"I'm going to work in Woolworth's" "When I grow up I want to be an astronaut" "When I get married I'd like to have two children" "My hearts desire is to see my Daddy" "I don't want to answer that" "This is no ordinary outing at the zoo it's a very special occasion we've brought these children together for the very first time" "they're like any other children except that they come from startlingly different backgrounds" "Stop it at once!" "We brought these children together because we wanted a glimpse of England in the year 2000 the shop steward and the executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old" "In 1964 World in Action made Seven Up we have been back to film these children every seven years they are now forty-two" "Is it important to fight?" "Yes!" "Tony was brought up in the East end of London" "I want to be a jockey when I grow up yeah" "At fourteen he was already an apprentice at Tommy Gosling's racing stable in Epsom at fifteen he left school" "This is a photo finish of when I rode at Newberry" "I'm the one with the white cap" "I was beaten a length and a half for third and had a photo finish so I took it out the box and kept it as a souvenir" "by twenty-eight he had given up on horse racing my greatest fulfilment in life when I rode at Kempton in the same race as Lester Piggot" "I was a naive, wet behind the ears apprentice all my years from seven, all my ambition was fulfilled in one moment and I eventually finished last tailed off obviously but it didn't make any difference to me" "just to be part of it to be with the man himself" "What will you do if you don't make it as a jockey?" "Oh I don't know if I knew I couldn't be one I'd get out of the game" "I wouldn't bother" "And what do you think you'd do then?" "Learn Taxi's" "At twenty-one, he was on "The Knowledge"" "and by twenty-eight he owned his own cab we were on the way to Langlands and all I can hear is Alf Garnett" ""It's the Labour government and your lot up here... "" " Have you got a girlfriend?" " No" "Would you like to have a girlfriend?" "No" "Do you understand the four F's?" "find them, feed them and forget them the other F, I'll let you use your own discrimination but I mean, this one" "I tried to do the three F's but I couldn't forget her" "I went to a discotheque he was in the pub earlier on and afterwards we went to a disco and Tony was standing there and I just... from there that was it" "couldn't get rid of him" "We have our ups and downs, no more than anyone else" "I think you've got to work at a marriage" "I think all marriages go through stages you can't stand each other" "I think "Oh god I hate him I wish he'd get out"" "I do" "We've been to the edge of the cliff and looked over a couple of times and we've always seemed to go back and we've stayed the course but I must say it's not easy being married and I don't know anyone who thinks it is" "it's quite difficult" "In 1993 Tony and Debbie left the Eastend and moved to Woodford in Essex" "Well with the help of my neighbour, I'm not really a D.I.Y type of guy he painted all the back of the house and was going to put a conservatory here but if you look along here we've put a patio in and a pond for the fish" "Well when we bought it it was very old this was two rooms and we've knocked it completely out refitted the kitchen put all new windows in new flooring, literally everything really" "Well the fence we had a bit of luck there because the next door neighbour they paid for it and they did all this end so I done... it came in my favour having a small bit done so that was a blessing there" "but the only thing I ever done was" "I planted them three trees and they seem to have grown in the last three or four years it has cost us a lot of money to do it yeah a lot of money and now we're penniless!" "well I think we over spent about... well a collossall amounts, thousands" "my over heads to keep everything going here is at this present time, astronomical" "Are you going to get out of this financial hole?" "Yes without question because it is a mill stone round my neck at this time but it's nothing what two years won't achieve through hard work and determination" "To help out Debbie works the day shift in the cab while Tony does the night shift" " Look son it's hard work out there" " Come on you're not reaching me yet" "Alright, now be bigger, dominate me" "At twenty-eight Tony was taking acting lessons" "Now he supplements his income with ocassional TV jobs" "Oi!" "That's all I've got on me" "Mate if I had a pound for every time I heard that I'd be a rich man" " You've got the fair haven't you?" " Yeah just about" "Would everybody please sit round now, get on with their work" "I don't want to see any backs to me shouldn't be anybody turning round, Tony do you hear as well?" "get on with your work in front" "Tony!" "don't turn round again there's only one ambition really, I want a baby son and if I see my baby son that'll be my ambition fulfilled no one knows that, only you now" "this is Hackney Marshes the games that are being played are mostly these are pub teams and I've been playing over here for nearly twenty-eight, thirty years" " So you're a veteran?" " You might call me that yes!" "Who do you play with?" "My Nicky and I think it's quite admirable that his dad's in the same side as his son" "Tony and Debbie have three children the eldest, Nicky, works as a French Polisher" "I wanted him to go on the Knowledge and become a cabbie" "I bought him a bike but I'm quite proud of the way he's turned out he's a very respectable kid very respectful towards people and most of all he's done it all on his own terms" "Perry, she is just started secondary school and she's a character but she's quite academic minded and hopefully she'll stay on" "Ref!" "come ref!" "come on ref get a hold of him there!" "we've only got another sixty minutes left" "Jody don't like school, she's just leaving school shortly" "I do feel that she's wasted a lot of years in her secondary school" "I'm not saying it's the school's fault, probably a lot of it's her fault but we have tried with her and tried to push her into it and I think she's a bit how Tony was" "she's just not interested in school which I feel she'll regret later on lovely mate!" "I try to discipline them in various areas but at the end of the day it is quite hard and difficult" "I'd like to stand up and suggest and lead with an iron fist but" "I haven't got the heart to do it and that's the truth of the matter and I have to do it and then if anything goes wrong it's my fault a girl said to me the other day" "she said "aren't you small?"" "so I said "but you're ugly, at least I can grow"" "what can they say to that?" "they can't say nothing can they and why did you fall in love with him?" "I don't know" "I don't know how you put up with me for so long sometimes I don't know how I stand him" "I've been in positions y'know and... well it's hard to say in front of Debbie but it's true it's tempting you take the bait" "I go on holiday once a year with the boys to Spain, Magaluf and we have a golf holiday, all against Debbie's will but it's true and I get in situations out there that y'know life is for living" "and I come back" ""Oh I know what you've been doing out there!"" ""you've been meeting all those birds!" and whatever and they look at you as if to say" ""I know but I don't want to know"" "that's how it is" "I have often not gone through life with one hand tied behind my back and my character happy go lucky nature and being in positions that I do I find my self caught in trouble" "I'm not proud at all to say this but situations arise that..." "I have had regretful behaviour various times but" "You got caught and that was it" "I'm not lying about the fact you could always cover it up and suggest other things but it's true and let it be true" "You caught him?" " Yeah" " What happened?" "well it was touch and go whether we carried on from it or not we went through a very traumatic time but then again let he who has never sinned cast the first stone it just doesn't happen with a taxi driver living in Essex, it happens with MP's etcetc" "I'm not going to hide behind any trees and suggest I'm holier than thou which no doubt I'm not, what I'm suggesting is this is what real life is all about, if I've been caught that's fair enough" "I'll pay the consequences and the consequences are iron out the detals and the problems with my wife and our marriage and hopefully eventually get it in the right lane and put it back on the tracks" "y'know its..." "Why did you forgive him?" "Because at the time" "I felt that there was still something in the relationship and there was three children involved here as well which is not easy when you've got three young children and there was obviously still something between me and Tony and it's not easy to walk away" "I could've walked away it's silly but when it happened I felt very strong and I could've walked away but it's not been easy to try again to get over the hurt because I've never done it and I've never been unfaithful" "and that's what I found really hurtful and I feel that I'm a good wife and that I didn't deserve it all I understand is, dogs, prices, girls knowledge, roads, streets, squares and mum and dad and love" "that's all I understand and that's all I want to understand" "Five to one, Cooladine" "Four and a half fifties" "At twenty-one Tony was earning a bit extra as a bookies runner at Hackney Wick" "go on three chase it come on boy go on three, inside" "on the out three" "I've just came back here after about two years since they've stopped racing at the Wick and it's really a travesty" "I look around the Wick and close my eyes and hear all the voices of the bookmakers" "I've got visions of me running up and down the stairs trying to earn a few quid running all the bets now I've come back here again and it makes me feel like crying" "So the Eastend's changing isn't it?" "Very much so, it's the way of the world it's very cosmopolitan now in Bethnal Green and the Eastend the Eastend tradition as we knew it the pie and mash shops and fish and chip shops are closing down" "for me it's quite sad but if that's what they call progress well so be it" "Tell me about the family, are you fairly closely knit?" "Well I love them all there's not one I don't love more than the other, other than my mum obviously but your mum is the root of the tree, you love your mum best" "By the time he was thirty-five, both Tony's parents had died" "I'm at the grave side I'm talking to her" "I've got all the images running through my mind saying like "Tony go downstairs and get me five cigarettes"" "and I used to go in the shop she used to throw the cotton in a hair curler out the window and I used to tie the cigarettes onto the cotton and she used to pull them up and she goes..." "I see her in the end" ""Thanks Tony, see you after school, be good" and that's the way it was even now" "I'll get... emotionally sentimental over my mum and dad that's just because" "the weekends they could've had over here in the later part of their life it would've been nice to know that their last days with were me but it wasn't to be" "The posh ones? "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes!"" "they're nuts just have to touch them" "I don't want to change because if I change it proves the other Tony Walker was all fake" "I'm not trying to keep up with the Jones's and make myself any more than what I'm capable of doing but I mean, I can only go so far and I'm only a cabbie, I'm not exactly a movie star" "I've done as well as I can go and I think this is the limitations for me now so I'm happy with what I've got if anything else comes along, it's a bonus" "Tell me, do you have any boyfriends Suzy?" "Yes" "Tell me about them" "Well he lives up in Scotland and I think he's thirteen and I'm rather lonely up there because he usually goes to school but we usually play til about half past six when he comes home from school and then we go in and then" "he goes home to do his homework" "Have you got any boyfriends Suzy?" "What is your attitude towards marriage?" "for yourself?" "Well I don't know, I haven't given it a lot of thought 'cause I'm very, very cynical about it" "but then you get a certain amount of faith restored in it" "I've got friends and their parents are happily married and so it does put faith back into you, but me myself I'm very cynical