He used to ride his motor-bike around the gardens paths at Tolworth House, rather dangerous when the younger children were playing. We had many a harsh word about this, especially his tendency to leave odd parts and dirty fingermarks everywhere. I am reasonably even tempered, but he was responsible for me losing my temper more often than I care to remember.

After leaving Northgate Grammar School where he performed quite well in spite of continually getting on the wrong side of the Staff, he went to Reavell's, a long established engineering firm, as an engineering apprentice, but he was so far ahead of the other apprentices that they often put him on production work, which he called 'Slave Labour'.

I had interested him in joining my old Regiment, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (R.E.M.E.) as a boy soldier, which would have given him a sound engineering education, but after a few tests they discovered that he was colour blind and unacceptable as a potential danger.

At one stage he built a Jowett Javelin car out of three others and was justifiably very proud of it, because it was talked of well at Rallies. He has a painting of it. My own memory of it is that unwanted bits of old Javelins were strewn about the garden, in particular the front lawn, and we fell out over it. As a young toddler Hilary damaged her hand rather badly when one of the old motor-bikes fell on her and she still has a nasty scar.

In the end I dug a couple of large pits in the potato patch, at least six feet deep, and buried the lot together with a variety of other old iron. When Jeff and Madeline Phelps, of U.S.A.A.F. at Bentwaters and living just around the corner in Marlborough Road, came over to see us from the States in 1986, I took them over to Ipswich on their trip down Memory Lane and we visited Tolworth House. There was a builder's foreman working there on the old peoples' bungalows which had been built on my old back garden, and he said that when they were building them several years before they had found a lot of scrap iron in the foundation trenches. I professed interest, innocence and surprise.

Malcolm left home in his 'teens, and after living for about two years in the Y.W.C.A. (the girl's establishment) he took a crummy flat in a basement. He went for a seaside holiday and met Pat Gregory from London. Within a short time they got married, but fell out after having two children, whom she took as part of the divorce.

It wasn't long before he remarried to Susan. By this time he was buying a small house near Ipswich Station where he had got a job with British Rail. Always mad about trains and bikes. After applying for some different jobs with British Rail, one of which was Station-Master up in the wilds of Western Scotland, he got his present position as Traffic Controller at Cambridge Station, and was able to buy a new house at Newmarket.

He is still mad on motor-bikes, repairs cars, belongs to a good Bike Club and wins awards for his hand-built bike at Rallies. He has ridden round the T.T. Course on the Isle of Man several times. Unfortunately he had a very bad accident coming back from a Rally at Colchester which resulted in several breaks in his right leg. This hasn't stopped him from adapting both his car and his bike for manual control, but sad to say his leg gave way one day and broke again, of its own accord, while he was touring in Germany with Susan on the pillion. When he returned to England the leg was put in plaster at the hospital and he had a serious discussion with his Consultant about the possibility of a false leg. He went on a tour of about two thousand miles in Spain, Portugal and France on the bike, with his leg in plaster and his crutches attached to the bike frame, and when he came back, saw the Consultant and said "Right, let's have it off." So now he has a false leg below the knee, is quite happy about it, and is currently planning a tour of Norway for the summer and a return trip to Spain in the autumn.

Susan has had an operation and can't have any more children. Son Clement is very intelligent, hyperactive and has a mechanical bent like his father. He is the oldest son*, of the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest son of Samuel Saggers of Great Bardfield.

* Note from Hils - actually this isn't quite right. Dad must have momentarily forgotten that Keith is Nobby's oldest son, from his first marriage.