Parents Dorothie and Stan came from a respected business family having a Hotel and Garage/Taxi business. Before motor cars came along they had horses and ran a horse-drawn funeral concern. Marjorie often spoke of the beautiful matched black horses with their black plumes and all the drapes. She used to play in the hay loft with Roger and her friends.

Father Stan had two sisters, Marie (Edith Mary) and Zita. There was a brother, Cyril, who died a bachelor. When Stan and Dorothie moved to Hotel Victoria in Holywell, North Wales, just before World War 2, Cyril and Marie took over the garage business and when Cyril died Marie ran it by herself.

At that time Marie was still single, but she married late in life to Harry Bearne, who had been the Ormskirk Postmaster before he retired. Harry was a very big West Countryman with a booming voice. Marie was very short but also had a loud voice and at times sounded like Grade Fields, I think deliberately. They both became rather deaf and it was quite painful to listen to them talking to each other. Harry died a few years ago and Marie died of cancer after major stomach surgery in June 1989. I went to her funeral.

Zita is as lively as a cricket although well over 80, and is the oldest living member of the Browns. She married George Dickenson when she was quite young, against the family wishes, and still lives in their house in Ormskirk, with her oldest son Basil. He is deaf and dumb, and Zita had to learn sign language to talk to him. He works in a local brass foundry, and is looking forward to retirement very soon so that he can get about in his car, of which he is very proud. The younger son, Edward, deals in Ships' Paint and lives nearby.

Marjorie's mother Dorothie (Dolly) was the backbone of the family. Her maiden name was Scott and there is a loose connection with the Bowes-Lyon branch of the Queen Mother. During World War 1 father Stan had been gassed in one of the battles which accounted for his lung condition of which he died. He was a heavy smoker and always seemed short of breath. He was a good amateur actor with a flair for comedy according to Marjorie, who must have got her own acting talent from him and passed it on to Gay.

While Stan passed his time entertaining his cronies in the bar, Dolly ran the Victoria, cooked the meals, looked after the paying guests (mainly the two Misses Woods and Commercial Travellers) and supervised the staff - Alf the potman and Kate the maid/kitchen help. They were both what is known as 'sixpence short of a pound' but they worked well enough, although exasperating Dolly at times.

After Stan died Dolly ran the Hotel on her own. Barbara, Roger, and Marjorie were all married and away and young Stan was in the R.A.F. and later studying to be an Auctioneer/Estate Agent, although he helped out when he could. Eventually she sold up and bought the 'Firs', a large house on the road to Chester. Stan and Eunice lived with her and she sometimes helped out in his office. When she remarried Bob Barran she sold the house to Stan and moved several times to houses or bungalows in the Conway area. Bob and Dolly died in the same week and she is buried in Rhuddlan cemetery.

It was Dolly who served me with a pint of beer in the Private Bar just after I arrived in Holywell in late May 1943. She said to Marjorie "There's a nice young soldier in there, go and tidy up the fireplace and have a look at him." When Marjorie came back to the kitchen she said "But he's got such a baby face!"

Roger had been an engineering apprentice at Thorneycroft's, and when War broke out he joined the Royal Navy and became a Petty Officer on minesweepers, working with the same engines which he had been working on in the factory. On one of his leaves he gave Marjorie a pencil sketch of herself which an artist in a pub had made from her photo. The artist was a Mr Rattigan, who also did an oil painting 'Lobster Pots' which I bought a few years ago at a local Catholic Fete. We found out that he lives near here at Houghton Regis and went to see him. He couldn't remember doing the sketch but said it must have been done in Dublin, because he was in Eire all through the War. He came to Marjorie's funeral.

I met Roger for the first time in the evening of Barbara's wedding to Lindsay, which I could not attend because I was in embarkation billets in Birkenhead during the daytime. After the War Roger set up in a garage near Holywell, married to Amanda from Preston. The first child, Victor, died as a baby, and a later baby, Roderick, also died. They also had Stuart, Amanda, Goronwy and Aloysius. The garage business did not work out, so he took a pub, the Mason's Arms in Denbigh, which Amanda ran in the daytime while he repaired and sold second-hand cars. That didn't work out either so took a job as Chief Engineer at Marston's Biscuit Factory in Denbigh. He was responsible for buying and installing new machinery and inventing new methods.

Burton's Biscuits bought Marston's and moved the factory to Llantarnam, South Wales. He went down there as Chief Engineer. He bought a house on the Caerleon Road on the bank of the River Usk, which has an impressive tidal wave twice a day rising almost 20 feet and coming very near to his back door. Quite frightening when we saw it for the first time.

Roger was just like Malcolm, an extrovert who liked fast cars, always a Jaguar, and up to his eyes in oily engines. He had a banjo and could do a very good impression of George Formby, so he spent a lot of his spare time in pubs and clubs with Amanda. He died very suddenly in January 1978, and we went to his funeral at Christchurch Cemetery near Newport.

The daughter, Amanda, was a very lively girl and married an Iranian student, supposedly well off and of a good family. There was a religious difference and just before they were due to go to Iran after his education finished she found that she would not have been acceptable to his family and it all boiled up to a divorce.

She has married again, but I do not know the details. Mandy now lives in New Zealand.

Stuart and Goronwy are both married and have families. One of the wives is a very nice black girl from Jamaica. She is married to Goronwy, and they have four children together, one of which carries the family name 'Stanislaus'. I don't know their addresses and am sure that the ones in our address book are wrong, because they both move about a bit.

Mother Amanda married again, round about 1980, to Ernie Green, a postman from Cwmbran, and they live in Newport with Roger's youngest son Aloysius (Ali), who is a very nice lad, but suffers from Autism - something to do with Amanda having chicken pox or German measles. Ali worked as a porter at The Royal Gwent Hospital. He is married to Claire and still lives in Newport. I believe that Stan's wife Eunice knows all the addresses.