about it" "When I last saw you at twenty-one you were nervous, chain-smoking and uptight and now you seem happy what's happened to you over these last seven years?" "Well I suppose Rupert" " I'll give you some credit" " Thank you!" "I'm not a chain-smoking person" "I think you can't just walk through a marriage and think once you get married it's all going to be roses and everything forever y'know you have... well everybody has their rows, but we've never yet had a row that we haven't managed to sort out" "it's very hard to actually say what it is that goes on between a couple it's either there or it's not and maybe we're very lucky, after twenty years we still seem to have it" "When I get married I'd like to have two children" "I'm not very children minded at the moment and I don't know if I ever will be" "What do you think about them?" "Well I don't like babies" "What was the biggest shocks to you when you suddenly were confronted with a small baby that you had to be responsible for" "Panic set in I think that I wasn't going to be able to cope" "At twenty-eight Suzy had two sons, Thomas and Oliver" "I don't think I'll have any more for the reason that I will get pleasure out of these two but I can't see me going on and on by thirty-five she had a daughter Laura" "Very little has changed, my life is very much the same as it was then" "I've had another baby, we've moved house and that's about all" "Would you like a nanny to look after them or would you want to look after them?" "No I want a nanny to look after them" "I've chosen to stay home for the last fifteen years to bring up my children because I wanted to be the one that did it" "Tom is now sixteen and he's his own man now he's suddenly got confidence in himself now and having being quite a shy child he's now come out of himself and he's his own person" "Oliver's very individual it's a sort of love hate relationship Oliver and I have we don't get on all the time but we still come through most things but it's been a hard battle for him, he's got learning difficulties" "and life hasn't dealt too many easy cards for him so its's a lot harder for him" "Laura just seems to take life in her stride, she just takes it" "she's very easy going and gets on with life" "Tom will be away at university in another couple of years and they'll all get on and make their own lives" "the mid-forties is a crossroads for people as their lives do change and" "I don't just want to suddenly find when the children have gone I've got nothing to my life" "I'm not very good at sitting around doing nothing, I have to be doing something" "I have to have a goal or something to try and achieve" "The more she went through the stages of bereavement the bigger the space became" " But the actual grief" " Doesn't go away doesn't actually go away ever" "I got into bereavement counselling about four years ago it can be very harrowing, it's very difficult which is why all counsellors need a supervisor because you come out sometimes from a session, mentally and emotionally drained" "She was coming more to terms with what happened" "It's an extraordinary experience when you meet someone who is suffering terribly and over the months you see them move on you see them get their life back together again" "At twenty-eight, Suzy's father died it is terribly hard and even now I still can't believe my father's not here it's still sinking in I think" "my mother had been ill before but when I started the course I didn't know quite how ill she was then and we found out she had terminal cancer when I was half way through the course" "and I did wonder if I could carry on as it was quite difficult going to the course every week and listening to other people, what they'd gone through, but in a strange way it helped me" "so I came through the course and my mother died just after that but I did find it a help doing it as I just felt I wasn't alone and I think that's the whole point of bereavement counselling" "is that people feel very alone when they've lost someone very close to them and a lot of people don't have someone to turn to well I was the only child going through their parents splitting up, aged fourteen" "you're at a very vulnerable aged and it does cut you up but y'know, you get over it" "I'd never had a very close relationship with my parents" "I didn't really know them very well but in the last few years of her life we became closer and I think that's what I resent that I lost her when I did because I was just beginning to really build a relationship with her" "When he was thirty-five Rupert made a big career move" "I was partner in quite a big law firm and I resigned from that and set up my own company" "I tend to specialise in refurbishing old buildings and converting them into offices" "It was a very difficult time when Rupert was deciding to leave he's got a lot of responsibilities with us and it's not easy starting up on your own" "Do you ever worry that the roof might fall in and you'll be out of this" "Yes, I mean it crosses my mind and this last year it's crossed my mind quite hard that we could lose this" "I've never wanted to have a business which was dependant on you losing your house but I think ultimately that can always happen" "The gamble paid off and the company's doing well" "What sort of things do you do?" "Ride, swim, play tennis, ping-pong and I might play croquet something like that" "I did have a privileged background but on the other hand I was sent away to boarding school very young which I found very hard to cope with and I'm sure my parents did it for what they felt was the right reason" "I just felt rejected which was why I never wanted to force that on to my children" "What do you want most out of life?" "To be happy and get on with life" "I don't want to sit back and let it all whizz past you don't know how long you've got your life for you could be run over by a bus tomorrow so you've got to make the most of it while you've got it" "if I could have it over I would change..." "I would change my life from fourteen to twenty-one, those years were not good for me like any other child with divorced parents at fourteen I felt very lost, bewildered" "I would've made more of my education instead of rather throwing it away because I thought I knew it all and didn't want to be bothered but I can't turn the clock back so I just have to bury that and think "ok it was a time of my life that was unhappy"" "and move on" "Two of the boys are coming into that period of their lives" " are you watchful of that for them?" " I am watchful of that but" "I hope they have a more stable home life than I had at that age and I don't take for granted the home life that Rupert and I have tried to build for them" "all I want is to be... to be here long enough to be fit and healthy long enough to see my children grow up to be independant people what I really couldn't cope with was if I died before they were grown up" "it's the one thing I think every parent dreads is not living long enough to see their children into adulthood excellent!" "What do you think about rich people?" "Well..." "not much" "Tell me about them" "Well they think they can do everything without you doing it as well" "Symon was brought up in a childrens home the only child of a single parent" "Rich people have all different things they have everything they want whereas poor people don't have anything and they know they haven't got anything so they know they're missing something" "What are you missing?" "Well I'd probably say a bike and... a fishing rod" "Twenty years ago when I was born an illegitimate child that's something that's only whispered about people feel strongly about it in those days but nowadays it's.." "it's not a serious matter the serious point is whether you stay with someone or you leave them since thirty-one" "I've got married, had a couple of kids well I don't think there's anybody else I could've ever married except Yvonne she gives me my life really because we're together, we have the children and everything" "look at the parrot, look" "When you decided to have the five did you want to have them close together" "Yeah, because one is fifteen and one is six and there's such an age gap that they could never get on they never grew up together, they won't know each other" "By thirty-five Symon and Yvonne were divorced" "at forty-two he had married Vienetta" "People go out when they're younger, we met in the laundrette!" " Once a week!" " Once a week in the laundrette!" "we both sort of drifted apart unfortunately and had our own lives, got married and we met up again nearly six years ago" "She already had a teenage daughter, Miriam now Symon and Vienetta have a four year old son Daniel" "Does he remind you of yourself when you were younger?" "Oh no he's got far more energy than me there's a bit of both of us, he's very bright and quick he's very clever" "I like to know how things work so for that he is like me yes" "Why did you call him Daniel?" "Long story!" "It's my fathers name" " Yeah" " That's nice" "We decided to name him Daniel before he was born, we didn't know it was a boy" "They say "Where's your father then?"" "You know when your mums out at work "Where's your father?"" "and I just tell them I ain't got one" "What effect has that had on you?" "Well I don't think it's had any effect on me, 'cause... what you don't have you don't miss" "Well it hurts me that he wasn't there, but at the same time... he wasn't there, he wasn't there for me or my mum, so..." "I never really wanted to see him that's anger inside me, but... personally I'd like to see him just for curiosities sake, but the anger that I've had for how many years is... it's been overgrown by boredom now, I just can't be bothered to look for him" "you've got everything then they've even got what I never had" " Which is what?" " A father isn't it!" "so they've had everything" "I've still got five children they haven't really taken the break up of my first marriage to well" "I've still to get to grips with that, and get to them and make them understand that daddy is still daddy" "Has that been hard?" "It has for me because I've always been the retiring type not really taking anything on, but" "I don't really want to lose my children, any of them" "I still want them to know that I'm there for them at that time I thought maybe two families can meet and everything would be alright but we're not talking about a movie we're talking about life, so" "things don't always work out that way" "It would be nice if they could just pop over and say hello and come in freely like as if they're one of the kids as others kids do so why shouldn't they?" "well before I'm old enough to get a job" "I'll just walk around and see what I can find" "I was going to be a film star, but now I'm going to be an electrical engineer which is more to reality really" "By twenty-one Symon was working in the freezer room of Walls sausages in London" "How do you see the future as far as work goes?" "Well I know I can't stay at Walls forever, it's just not me" "I couldn't stay there for that long, my mind would go dead but eh..." "I think if I really wanted to I could learn a trade, even now" "I'm quite happy to stay there, it doesn't look like it's going to close down better the devil you know isn't it" "Walls did close down and Symon had a number of warehouse jobs before he joined Yuson, an air freight company as a forklift truck driver" "when I was young I used to say I'd never work in an office with all those stuffy people in a stuffy office" "I've done enough hard work to realise I've been doing the wrong job for so long now and the brother has big eyes and he's blue, the brother is blue the year before last Symon went to GCSE maths" "same thing as my daughter and they're both swatting here and Symon comes up with good grades and he passed it's just give him a kick up the bum to get something in that feild 'cause he's very good" "I had one dream when all the world was on top of me and everything was on me and I just about got out everything flew up in the air and it all landed on my head" "So are you still drawing and painting?" "I like to but I never find the time to sit down and set something out to do it's just that this is so good she just stands back - yeah" "He does help Miriam though she's doing art at A-level, so when she has a bit of difficulty with something she says "Symon!"" "so he comes to the rescue