I got to know Arthur through cricket, although I already knew who he was. We started going out together in the autumn of 1954. The first occasion was when Mary Belton and I were going for a cycle ride on the Beltons’ tandem. We were just going round Porter’s Corner when we met Arthur and Fred Belton (Mary’s brother) coming towards us on their cycles. We all decided to go for a ride together with Arthur and Fred on the tandem and Mary and I on their cycles.
We went as far as Cowick, calling at The Old George in Sykehouse on the way and at another pub when we got to Cowick. When we got back to Barnby Dun we had to go back to the Belton’s house so that we could all get our own cycles, and then Arthur escorted me home. He suggested that we go out the following evening for another ride — just the two of us this time.
When I got in that first evening, Dad asked me where I had been, and when I told I had been with Arthur Frankish he asked how many pubs we had been in. I told a white lie and said that we had only been in one.
And so we started going out together.
We were married on the 15th September 1956 and spent our honeymoon in Hastings. We started our married life living with Arthur’s mother along with his brother John, who was engaged to be married to his girlfriend Joyce.
John and Joyce got married the next month, on 20th October. I was ill with a kidney infection and couldn’t go to the wedding. The rest of the family went off to the ceremony while I stayed at home in bed with only my young sister Barbara coming to keep me company. After a while Arthur came rushing in. His brother Bill, who was John’s best man, had forgotten the wedding ring, and Arthur had come back for it!
We stayed with Arthur’s mother for 18 months until we got a council house in nearby Sunnyside. We lived in in Sunnyside until June 1964, when we bought a house back in Barnby Dun — 19 Stainforth Road, where we have lived ever since.
