lived in that for over 2years. In the winter time you could see the frost coming through the roof and yet it never seemed to get damp. There was no gas, electricity or water laid on. We had a natural spring about 150 yards away, so we used that for drinking water, and there was and old well that we used for washing water.

It was very cold in the winters, but I was warm enough in bed!!

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Thomas Brommell (author) and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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