at times" "Well I get it from my mum 'cause she loved art always dragging me around the galleries and whatever" "Was it difficult moving from a home back to live with your mother?" "Well I find it's comfortable" "I can get on well with my mother sometimes well that's good because alot of young children can't get on with their parents at all at this time of their life but I get on pretty well with my mum now" "What sort of like does your mother have?" "It always seems hard, she's always been nervous she has periods of depression it's made me very protective towards her" "I feel I've got to help her all the time she died in 1990, she had cancer she didn't survive all the stuff it was doing to her" "Was that tough?" "Yeah for me because there was so many things I never actually said to my mum that I would've liked to say to her" "just things you think about afterwards, it's too late because they're not there any more" "What sort of things?" "Just, I love you every day, and" "I like what you're doing or don't like what you're doing, just ordinary silly things everybodys got to get used to knowing coloured people and coloured people in turn have got to get used to being with white people" "'cause if either side doesn't work properly then no side will work properly they're just the same as me aren't they" "Do you think it's hard being a black man in English society today?" "It depends what you want isn't it if you just want to live in the society then no it's not hard if you want to fight the society, yes it would be hard to be honest Michael I've never actually taken it on" "I've heard it from both sides to be honest to be fair to myself" "I've had white people say "you black this and that"" "and I've had black people tell me "you white this and that", so..." "I stopped thinking about colour a long time ago" "It's still as tough out there, you're still fighting and you're still having to push yourself 'cause when you've got a job you've always got to try and work harder even at school you've got to... they seem to stereo type you" "even when we moved in here, we've had no one speak to us" "I suppose they suspect you to be having loud music and parties and that but we're not all the same, you've got good and bad in every nation and y'know, we're just the same as anyone else as far as I'm concerned" "I just want to be like anybody else nothing too marvelous" "I feel ok just getting on with my life just sort of keeping up but I know if I really wanted to I could get on it'll only take a little spark with me to do it" "What's the biggest influence Vienetta has on you?" "I think really motivation, because... before I never really pushed myself" "she looks after me she doesn't just push me, she looks after me she would never let anything be wrong for me she always makes sure that if I go down the road I look alright if I go anywhere I look alright" "y'know?" "and I do the right thing, and it makes me feel that there's sombody out there that really really wants me" "*speaks Latin*" "Yes, speak up" "When he was seven, Bruce was at a pre-preparatory boarding school at fourteen, St Paul's in London" "They don't enforce being upper class and things like that at St. Paul's they suggest that you don't have long hair and do get it cut and they teach you to be reasonably well mannered but not to sniff on the poorer people" "At twenty-one he was in his last year at Oxford reading maths" "You can show that this is irreducible then you do a transformation on this point and X = T + two" "Good that's a nice way of doing it particularly using Eisentstien down here, his test is very powerful" "Well there was one job, I'd like to make maps really and it's nice sort of outdoor life" "you go to..." "I mean you travel around but there are very few jobs like that going you observe that seven which is a prime divides the co-efficient of T squared" "I won't carry on with mathematics, I don't think I'll be a teacher so you're in the lead you see?" "because DSC cabs have got a profit of two thousand" "Good B cabs have got no profit at all, ok?" "now can you explain that to Abdul 'cause I want him to understand what it is" "At twenty-eight he was teaching immigrant children in East London" "I was working in an insurance company at the time and I decided to go into teaching without any experience at all" "I didn't think they'd allow somebody to walk in of the street into a classroom" "Well going to Africa and try and teach people who are not civilised to be more or less good" "So is this your missionary dream come true?" "Well not exactly" "I've had the opportunity to come here for a term and it just so happens the school I'm in has great links with this part of the world" "At thirty-five, Bruce was teaching in Sylhet in Northern Bangladesh and then I've also got the chance to learn a bit of Bangla which is very difficult, I'm not doing very well at" "*Speaks Bangla*" "the straight line yes, keep going, keep going no, no stop there" "At forty-two, Bruce is again teaching in the Eastend of London and having plotted the points what do you do now?" " Join them up" "This is Bishop Challoner Roman Catholic girls school in the Eastend of London it's about a thousand girls, eleven to eighteen and I've been here about five years" "it was a chance to go for promotion to be head of the maths faculty and to teach A- level as well" "I didn't agree with the Conservatives about what they were doing with the black people y'know, the racial policy" "I'm an optimist here, I think we can show the way, if you like for developing a more harmonious multi-cultural society" "I'm quite pleased in a way that I know an Algerian fellow near where I live he will say that in other countries in Europe... they are spat at, harrassed and beaten up by the police here he says "I walk down the street and nobody minds"" "well my girlfriend is in Africa and I don't think I'll have another chance of seeing her again" " Have you got any girlfriends?" " No not yet, I'm sure it will come but not yet" "I do think a lot of people think too much about it" "I think I would very much like to... become involved in a family, my own family for a start that's a need that I feel I ought to fulfil and would like to fulfil and would do it well" "yes I haven't got married or whatever and I suppose that would've been something which I'd hoped had happened" "y'know I suppose there's lots of reasons really" "I don't suppose I've met the right person" "Well you're getting on a bit, are you getting worried?" "Well not particularly, I'm always optimistic who knows who I might meet tomorrow" "I think that's the trouble with reserve you're not rejected but you never know what might've been, but I'm getting better" "What do I look like?" "It was when, I think, we were doing the school production of Annie and Bruce was playing President Roosevelt and I had to put on his stage make-up" "not many men that will let you put on their make-up" "It gives me great pleasure to be here on this joyful and happy occasion to celebrate the marriage of Bruce and Penelope" "Bruce an Penny married last summer she teaches at Bruce's school" " I Bruce Swain" " I Bruce Swain" " Take you Penelope Sarah Jane" " Take you Penelope Sarah Jane to be my wife" "How did he propose to you and where?" "The where was on the sofa and in the middle of a conversation about something completely different he just asked if I'd like to marry him and if I hadn't been listening carefully I would have missed it completely" " To love and to cherish" " To love and to cherish" " Till death us do part" " Till death us do part" "It's quite unusual really we did a lot of it ourselves and we had the reception here" "we didn't have a lot of things that you normally have at weddings like the cars and photographers and all that sort of thing" "everybody say "cover work"" "we just planned what we wanted and it all worked out very well in the end it was a very enjoyable day" "in practical ways I'm better fed, better looked after thanks to Bruce, generally better organised than I was before he is very good at financial organisation and... running bank accounts and be sensible when I aren't" "Firstly when we got married one of the odd things was her mother said "Oh good there's someone to look after Penny and cook her meals"" "rather than the other way around which sometimes happens" "What was the biggest shock about being married?" "Well I think three bags of clothes getting chucked out two of which didn't even make it to the charity shop" " Is that right dear?" " Yes!" "But I suppose some of them were crusty old flares, I don't know perhaps they deserved to get chucked out" "Does he think that the discovery of gold was a good thinkg for the Transvaal?" "She's very determined and doesn't let things go especially with school, she wants everything to be well done she prepares lessons way into the future" "and shes very sensitive and responsive and helps me act in a better way" "I might become petulant or something and it's somehow not appropriate in that situation my hearts desire is to see my daddy who is six thousand miles away" "I can remember being happy there" "I can remember also being miserable because I can remember crying" "I always seemed to be beaten on and never used to understand why" "Squad halt!" "People possibly say I'm a little innocent at times or naive and I used to get worried about this and think... perhaps I ought not to be taken in or deceived or..." "I'm not talking about love now I'm just talking about generally speaking" "I think I do have a greater level of confidence especially in expressing myself and holding opinions" "I think if you're having a partnership with somebody it definitely makes you more mature in a way, because you're not thinking about yourself all the time, you're thinking about someone else" "What ambitions do you have now?" "I may become a senior teacher at some point here but I don't really have aspirations to become a deputy head and a head teacher" "Why?" "You do tend to move out of the classroom at that stage and also you have to go on courses an M.A. in educational studies and so on and.." "y'know, our lives are busy enough really" "I'm in a sort of middle-aged mode at the moment where middle-aged content is the best description" "Go on Potter!" "How are you doing dear?" "Fine thank you dear" "If you saw me running around the cricket field now after a ball it's just comical, it's just a lumbering old man, y'know?" "no flowing swoop and hurling in of the ball it's all gone, that lifeness, that youth, it's just gone" "Not so fast!" "We may have children I don't know if in seven years time or so we're living in a slightly bigger house... with a young family that would be nice" "I don't want to pin all my hopes on it and nothing happens we are quite old" "I can see bringing up teenage children in your fifties might be a bit strange" "Looking back on your life, half way through say, what regrets do you have?" "Now I'm married to a lovely person that takes out some regrets that may have been or..." "I missed my chance there or something and you never know what the future will hold for you and I think I'm lucky to have found Penny" "He is the nicest person I've ever met he's just somebody you could rely on the whole time" "Oh I might quote that sometime!" "he's not... he's not the kind of man you would ever have any doubts about" "Some people from Africa come here but when they go they put their clothes on" "Jackie, Lynn and Sue all grew up in the Eastend of London and were friends in the same junior school" " Well I've never been abroad" " No, nor have I" " I have" " Oh yeah 'cause you went on that cruise didn't you" " Yeah" "I've had the opportunities in life that I've wanted" " I've had more opportunities than..." " Yeah right, you've made" "I think that we all could've gone and not any way that we wanted to at the time within our capabilities" "I mean, we chose our own jobs we were able to choose our own jobs quite freely" "Well we only had a limited choice anyway, truth be told we didn't have a choice of private education because we couldn't have afforded it anyway" "I wish I had wanted something that bad that I had to go for it" "I really hope that my two want something and are hungry for it and they'll go for it, I'd love that they have different things, technology has taken off so much in the last ten years" " Yes computers and..." " They