In Slough

Clare Remembers Slough (December 1979–March 1982)

Nigel: So this is our recollection of living in Slough - between December 1979 and early 1982. We moved to Saffron Walden when I joined STL in Harlow. So, just over two years really: 1980 and 1981, with a few months either side.

We moved to Slough because we had to leave our rented flat in Windsor. We’d broken the lease by acquiring both a baby - Alex - and a cat. Our relations with the landlady weren’t great, and it was inconvenient anyway: the flat was up a couple of flights of stairs, which was no good for a pram. So we started looking for a house.

At that time I was working for Kienzle Data Systems, a computer programming company on Slough’s industrial estate. Who actually chose the house by the canal, near the bridge?

Clare: We chose it together.

Nigel: And I was working full-time, five days a week, while you were...?

Clare: I was working Saturdays and Monday evenings - twelve hours a week altogether. You came home from work on Mondays around four o’clock to relieve me.

Nigel: That was at the International Stores in Windsor, wasn’t it?

Clare: Yes. I kept that job after we moved to Slough; I just commuted back to Windsor. On Mondays they put me on wines and spirits because they needed someone over eighteen. By then I was about four months pregnant with Adrian and realised I couldn’t stand for hours, so I gave in my notice. I could have told them I was expecting, but I thought, “What’s the point?” I wasn’t going to last another three months at the tills anyway.

Nigel: You were cute when you were pregnant - cute in a different way. So then you became a full-time housewife, right?

Clare: (primly). A home engineer, thank you. I looked after Alex and kept the place running.

Nigel: What are your standout memories of Slough?

Clare: Most of them seem to be minor disasters. Once we came back from holiday - I think one trip was a week, another about a fortnight  -  and found the whole place flooded. The kitchen leak had covered every floor; the carpet in the living room was literally floating.

Another time, after a shorter break, we came home to find twenty bottles of milk on the step. I’d left a note saying no milk until further notice, but the milkman just carried on. The postman arrived as I was looking at the bottles; he shook his head in disbelief.

Then there was the Christmas turkey. We’d bought a big one, expecting leftovers for days - turkey curry, turkey risotto, turkey sandwiches. About an hour after lunch I heard a noise in the pantry. The cat had helped himself and was halfway through the carcass. We let him have it. Foolish, since money was tight, but there we are.

Nigel: Any other disasters?

Clare: Oh yes. I remember trying to dry some sealant round the window with a hairdryer and cracking the glass, which we then had to replace. And the endless mould in the bedroom - that was a battle. We finally moved the bed from the outside wall to the one adjoining the living room, and that helped.

Nigel: Adrian was a remarkably contented baby.

Clare: He was. He slept in a cot in the alcove beside the fireplace in the living room, surrounded by ordinary domestic sounds. I discovered that children find the familiar noises of home far more reassuring than silence down a corridor.

Nigel: Since we had only one bedroom, one living room, a kitchen, hall, and bathroom, how did we divide the space between Alex and Adrian?

Clare: Alex had outgrown the cot, so he slept in the playpen in our bedroom. Adrian was still in the cot, in the alcove by the fire. Alex had always been used to being in with us - he’d been in our bedroom in Windsor too. There simply wasn’t space for two babies in the same room in Slough.

Nigel: And financially? That was the era of sky-high interest rates.

Clare: They weren’t yet at their worst, but we were always close to the edge. My twelve hours’ pay made a difference, and when I stopped, we went slightly into the red each month. You had an Access card - maxed out - and we paid the bank’s overdraft charges regularly. You finally got a small consolidation loan, which worked wonders. It stopped the constant drift into overdraft.

Nigel: I might have borrowed a bit from Kienzle too.

Clare: Maybe. I know it worked because I later recommended the same idea to my brother James, who was overstretched on his mortgage.

Nigel: Living in Slough had its other drawbacks: the traffic over the bridge, the danger of the canal.

Clare: And the neighbours upstairs - dreadful people. They said we were noisy. I finally traced the noise to a bunch of brooms I’d hung on the back of the larder door; when I opened it, they rattled. Hardly a hanging offence. But the man upstairs took to emptying his ashtray over his balcony - directly above our front step. After the third time, I swept up the ash, marched upstairs, opened his porch letter box (they had a glass door) and tipped the lot back in. Never said a word. That was the end of that.

Nigel: De-escalation by escalation.

Clare: Exactly. And it worked - he stopped.

By then the flat was too small anyway, and you’d been offered a good R&D job at STL in Harlow. I went house-hunting in Saffron Walden with the boys. I spent a day there looking at houses within our range and found the right sort of place - child-friendly, good schools, a pleasant town. We never regretted it.

Nigel: So - two years in Slough. You didn’t feel it was a dreadful place that ought to have been carpet-bombed, then?

Clare: Not at all. Perfectly ordinary. We never went to the greyhound races, though. They’ve gone now anyway.

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No extant pictures, but this is how I imagine our time in Slough: this our garden next to the canal.

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