We married in the summer vacation of 1969 before Jean started her new job in Oldham Unfortunately we had already offered on a house in Marple on the edge of Greater Manchester town and country. The view over Manchester below was stupendous. That meant a tricky commute to Oldham through Hyde and Dukinfield. A colleague lived close by so they shared lists from time to time.. She was a history teacher with some religious education. It was a bizarre school, an independent grammar school that used to be called 'Direct Grant' as opposed to Local Authority schools. The heads of departments came out of the ark and we still have Miss Roker's greening academic gown with occasional cigarette burns, all a bit of a change from the rough and tumble secondary moderns of her teaching practices where the high spot was Shite O'Brian, nicknamed for her vocabulary. Once I remember she got to school only to find she had lost her voice - not noticed earlier since our morning routine did not include conversation.
From those four years in Oldham some friendships still exist. Among her pupils were daughters of a Yorkshire TV producer who reappeared in her life unexpectedly. As she graduated in Oxford's Radcliffe Camera for her MSc in 1986, the eldest daughter graduated for her PhD and we found ourselves reminiscing with her step-mum and sister, her own mother having died a decade before.
My time was taken up with PhD research for which I had three years funding. My undergraduate work had been in critical Biblical Studies and my PhD focussed on ancient Hebrew marriage, something that had been scarcely tackled up to then (1970). That was finished in 1974 before a major wave of feminist study linking exegesis (explaining what texts say) to female experience today (hermeneutics) enabled writers to go down relevant experiential wormholes. Times have changed and my own normal advice to my PhD candidates to to look for depth rather than breadth, contrary to the advice I was given.
When funding finished in 1973 the mortgage still had to be paid. My grant had been £600 per year, the house cost £4300 and the monthly mortgage was £22 6/8. We wanted to start a family so needed to supplement my wife's salary. Pregnancy normally meant giving up your job in those days. Pregnancy happened very quickly and I was offered a post in Buxton, a new convergence of grammar and secondary modern schools. I had not done a PGCE, which was not required then, so it was learning on the job in the deep end. The baby miscarried in November and there were no more pregnancies. Throughout the 1970s a succession of crude medical interventions were unsuccessful. IVF was first successfully performed in 1978. Discussions with the adoption services accepted our application eventually, but after four years of ineffectiveness. We offered a home to up to three siblings, any colour or condition, but they would only sanction a white baby (who never appeared). The 'service' had no further communication with us. Additionally our niece died of meningitis aged eight in 1977. So all in all it was not a good decade.
The merging of two schools did not go well. Nor did starting a teaching career without guidance or mentors. My Head of Department had a nervous breakdown in November (I found him crying in the cloakrooms) so I was in charge of a department of one. My teaching load was around 800 pupils, one lesson a week so it was hard to build relationships, hell at report time. I had more time with pupils who did not want to be there. It was ROSLA year when the school leaving age was raised to 16 leaving a reluctant cohort imprisoned and unable to get jobs. So I looked out for teaching posts which meant I could leave mistakes behind and have GCE classes. It was rare then for an RE teacher not to be a regular churchgoer so an atheist like me did not fit in well, so my next job was in Wiltshire a local authority grammar school about to go comprehensive. That meant a major upheaval moving house and for Jean a change of job. Reflecting on those choices in retrospect, that was not a good decision. The distance from family and friends. My new school had many failings and poor leadership. Jean had opportunities for promotion in Devizes, though her line manager was misogynist which had mental health implications.
I was offered a term of 'schoolteacher fellowship' in in St Martin's College, Lancaster in 1979 hoping to turn my PhD thesis into a book. That did not succeed, but had other implications. The decade allowed us to see my mother's sister in Portsmouth, who we became close to, and my grandparents in Nottinghamshire, a rather longer journey. Salisbury also had a good theatre, often frequented. However, retrospective reflection contain moments of regret and none of this was easy on Jean, a guilt I now feel strongly. It left Jean at the mercy of grunting hedgehogs and an escaped tiger which made the national news. The circus came to Devizes and a tiger escaped and wandered around the school. While senior staff hid in their cloakrooms, Jean rounded up the pupils outside to bring them to safety. This is how management delegation works: never do anything you can't get some other poor soul to do.
The staff begged me to be the union rep in a school that was increasingly unhappy. That was probably a mistake and certainly brought me no benefit. The headteacher regarded me as a threat, not a supportive helper and our relationship was soured. The chance came for university level teaching, so the 1980s saw many changes.
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