have access to a lot more" "I think in some way an awful lot more than we had" "I'm going to work in Woolworths" "Well I'm a school mobile librarian and assistant to the young peoples office which is where we are now" "At twenty-one, Lynne had set out on a career working in a mobile library in Tower Hamlets in East London" "Sleeping Beauty" "Teaching children the beauty of books and watching their faces as books unfold for them is just fantastic to work with children of that age you've got to love them, and I love children" "Because of cuts in the education budget, Tower Hamlets closed the mobile library and Lynne went to work in Bethnal Green" "One of the jobs that was going was divisional children's librarian and they based me here they hadn't had a children's librarian here for nine years you can draw, better than I can right, the story I've got for you this morning is called the magic bicycle" "and it's all about Mark" "I do regular class visits with nineteen to twenty classes, more than that... coming into the library and within that we do either story telling or library skills but, he couldn't ride it" "I've been a governor of schools in Tower Hamlets for twelve, thirteen years in chair of governor's at the moment" "I've had the parent on the phone two or three times this week wondering what's happening they wanted to come in and discuss with me and the co-ordinator about how well the project was going and to observe a lesson" " Can you ever see yourself not working?" " No" "I like the excitement, I like the push of filling my life it's stimulating" "there are times I go home I'm absolutely shattered" "I go home, I go to sleep" "Well I know he loves her and he loves her" "I don't I love him" "I had an all white wedding, all white" "We were both in white and my bridesmaid was in white" "I've been married a year and... a couple of months you do think "christ, what have I done?"" " See I've still got my ideals - and I'm being honest about it!" "and my husband thinks the same, at times you think "christ, what have I done?"" "Lynne married Russ at nineteen, they have two daughters, Sara and Emma" "We married young but because we wanted to go out and have fun together and grow together" "How do you manage to keep a career going and bring up a family" " and hold a marriage together?" " We've always had a very good partnership" "I couldn't do it without him" "Russ cooks during the week, I cook at weekends it's not as if I'm going running home to cook a meal for everybody" "I know that when I get home it's going to be done we're there together and we love each other and we've never stopped if I could I would have two girls and two boys" "Yeah so will I!" "Used by a doctor in medicines in controlled doses is fine fifty percent of teenagers between fourteen and eighteen have tried drugs" "I think Emma's more like me, Sara's much more placid, she's like Russ with the girls in their teens now I've looked back and thought" "Emma is very much like I was" "Emma's just done her GCSE's and got ten gone back to sixth form college and doing A-levels she doesn't know what she wants to do" "she's got her own life now and she's building that life and she's making her own decisions" "we go through stages "the terrible two's"" "seemingly at the time when you're going through them it seem terrible they're never ever going to end but I know my mum and dad would say" ""Don't worry, it will go, you'll come through it"" ""to the next stage and the next stage"" "and I think it's ongoing like that" "I'd love to be able to talk to my mum and dad and say" ""did I really put you through that?"" "I remember some of it and god, yes I must've until you go through it with your own you never ever realise what hell you put your parents through" "By the time she was thirty-five Lynne's mother had died" "She was a great friend to me as well as a mum probably the best friend I'll ever have it's only two years for some it probably seems like "Oh it's a long time"" "it's not very long the biggest area of my life that's changed since we last talked is I lost my dad and literally just after 35up went out he died" "they looked after the girls while I worked after mum died the first thing dad said was "that's my job now"" "and of course suddenly we had neither of them" "At thirty-five Lynne was having a health problem of her own they stuck all these tubes up inside me and discovered that I've got these veins up here, that shouldn't be there" " In your brain?" " Yes" " And what can they do about it?" " Not a lot at the moment they're investigating other treatments, but the surgeon said that... he doesn't want to operate at the moment as it's too near the optic nerve well it's never going to go away, I've still got this" "vein malformation, it'll always be there obviously I had it from birth" "there's a one percent chance that it could haemmorage" "I've got more chance of being knocked down crossing the street and in that perspective I don't worry about it at all" " Do you think about dying a lot?" " No it doesn't worry me at all my dad taught me that he wasn't scared of death at all it's the people that are left behind" "that take the brunt of someone dying" " Is there a spiritual side to your life?" " Yes" " Can you talk about that?" " No" "Why?" "It's private, it's personal, it's me it's part of what makes me up and makes me, me sometimes things are not good, are they?" "and I know that you would've thought about that..." " Do you think morality has changed in your lifetime?" " Yes" "I think we've lost an awful lot of morality a lot of values in my opinion have gone" "Like what?" "Respect there seems to be a great lack of respect for anything" "I think that's what makes part of it hard bringing up children hard nowadays because our values are so high and expecting them to maintain those values" " Are you asking too much of them?" " You do expect a lot from them but I think I'm flexible aswell" "I'm learning when to let go" "I mean, for me I'm lucky everything's worked out these girl have lost a relationship but gained new ones for them, that's the way their life's gone" " Russ and I have been together..." " I actually envy you that" " Of course, we both do" " I envy you that because..." "I don't know how whatever the reasoning behind it you and Russ have made that work" " and that was something that I failed at - and me yeah, it's a failure definitely" "If we did all love Jeffrey and we all wanted to marry him" "I think I know the one that he'd like best and that's her" "I don't think I'd get married too early" "I'd like to have a full life first and meet people" " I'd like to enjoy myself before I..." " Yeah, before you commit yourself to a family" "We had a teacher at school his favourite ploy was..." ""All you girls want to do is... walk out, get married, have babies and push a pram down the street with a fag hanging out of the side of your mouth" "Marriage means a different thing to me" "I've still got my ideals about marriage I don't know what it's all about" "Sue was twenty-four when she married Billy they had two children, William and Katherine" "I think that to get married young there must be things that you miss you must miss that crucial stage of being yourself because the minute you get married you're no longer a single being you're a partnership and that should be the idea behind it" "By the time she was thirty-five she and Billy had divorced" "I've never sat down and thought well, what was it?" "was it this?" "was it that?" "I just knew it wasn't working there has been relationships when I could've settled but they didn't feel quite right, so... so I've always come away and pulled away and just waited until the right one came along" "if they ever do!" "deep down I probably wish I wasn't having to do this" "I'd like to still be married and I'd like to have that steady relationship but I'm the type of person that likes to go out and likes to have a good time so it's not that hard for me, but" "I think as you get into your forties you start thinking... well, maybe I should slow down a bit" "I've been a single parent for a long while and brought them up on my own because Katherine was only two when Bill left it's been extremely hard and sometimes it's been very lonely" "Do you think William misses not having a dad?" "He probably does, he doesn't talk an awful lot about it he seems so together, he's quite deep, so he doesn't say an awful lot he's got my dad, my dad's there" "my children probably owe a lot to my mum and dad my mum and dad have been absolutely brilliant" "with William, I want him to have a really satisfying career which is something I've never really had for him I would love that, well for both of them but particularly for him 'cause he can go far if he puts his mind to it" "he may go to university, we have talked about it if he does well, he's capable of it with Katherine she talks about doing things like hairdressing an girly things 'cause she doesn't really know what she wants to do yet" "she just wants to enjoy herself at the moment" "I can remember being the same when I was her age but she loves babies and she keeps saying "mum I want a baby"" "and I say "don't even think about it!"" "It was hard first of all when I gave up work from having a fairly high salary ...to nothing was hard but you get used to it, whatever your circumstances are you live in them, you get used to them and you cope, everybody does" "When her children were old enough to go to school, Sue started work again she has an office job in the law faculty of the University of London" "I've always worked, but... anyone who has got teenagers knows how expensive it is, and there are times when I can't quite manage what I'd like to with them especially school trips and things like that" "I've got certain little savings things that I do for them and policies that will come out when they're twenty-one and hopefully things like when they get married or want a car, then... they're the times that are hard when you're on your own" "#your guitar, it sounds so sweet# we've all got little secret dreams and I love to sing along with millions of others #it's just the radio# but didn't want to give up work and risk all that to follow the dream" "there's still lots of places I want to go lots of wild things that I want to do like jumping out of a plane silly things that you can do but you just never seem to get around too you just never seem to get around to it but I think you should make sure you do" "I'm just basically a happy person" "I don't get upset in front of the kids and that's important, I don't ever want to upset them because there has been times when I've been hurt over the last few years but I've done my best to keep that from them and they don't need that" "I'm with someone now which is nice, it feels right but it's early days yet" "regrets... everyone wants to be a perfect parent but..." "I'm not, I do the best I can" "I can't say it's the worst part of me that I go out such a lot because I don't think it hurts them it's a completely different lifestyle that I've got compared to my mum and dad" "but they are always there for me and.." "they're more responsible for the way my kids are than I am" "I would like to get married when I grow up" "I don't know what sort of boy but I think one... thats not got lot of money but... has got some money, not a lot" "Have you got any boy friends?" "oh... that's personal isn't it!" "I don't like the way you came out with that" "We shan't tell him... shall we?" "It was horrific really, the cake what happened to the wedding cake it was sitting right in between Mick and myself suddenly the columns just completely gave way and it just all fell into one" "I would say on average nineteen is probably too young" "By the time she was thirty-five, Jackie and Mick had divorced" "We decided ourselves, just between the two of us we knew it wasn't going any further we both knew at the end of the day we would be happier leading our own lives" "My mum, 'cause she's got five girls she had seven years bad luck that's why she's got five girls" "I'd like to be able to have a happy family" "I know that's not possible to be happy all the time but as much of the time that was possible" "Go through there that's the nursery" " Got any plans?" " Oh do me a favour" "She and Mick had decided early on that they didn't want children" "Basically, I would say because I'm far too selfish" "I