family
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The family had moved to Preston Drove in the late 1960s, needing a larger house to accommodate 2 children (and Marigold pregnant with Biff her third child), as well as her mother. Though it had 4 bedrooms and overlooked Blakers Park, it was a slum but the best they could afford at the time
At the beginning of the 80s I was teaching; I couldn't go back to social work - and Rob had left me (1974) with the 4 children so I really needed to get a job, not only for money but (youngest was 4, eldest 12), partly to make me feel better.
By the mid 80s, Jonathon and Mim the two eldest of Marigold's children were at University (Leeds and York respectively), both very political and involved in CND, and Mim was very involved during 1984/5 with the Miner's strike in Yorkshire. The family were still very close and devastated by Mim's death that year in a traffic accident in York
I'll have to mention something here, and its that my daughter Mim died in 1985 in a bicycling accident in York; she died and that had a huge effect on all of us. It was the time of the miner's strike (she was very involved in the strike). She'd warned me that she might be in a bit of bother; she and some friends were going on a picket line at a pit just outside of York. The phone went one evening and I said to the policeman 'is she in trouble, is it the strike?'...they shouldn't really ring you like that and he said 'well, no she's been in an accident'. She was on a pushbike - it was a motorbike knocked her off.
Biff was working at that time at an insurance firm in Queens Road, Eagle Star. They were so, so not understanding when Mim died so he walked out of it. A week or so after her death, we'd had the celebration of her life and everything, he went back to work and they just said 'Are you taking this as annual leave then', and Biff thought he would hit her so he got up and just left. I was very shocked.
She was a very political person, Mim and I think, I mean you can't tell what would have happened. She studied History; she was very intelligent and quite sharp; she was quite a sharp character, impatient and quite frightening really. In her teenage years, she would get quite angry.