enjoy doing what I want, when I want and how I want and certainly at the moment I can't see any way around that and it's not to say that that's a forever decision" "and this one off, here we go oh yeah had a brief but very sweet relationship result which was Charlie cor blimey Charlie you just have to clean your teeth, not eating the brush it's the best thing that could've happened to me" "and I could never have believed... that I could enjoy a child as much as i enjoy him anybody that wanted to know just got told, I was pregnant" "I wasn't with the father, end of story give us a cuddle" "I don't really want Charlie to be an only child" "I'd love him to have brothers and sisters but not neccesarily loads of them!" "just one would do actually!" " right Charlie, there's yours - right" " and please eat it all up" " I will" " and James - thanks mum - good boy and last but not least" "are you going to eat that one for me?" "After her relationship with Charlie's father ended she met Ian and had two more sons" "which one is the most like you, do you think?" "At the moment, personality-wise it's probably James he's the cheeky one, he's the one that's full of confidence" "Charlie's the quieter one, Charlie's the grown up" "Lee's an absolute bullet if he wants to do something he just does it no fear of anything but they're all good boys, you can take them almost anywhere" " Almost?" " Almost anywhere yeah!" "What's the most fun?" "The little things that they come out with the sheer unexpected pleasure of them" "I don't know, it's really hard to describe, y'know?" "they come out with so many different comments" "Finished!" "this is actually a place called Newmains which is about a forty minute drive from Glasgow and about a fifteen minute drive from Motherwell" "So how did you land up here?" "Well because the boys dad's Scottish and this is his home town and we decided that..." "Charlie was what?" "five?" "about to start school and it was now or never if we hadn't moved then I don't think we would ever have done it but obviously I'm glad we did, there's a lot more here for the boys" "they've got a lot more freedom here the way the people treat each other is more like a village and it's a good advert I think, a very good advert" "I like it far more than I ever did London" "Not long after settling in Scotland, Ian and Jackie split up" "Right James" "We're here living on our own although he's a regular visitor and sees the children quite often" "Lee when any couple parts, and I don't care how good or bad the terms were there's always a tendency for recrimination" "just the usual petty "this was your fault... this was yours... " y'know?" "and blaming each other and it took us a long time to realise how much the boys were listening to us" "'cause they could so easily have grown up thinking that it was their fault and it wasn't, not in any way shape or form they just happened to be the unlucky victims of it" "What would you do if you had lots of money?" "about two pounds" "I would buy myself a nice new made house one that's all nice and comfy" "When Ian and I split up I went into temporary accomodation and I got housed a couple of miles from here but that was furnished because I didn't have anything to take with me" "I was there seven weeks and they offered me this one with the help of family and friends and word goes out" ""Jackie's needing some stuff" and it all just suddenly arrived the poor, if you don't help them they'd sort of die soon wouldn't they" "I don't cope financially, without my mother-in-law... stepping in to fill the gap, I wouldn't be coping" "It's really hard to explain it to anyone who's not had to do it but you may, get to a point where... either that bill doesn't get paid or your children don't eat so obviously your children eat" "which means my mother-in-law pays the bill or she makes sure that my food's in for the following week so I can pay the bills but it... it's not easy to live like it" "she's brilliant if I couldv'e chosen a mother-in-law she's the one I would've chosen she's great for me, she's absolutely brilliant with the children she's just always there when I need her to be" "at the moment, a career is probably about the furthest thing from my mind and I don't really know what I'm aiming for, except to get the house together my father had a reasonably good education he never went to the local school" "but at the same time" "I don't think he was too worried which way I decided to go oh I've no doubts I could've done more" "certainly when I was younger it was probably laziness that stopped me when we did the last program there was a comment my father made which was maybe he should've pushed me a little bit harder and I think maybe in retrospect he should've done" "and that's probably the one thing I'll do with mine that he didn't do with me" "I think I shall push them just that little bit harder" "James, you watch, you're catching up to him go on Lee" "I was working up here until very recently but they discovered I've got rheumatoid arthritis so at the moment that's put work on hold" "it's painful, very painful, particularly my hands, feet and shoulders it can be almost crippling at times" "I get tired and that obviously makes life awkward at home with the children well there's certainly no cure at the moment they're trying to stem it so it gets no worse" "whether we're having much success at that?" "it's still quite early days so I really don't know, I certainly don't feel that great at the moment" " Are we ready?" " Yes go swimming is one of the best things for arthritis it can help as long as you don't over do it but having said that I'll pay for it tomorrow" "I'll be stiff tomorrow" "I shouldn't really lift Lee if Lee wants a cuddle he should sit on my lap and I should cuddle him on my lap but how do you tell a four year old you can't lift them" "I can't stop being his mum just because I'm not well" "Do you remember those scenes at twenty-one when we were showing them round the house at East tilbury?" " We've come a long way haven't we?" " Just a bit!" "oh god!" "Yeah infact don't flash back to that at this point please!" "just the double chins and the age and... the funny part about it is you don't think about your age until you think about something like that when you think how many years ago that was and it was all so new and so fresh" "and yet I've done exactly the same now, I've just started all over again but with three children in tow this time but that's life" "There was so much hope then wasn't there" "There still is, oh there still is don't make that mistake Mike" "I am down and depressed about my illness but I'm certainly not down and depressed about my life" "I will not..." "nothing's going to do that" "I've got three wonderful boys, I've got a loving family around me" "I'm lucky, there's a lot of people that are a lot worse off than I am a lot of people" "When I grow up I'd like to find out all about the moon and all that" "Nick, a farmers son, grew up in the Yorkshire Dales" "I said was interested in Physics and Chemistry but I'm not going to do that here at fourteen he was away at boarding school and at twenty-one reading physics at Oxford" "So what career are you going to pursue?" "It depends whether I'll be good enough to do what I want to really do" "I would like if I can, to do research the gas in these experiments is a temperature comparable with the sun whereas in a power reactor it'll be maybe ten times the temperature of the sun and we're trying to induce that gas to fuse" "by twenty-eight he had moved to America and was doing research into nuclear fusion at the university of Wisconsin by thirty-five he was an associate professor there the first one is basically saying that the rate of change of crystal momentum, it's DDT this quantity H-bar K" "that is equal to the Lorentz force so if you work out the density in any cell..." "In addition to now being a full professor I've been doing some administrative jobs" "I've been associate chair of my department" "I've run the graduate program in my department which is electrical engineering" "I've been running admissions and dealing with student problems and so on for the graduate program and I've spent the last year and a half writing a couple of books one about this business of using plasmas to process semiconductors" "and another one about semiconductors, it's called "Semiconductor Devices"" "and it's got a subtitle "A Simulation Approach"" "Do you have a girl friend?" "I don't want to answer that" "I don't want to answer those kind of questions" "I thought that one would come up because when I was... when I was doing the other one somebody said" ""what do you think about girls?" and I said "I don't answer questions like that is that the reason you're asking it?" "yeah I thought so the best answer would be to say that I don't answer questions like that it was what I said when I was seven and it's still the most sensible but I mean, what about them?" "Nick was only seventeen when I first met him and I knew he was a nice person" "I find him very attractive and he uses his intelligence in his relationship with me which is very important" "His English born wife Jackie is a professor of journalism at the university they have an eight year old son" "Why only one child?" "Well there's a couple of reasons, one is that these... silly jobs we have demand such an amount of time and such a commitment that it's hard to fit in one also he's such a lively person and he demands so much attention" "that he makes it hard to find time for another so I think that's the main reason" " So you don't want another one?" " Oh yes, no I would love to" "I would dearly love to have another one actually no, don't go away with that impression, I absolutely adore children if I could change the world I'd change it into a diamond but I don't think I've done anything that you can call a great success" "It would seem really ridiculous to any of my friends who watch this if I said" ""Christ aren't I a great success, look at me"" "When I first met you, I remember I thought this was very idealistic but it was rather interesting when I asked you why you're working on fusion you said you wanted to save the world and I think that's embarrasing now but I don't think you'd feel the same way" "about something that you didn't feel mattered" "I always wanted to have an impact to do something useful that was actually going to benefit people" "I had this vision of people in ivory towers being cut off doing stuff all their lives and having no effect on anybody and that was not what I wanted to do so I chose to go into this fusion business" "'cause I thought this would have a huge impact" "I'm not expecting to be reported in newspaper headlines anytime soon that's not the limit of my ambition but it's just trying to be realistic" "I'm just going to have to try and settle for reasonably small victories they'd like to come out for a holiday in the country when I'd like to have a holiday in the town" "Do you get lonely here?" "You tend to get stuck into your everyday routine and you don't think about it but when you call home, then you realise how far away you are and now it seems acute because both our families are getting older" "even if you think in terms of seeing them once every two years" " That's not so many times, is it." " You're thinking only about 10 times and that's awful" "This year, Nick went back to the Dales to see his family" "It's been five years since I've been back here it's changed quite a lot, it's got more touristy and less like an area that's farmed as every second house seems to be a hotel" "it's been rotten for my dad as he's been unable to walk a lot of the time he's had terrible troubles with his legs and of course farming is in a miserable shape so he's retiring and the animals have been sold" "I think he's had a very hard life he's had to work enormous hours everyday of his life doing something that ultimately isn't going to work" " Do you want to take up farming?" " No, I'm not interested in it my youngest brother's deaf, if he can't do anything else he can probably run it if he can't..." "as a last resort" "So your brothers won't take over on the farm?" "Absolutely not, no, neither of them really wanted to I think" "Andrew's a newspaper reporter he's going to take a job near York he's going to need a base over there, he can't commute from here" "well Chris was married which is great, she's a very nice wife who is getting better and better at communicating with the deaf" "and he works in Skipton, he's taking some courses in computers" "I'm not sure what but he always says to me that I do computers and I think it's a good idea he does computers so I try to encourage him" "So you're all away?" "so the Hitchin's are finished here?" "Yes the Hitchin's are certainly largely uprooted from here aren't they" "I'm the only child in the village except for my baby brother well this is Arncliff school where my brother and I went to from age five to ten and there's the church where we were all christened and everything" "we used to go to harvest festivals and things there" "What did you learn here that you've carried with you?" "Well you just look at this place and it's utterly beautiful but... not beautiful in a pretty cutesy way I think of it as being magnificent but rather grim really" "I feel as if you could look deep somewhere inside me" "I feel like there's some of this in there somewhere and it's rather dour but just wonderful it's very uncomprimising and sometimes it's rather tragic but it makes other places you go seem rather trivial as well" "I'm enormously proud of having come from here even the people, the idea of being a Dale's person is very important to me what you see that's so magnificent are the clouds sweeping by all the time" "air and cloud and water continually sweeping over you there's a poetic side to that, I would be looking at these and thinking now... how does a cloud work?" "when you come down to it, what I do when I'm trying to solve equations it's the same equations that describe clouds and water and air flowing around so from a scientific point of view I relate back to this sort of thing" " It's hard being away from your roots?" " Terribly hard it's hard in lots and lots of ways, if... you go to an alien culture you don't know what's going on around you half the time it's really strange to go to a different country" "people don't send out the same signals" "it's very hard to imagine being able to come back here" "I think about it a lot but I haven't seen the way to do it yet" "in some sense it never really belonged to me part of me would love to own a stake in it but I really don't own any of it but the other thing is..." "I've had to move out of here and I think that the way the world is it's very hard to stay in one place people are forced to move constantly the history of this century has a lot of examples where people moved or should've" "and professionally and in lots of other ways it's really important that people are always thinking about... what's happening around them and how they have to react to it beauty is transient, so maybe we can come by here and visit it" "but unfortunately I'm not going to be permitted to be here very much" "I don't like the big boys hitting me and the prefects sending us out for nothing" "When he was seven, Paul was in care in a children's home in London were you happy at the children's home in England?" "We didn't mind that really as we didn't know what was going on 'cause I was a bit young then well my mother and father separated originally I think" "they eventually got divorced" "I went to the boarding school for one year, then we emigrated to Australia my father got remarried" "Paul settled with his father and step-mother in a suburb of Melbourne what mark has it left on you, the fact that you were brought up in a bad marriage" "The only thing I can say may have came from that is my lack of confidence and being able to show my feelings" "Would you like to get married Paul?" " Tell me why not" " I don't like... say you had a wife say you had to eat what they cooked you and say, I don't like vegetables, well I don't and say she says "you have to eat what you get given"" "so I don't like vegetables, say she gives me vegetables?" "then that's it!" "I know I prefer to be alone really" "I can't say I don't want to get married, 'cause I think I do but I want to be happily married and therefore I want to make sure" "What was it that you fell in love with, what is it about him?" "His helplessness I suppose, brings out the mothering instinct in me can pick him up and cuddle him and he's also very good looking I think but he doesn't agree with me and in the summer he's got this cute little bum in shorts" "I can tell quite a few stories here but the one that really irritates me the most is when we have an argument he says" ""that's it, leave me" and I say "fine alright, I will one day"" "So how's married life been since I last saw you?" "Oh shocking!" "shocking!" "We had our twentieth wedding anniversary just before christmas" "Which was a life sentence" "Yeah!" "everyone reckons we should be out of jail by now" "By the time they were twenty-eight, Paul and Sue had two children" "Katie and Robert when he was thirty-five he brought his family to London for a holiday to show them where he had started out" "When we had Katie when she was born Paul said to me" ""Oh I'm glad I've got a daughter" he said" ""When I'm an old man at least she'll come up and give me a kiss and a cuddle"" "She is also the shy one of the two which is probably followed after me a bit" "Well Katie loves to shop we're starting to learn more of what we share alike, she's very much like Paul and she doesn't quite know what she really wants to do just yet" "I really love painting and art and I love music and she has taken to that she seems to have the creative flair what does university mean?" "I'm pretty happy with Katie and I'm not having a go at Rob but I've got fears for Robert 'cause he's struggling a little bit and he's had three teachers already lets say they don't know how to motivate him" "Robert had started school and he was having a few problems he's a square peg in a round hole in the normal mainstream schools so we've moved him to another high school that's a community school which is much more relaxed" "and as a family unit we're a lot calmer" "I was going to be a policeman but I thought how hard it would be to join in" "I just haven't made up my mind yet I was gonna be a gym teacher but one of the teachers told me that" "I had to get up into the university" "At twenty-one, Paul was working as a junior partner for a firm of bricklayers by twenty-eight he had gone out on his own as a sub-contractor but it didn't work out" "Well I've gone from being stable in one job which was the brick-laying, to.." "I've probably had about ten or fifteen jobs, I've never counted them although I haven't been sacked from jobs I just haven't been able to settle" "Paul now works for a plastics company, installing industrial signs" "I think I've got to a stage now I just want to stay in work two or three years ago I tried to increase my skills and went to school and did a carpentry certificate as I wanted to work as a carpenter" "but I found there was too many good carpenters that were out of work so I didn't go too far with that" "I suppose partly it's due to my lack of confidence in myself and the monitors up in the wash room sends the nurse out well there's no talking, no I wasn't talking today and Brown sent me out for nothing" "I find it hard to express emotion most of the time although I'm getting on top of that" "I'm more than happy now just the simple things to say to Susan, like "I love you" or something like that" "I mean I can tell you about it but" "I really haven't been able to say it freely to Sue, y'know?" " Is confidence still an issue with you?" " Yeah unfortunately" "I've learned to live with it sort of accept it but I've never really got on top of it fully which really annoys me there's nothing I can do about it though" "I'm more at peace around the horses and the animals" "I can be upset and on edge and come down to the horses and within three or four minutes I've forgotten everything so it does calm me down" "but I can be a pretty angry person and... in the wrong circumstances I can fire up terribly but fortunately it doesn't happen to often these days" "At the beginning of this year Paul and Sue moved to another Melbourne suburb" "It's like living in a palace compared to our other house it's nearly twice the size" "There's probably a few more professional people live around this area" " So you've moved up the market a bit?" " Yes we have we got to the point where we had paid the other house off so..." "I suppose it's forced us to save too" "I think we will have to spend less" "We wouldn't manage just on Paul's wage alone it's the difference sometimes between eating not eating and just paying bills most people these days rely on two wages to survive" "I've been doing mobile hairdressing now since Robert was a baby" "with this job I go and cut peoples hair but it's like going visiting all day some of the people don't want me there doing their hair, they just want a chat tell them what I've been up to and for them to tell me what they've been up to" "I've got twenty-three thrupenny coins and I don't know how many half-penny coins I have now" "I spend, yeah I spend he doesn't save because I don't give him any to save, basically these days you don't get a pay packet, well I get money as I go" "Paul's wages are paid straight into the bank and it's really no money anymore you don't see it, it goes straight into the bank then all your money comes out it's just pretend isn't it" "I quite often joke that it's a myth that I actually get paid at all!" "because I haven't seen any money for some years now!" "In their twenties Paul and Sue sold up bought a van and travelled Australia" "I think it brought us closer together because we really got to know each other and we relied on each other so much" "When I was younger I definitely wanted to move out of Melbourne" "I would've only needed that encouragement from Sue if Susan had been exactly the same then we wouldn't be here now" "I think as I'm getting older I'm more nervous about doing that" "I still know there's a huge amount of space out there" "I don't know why but obviously that's important to me it's just such a beautiful country right down to the barren land" "What's the most fun in life at the moment for the two of you?" " I'd say christmas holidays" " Yeah christmas holidays with the kids 'cause the kids love it we had a great summer this year and we had a whole week of great weather it's what a family should be and that's why it stands out I suppose" "I guess I do feel middle aged but I'm pretty comfortable with it" "I always remember when I was younger I always looked forward to getting older and hopefully into my eighties even it's never been something that really worried me one of our ambitions was always just to grow old together that's true, we used to say that" "I keep telling my children "isn't it nice to be loved"" "to know that someone loves you, it must be really sad for people out there... that have no one, that don't know that they're loved and each day, sometimes you're coming home and think "well they'll all be home"" "and it's nice to just come home" "I read the Financial Times" "I read the Observer and The Times" "What do you like about it John?" "Well I usually look at the headlines and read about them ...about it" "What's the point of the program?" "it's the point of the program is to reach a comparison and I don't think it is" " Good point" " Because we're not typical examples and I think that's what people seeing the program might think falsely" "I mean, they tend to typecast us" "So everything we say, they'll think..." ""oh that's a typical result of a public school system"" "That's one of the troubles with this sort of program" "I don't really think that people like us" "Unless we're seven and being rather funny, have very much to say that's... very interesting, because I mean... we don't know very much" "Well we didn't know very much when we were seven" " But we were still quite funny" " We were at least funny!" " Yes!" " Yes!" " In ourselves!" "I agree with John, all we can say is what we think and if that's of interest to people, good luck to them" "I'm going to Charterhouse and after that, Trinity Hall Cambridge" "Andrew went to Charterhouse and Cambridge, where he read law" "I'd like to be a solicitor and also fairly successful at twenty-eight Andrew was a solicitor" "What qualities do you think it needs to be successful?" "Well you have to have a legal ability in my business, obviously and you have to have a bed-side manner as far as your clients are concerned there's no good being brilliant if you can't communicate with your clients" "by thirty-five he had become a partner well I work in the corporate department of a large firm of solicitors in the city that is dealing with things like mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, general corporate advice putting deals together for clients" "I suppose the pace has changed a bit as... with technology people expect work done much faster than they did... well perhaps not seven years ago but fourteen years ago our practise has got much more international we've more business travel, we have offices in places like Sao Paolo in Brazil" "Moscow, Thailand" "How has that changed your life or your part in the company?" "Well it means you're under increasing pressure to produce things quickly" " And how is that for you?" " That's fine you have to meet the pressures, that's what people come and see you for" "What do you think about girlfriends at your age?" "I've got one but I don't think much of her" "They're no longer just bores" ""We won't play this" or something they're the other half of the community and they're there and you can begin to talk to them" "I don't think I financially come from the same background" "Andrew didn't go for a classy debutante, he went for a good Yorkshire lass but obviously he knew what he wanted" "By the time he was twenty-eight, Andrew had married Jane" "I think I'm quite down to earth and less extravagant than some women are" "I don't go out and buy lots of expensive dresses, I just buy one or two and I even let her pay for them!" "Well I suppose the most important thing that's happened is we've had two children one, five years ago, Alexander, then a couple of years later, Timothy" "when I see the children playing together now" "I realise how much fun they have together and it's probably what I missed being an only child" "What's the most difficult thing about keeping the marriage together?" "I don't think it is particularly difficult actually we seem to manage alright" " Would you say?" " I think so, we talk don't we" "We have a situation where we retain a babysitter once a week and we make a point that once a week we always go out by ourselves, mid-week and I think that's quite important" "Do you worry about not having a career and what will happen when the children leave home?" "Well I do but I've made that decision now and I've come to terms with it if I wanted a career I would but I wanted to be a mother and to be a full-time mother" "it's our children's half-term so we decided to spend a few days in New York" "I come here from time to time on my work but it's usually very rough but we thought it would be rather nice to bring them with us smile!" "I think it's not a bad idea to pay for schools because if we didn't schools would be so nasty and crowded" "Yes, so do I think so" " and the people in the schools wouldn't..." " and the poor people would come rushing in and the man in charge of the school would get very angry and he would get bankrupt he wouldn't be able to pay all the teachers if he didn't get any money" "education is very important and you can never be sure of leaving your children any wordly goods, but at least you can be sure that once you've given them a good education that's something that no one can take away" "well Alexander is coming up into his teens and he'll be sitting common entrance to go to his next school later in the year which will be a boarding school infact he's down to go to the same school that I went to" "Timothy is continuing where he is now for a while and perhaps be going through the same procedure" "Well I think boarding makes you feel self-sufficient and also teaches you to be away from your parents and to live with people for a long time" "It's going to seem very very strange but if it's what he wants to do and it helps him to get where he wants to go then I'm prepared to only see him every three weeks" "Once I had a talk to Grevil, he was in my class and" "I asked Sir if he could put him out of my class as he was always getting minuses" "I think it's become much more competetive for children nowadays" "I don't really remember much about my early childhood but..." "I feel that they are under more pressure to perform now" "you look back at us at the age of seven saying... we're going to this school, that university and so on but there have been many places where one could've gone wrong just because you have the opportunities it doesn't mean you will pull through" "Where might you have gone wrong do you think?" "Well one could've given up on university or found the pressures of work too much one could've found the pressures of marriage too much all sorts of things can go wrong and what is it in you that's pulled you through?" "Well I suppose it's just being persistant" "I don't like giving up and perhaps it's also not being too adventurous not wanting to do anything else once you start" "I've been in my job for twenty years and not really wanted to do anything else when I leave this school I'm going to Collet Court" "and then I would be going to Westminster Boarding School if I pass the exam and then we think I'm going to Cambridge and Trinity Hall" "John went to Westminster and read Law at Christchurch Oxford" "I do believe parents have a right to educate their children as they think fit and I think someone who works on an assembly line on some of these car factories, earning a huge wage could well afford to send their children to private school if they wanted to" "At twenty-one we asked him what career he would pursue" "Might be in the courts" "Doing what?" "Perhaps Chancery practise" "I now have a career, I'm a Barrister other than that life chugs along in varying degrees" "When boys go around with girls they don't pay attention to what they're doing for instance my grandmother had an accident, because a boyfriend was kissing his girlfriend in the street" "John married Claire, the daughter of a former ambassador to Bulgaria he has a very successful career at the courts and is now a Q.C." "He decided not to take part in this film" "When I leave school, I'm going to the Dragons School, I might and after I might go to Charterhouse Marlborough" "I can't remember all the other places as mummy's got so many but those are some of them" "What about university Charles?" "I might go to Oxford" "Charles went to Marlborough but he didn't go to Oxford instead he went to Durham university" "I'd say I'm pleased I didn't, because it was very much a sort of... sort of Marlborough prep school" "Marlborough, Oxbridge conveyor belt and you get shoved out at the end and what did Charles want to do?" "it's hard to say probably scribbling away in some basement for some London newspaper or something" "Charles did scribble away for an East London newspaper he then moved on to the BBC where he became a producer" "he is now editor of science documentaries at Channel 4 he decided not to take part in this documentary" "Well we pretend we've got swords and we make the noises of the swords fighting and when somebody stabs us we go "ARRGHHH!"" "Neil grew up in a Liverpool suburb in the winter if you live in the country it would just all be wet and there wouldn't be anything for miles around and you get soaked if you try to go out" "and there's no shelter anywhere except in your own house but in the town you can go out on wet wintery days 'cause you can always find somewhere to shelter 'cause there's lots of places" "At fourteen he was at a local comprehensive school" "I think it's a very good idea to have competition otherwise you might start to relax and not try hard enough being in Set One is very very hard to keep up with the leaders" "I never have the time to relax at all" "Neil had dreams of going to Oxford but he didn't get in instead he went to Aberdeen university but dropped out after a term at twenty-one he was working on a building site and living in a squat" "I came to London and" "I contacted an agency for squatters and they were able to give me the address of somebody who was able to help people who were looking for accommodation in the London area" "You've kicked against the stability that's..." "I don't think I ever had any stability to be quite honest" "I can't think of any time in my life when I ever did" "I don't think I've been kicking against anything" "I think I've been kicking in mid-air the whole of my life" "At twenty-eight he was homeless wandering around the West coast of Scotland" "if the state didn't give us any money, it would probably just mean crime and I'm glad I don't have to steal to keep myself alive" "if the money runs out then for a few days there's nowhere to go to and that's all you can do, I simply have to find the warmest shed I can find" "How do people regard you here?" "Well I'm still known as an eccentric as I have been since about the age of sixteen or so" "I'm not claiming that I feel as though I'm in some sort of Nirvana, but" "I'm claiming that if I was living in a bed-sit in suburbia I'd be so miserable" "I'd feel like cutting my throat" "At thirty-five we found him living on a council estate in the most Northernly part of Britain, the Shetland Islands the nice thing about here is that you can cut yourself off when you want because there are people living around but they're pretty quiet people" "it's an environment which sustains me, it's one in which I can survive" "I still feel my real place is in the world where people are doing what the majority of people do and the reason I don't feel safe is because" "I think I'm getting more and more used to this lifestyle which eventually I shall have to give up and what would you like to be doing say in seven years?" "I can think of all kinds of things I'd like to be doing the real question is what am I likely to be doing?" "What are you likely to be doing?" "That's a horrible question" "I think most likely I'll be wandering homeless around the streets of London but with a bit of luck that won't happen" "some of the advantages that residents of the Trowbridge area have in comparison with those in other parts of Hackney first of all they are geographically isolated they're separated from most of Hackney by..." "At forty-two he's a Liberal Democrat member of Hackney council he was elected two years ago" "While I was in Shetland I felt strongly that I should become involved in politics simply because I felt I wasn't acheiving things in the way I wanted to and I could see decisions being made politically by people I felt were not competant to make them" "and who I felt were not representing the majority of the public and I felt angry and I thought in my own small way I've got to get in there and I think more people should" "I think it's only apathy which leads to bad government at any level" "It's like a million miles from the Shetland's here, how do you cope with that?" "That is one aspect of it, adjusting to London after all that period away even though I'd been back ocassionally for visits it was extremely difficult it became progressively easier, the first six hours was an absolute nightmare" "and then the first week was pretty bad" "I suppose it took me a year or so to adjust" "I suppose I ... yes well" "I would like to be somebody in a position of importance and I've always thought this but I don't think I'm the right sort of person to carry the responsibility for whatever it is, I always thought well I'd love to be... possibly even love to be in politics or something like this" "the question of long term?" "delegation as you'll be aware the Liberal Democrats..." "Do you have any nerves when you give speeches, arguments or defend positions?" "Yes of course and if I didn't it would be wrong the councillor who has no nerves is not doing his job it becomes slightly easier after the first time" "I'm glad you didn't record my first speech as most of the chamber walked out and I determined like Disraeli to say something like" ""Well you are not listening now but one day you will hear me"" "but unfortunately most of the chamber had already walked out so it was hardly worth saying that and also I don't believe that will neccessarily be the case well I'm going to take people to the country and sometimes the seaside" "and I'll have a big loudspeaker in the motor coach and tell them whereabouts we are and what we're going to do and what the name of the road is and all about that" " Do the days seem long for you?" " They can do" "Do you have any friends anywhere?" "I have some good friends still in England" "Father god, we thank you for the love that you showed to us all in creation we pray that that love may grow and take root wherever Bruce and Penny find themselves from now on we pray that you will give them both understanding and patience" "I think it was after the twenty-eight program there was a dinner organised just to say farewell to everybody really" "I don't the idea was that we would get together and become friends but I think Neil turned up without much notice, I can't really remember" " I came down from Scotland" " OK, right and I don't think anywhere had been arranged for him to stay" "I think there was for all those..." "I'm not sure exactly and I said "oh well you can always sleep on my spare bed"" "I think the time between my moving to London from Shetland and finding my own accomodation in London was about two months and all that time I stayed with Bruce" "Was that difficult?" "Not at all, he was a model host although he did always insist on measuring the amount of bathwater there was in the bath!" "and I'm not quite sure why that was, I never actually found out!" "I hope you don't mind me saying this but..." "like... he'd find the fridge a bit noisy so he'd turn it off!" "I had occassions where he'd walk round the block or..." " I didn't stay in and chat" " No, no, no that's true" "No I accept that I wasn't the model lodger in every way however that only emphasises how patient you actually were" "How has Bruce helped you?" "Well he's just been a good loyal friend and I appreciate what he's done to help me settle in London and just be someone to talk to when the need has arisen when I grow up I want to be an astronaut" "but if I can't be an astronaut I think I'll be a coach driver this is probably linked up with the fact I want to travel my thoughts haven't really changed" "I definitely would like to be a coach driver now" "I've trained to be a teacher of English as a foreign language been on a number of training courses" "I've done that open university degree, that was perhaps the longest of all it was an open university B.A." "I took a number of subjects this is all background I suppose and really... perhaps you'd like to know whether I've done any work and the answer is no" " Another one?" " There you are" "Oh there'll be plenty in the next few weeks" "All Neil's political work is voluntary like the canvassing he did for the Liberal Democrats at last years Winchester by-election he lives entirely on state benefit" "I haven't had any paid work apart from a couple of short government schemes" "I worked in a local community theatre for about six months" "I worked as a gardener, fairly inevitabley" "Does it worry you living off benefits and the state?" "Yeah of course" "I feel as though I'm a drain on people who are working hard to provide the money it's not that I don't think there should be a benefit service" "I think there should be work for all or for as many as want to do it and I'm not satisfied with efforts that... that have been made to provide work for those who want it when I get married I don't want to have any children because" "they are always doing naughty things and making the whole house untidy" "I don't know what the best stage is for falling in love maybe when you're in love in your teens you really are in love and when you think you're in love later on you're not or maybe I'm still not old enough to really fall in love" "I always told myself that I would never have children" "Why?" "Because children inherit something from their parents and even if my wife were the most... high spirited and ordinary and normal of people the child would still stand a very fair chance of being not totally... full of happiness because what he or she will have inherited from me" "well I'm not married" "I value all experience" "I feel that part of my life hasn't happened" "I'm not homosexual therefore I do hanker after a stable relationship with a woman" "I've never been able to achieve that, and" "I think I'm somehow deficient in... my ability to react to the needs of others through not having had that relationship" "I feel, especially sometimes when I'm on my own that I'm losing touch with the way other people live" "Do you worry about your sanity?" "Other people sometimes worry about it" "Like who?" "As I said I sometimes can start behaving in an erratic fashion sometimes I get very frustrated, very angry for no apparent reason, for a reason which won't be apparent to people around me" "Do you ever think you're going mad?" "Oh I don't think it, I know it well 'cause... we're not allowed to use the word mad but you know..." "I think most people are mad here, really my health's been a lot better more recently than other times in my life maybe being busy has been part of the cure" "and I think my christian faith has helped me" "Can I just say Neil many thanks for the prayers, they were really nice and thoughtful" "I also beleive that as my friends who have been so loyal have... have got to know me better, there's always room to get to know people better that they themselves have been able to... show support and sympathy in the most appropriate ways" " Is this a good time in your life?" " Yes probably, I've never been busier and I've never been in contact with so many people please put all the leaflets right through the letter boxes" "I feel incredibly grateful for the opportunity to do what I do" "I'm grateful to the people who elected me, I hope I haven't let them down" "I hope I will be re-elected, that depends on my performance in the last two years" "In May he was re-elected for another term" "I don't think there's a councillor in the country who doesn't want to be an MP yet they say every MP wants to be prime minister but I'm quite happy at the moment doing my council work" "and trying to serve what I see as a very great need in Hackney well I suppose I've done many more things than on previous programs but whether I've changed inside?" "well I can't say" "What's the most enjoyable thing in life for you at the moment?" "I think it's looking to the future" "Well that's a change for the better isn't it?" "Well perhaps that's just because I'm getting old but I think... it's made me beleive that things can't be as bad in the future as they have been in the past" "I think there are certain short term objectives I have here in Hackney and if I can achieve a few of those then I'll be pleased" "Stop it at once" "One of the underlying ideas of the film is that England is a class driven society is that true do you think?" "People will say "oh no it doesn't make a difference"" ""he got it on his full merit" probably some have but there's a lot who fall by the wayside who get pushed into these jobs and other people who have been fighting really hard working overtime in universities or wherever... to try and get to where those kids are" "and they just got it like that because daddy goes to the right club!" "in the city where I work there are lots of very successful people from all sorts of social classes and if I was recruiting someone it's not something I would take into account so I think social class distinction has become less important" "I've met some really interesting people through my work that are of a higher class they describe things and you know you'll never be a part of that circle but do you want to be?" "I think the English classes police themselves in subtle ways if you're working class you're not supposed to want to do anything else and if you do try to do something else then... the other people around you will point out you're getting out of line" "In my day young people had to know their place but now they're starting to burst forward whereas before..." ""you will go that far and you will stop there and you will not go any further"" "If the money's there then maybe that would give you the advantage it might get you into a better school, it might get you into someones law firm if the money's there, but I don't know that it's class as such anymore" "Nowadays the only excuse for class is ignorance, if that's an excuse there is so much worldwide communication and intra-national communication that people should know enough about how others live for this to not be the case" "But I think it does still exist to a certain extent and I would love to see it change but I'm not sure how it can really be done" "I think wherever you are there are a range of opportunities and they are obviously limited more limited depending on your background" "I'm hoping education is one way out" "I don't think it's like England exactly but there's..." "I think there's definitely a class... maybe I've got the wrong idea of what class is but I think there's definitely an upper class and a lower class here" "Yes there is a society of class there is the advantaged and the disadvantaged but even from the advantaged we have failures" "Look at the royal family born into all that money, wealth and priviledge but look at them!" "what a mess!" "I wouldn't want to swap any of that for some of theirs money, wealth, position doesn't give you happiness, health or anything like that" "What effect has it had on you?" "being in these films?" "It's funny because before the films start you think... what on earth have I done with the seven years that I can talk about?" "and you panic and think I should've done something, something dramatic" "I was hoping I'd win the lottery last night so I could come on and say that!" "y'know, life's not like that" "We were talking about my ambitions as a scientist my ambition is to be more famous for doing science than for being in this film but unfortunately it's not going to happen!" "I've met some of the most interesting people I know and am still in contact with and this includes people in different parts of the world one or two particularly close friendships have been forged through the program although I was very suspicious when the initial contacts were made" "I don't think I'd have kept a record of my life like we have with this program so yes I enjoy doing it but... it's not something that takes a great precedence if you came and asked me if you could do this to my children" "I certainly wouldn't be enthusiastic" "I think it's something that..." "I wouldn't want to wish on someone particularly" "I think for the first forty years it's restricted me because I was always shy to start with and knowing that people were going to be looking at me and watching me and rather than do something that looks stupid I've always pulled myself back" "there's a lot of baggage that gets stirred up every seven years for me that I find very hard to deal with and I can put it away for seven years then it comes round again then the whole lot comes tumbling out and I have to deal with it all over again" "it hasn't changed my choices in life" "I haven't thought, well I have to be doing this by then or... how will this seem to others?" "or so on it's just a periodic little intrusion it's the only time when you're a cabbie... instead of you picking up a celebrity and saying "oh you're Paul Gascoigne!"" "and they say "oh I know you" and they turn the tables on you" "Do you like that?" "it's not a question of liking it, I'm used to it it has to be said that I bitterly regret that the headmaster of the school where I was when I was seven pushed me forward for this series" "because every seven years a little pill of poison is injected into.." " Oh no!" " Well that's the truth!" "being honest I think... despite all the things I might have said over the years about..." ""oh no this program again!"" "I think there's a certain amount of excitement there too underlying" "I'm old enough to admit it now I suppose no it probably is a bit of good fun some of us don't see family from one year to the next and I think that's how we all feel about each other, that we're linked" "and that can never go" "At the end of their very special day in London after their trip to the zoo and the party we took our children to an adventure playground where they could do just what they liked" "those from a children's home set about building a house" "there's Nicholas" "and Tony" "Andrew" "and Bruce" "Suzi" "Jackie and her friends" "give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" "this has been a glimpse of Britain's future"