Fred and Joyce on their wedding day	Fred junior in later life

My parents Fred Tyman and Joyce Wagstaff were married at St Mary’s Church in Rushden. My father was aged 20 and my mother aged 18. During World War 2 my father joined the Navy Fleet Air Arm, which meant working on aircraft carriers.  He had  volunteered for the submarines service but at nearly six feet tall was considered not suitable.  The army would have liked him to join the Guards but the navy was his choice.

Soon after their marriage he was shipped out to the West Indies, where there was oil, sugar cane and bitumen.  He said he had been to America with the navy but came back on station to the West Indies as they were then called.  He had one near escape or luck as you might say, he was taken ill with a very nasty throat infection, so he couldn’t sail with his ship on patrol.  Some days later his ship was sunk by a German submarine with most of the crew being lost.

On occasion my mother would remark that it was funny that before my father went to war, he couldn’t dance, but when he came back he could.

At the end of the War, my father came home and brother Bob, was born on 11 May 1947.  We had a lot more to do now that my father was at home and were living in Cattle Lane, Irchester.  Around this time grandfather Tyman died so my cousin also came to live with my grandmother.

After we had left Cattle Lane to live in Tennyson Road, Rushden, we would visit my grandmother and she would give me sweet coupons; the country was still on food rationing.  I used to go to a sweet shop next to my Aunt Nellie’s house. (What a treat).  My aunt Nellie’s house was part Roman, the walls were very thick and all stone.  There was a window in between the internal walls.

My uncle Laurie was stationed in India during the war and rose to become a Regimental Sergeant Major.  My aunt Linda and her husband Owen lived in Crow Hill, Irthlingborough, but we don’t see much of them, it used to be at Christmas when everyone got together.

My first memory of life was with grandma Wagstaff.  My birth certificate shows that I was born at 159 Newton Road, Rushden.  The first thing I can remember is going by Newton Road School and noting the ornate entrance which is still there.  I can also remember standing on the corner of what was Wills' Store, 1945 watching an army convoy going by.  My grandmother Wagstaff, died when I was five years old, and I remember crying and being very upset that I wouldn’t see her again.

We then lived at 5 Cattle Lane with my father’s parents, until moving later to 36 Tennyson Road.

The house in Cattle Lane was a terraced house and had a range for cooking and heating.  The toilet was 40 feet at the bottom of the garden which backed on to a very old Church wall, probably built from Roman stone.  (St Katherine’s Church).

The house had no refrigerator, television or telephone, double glazing or central heating. The soil in the garden was black soil which was add for the area but grew very good celery, which I didn’t and still don’t like, but had to say  it was nice.  The home was always a very welcoming and happy house.  At Christmas we had a gramophone which we had to wind up to be able to play records.

I remember my grandfather Harry Tyman being very white, I found out later this was because he was gassed in the trenches during the first World War.  I was told that my grandmother’s father, my great grandfather, lived in Cattle Lane and I can remember a man with a cap and muffler at the time.  It was said that he was a very old man.

Grandfather Wagstaff was like Grandfather Tyman, exposed to mustard gas in the 1^st World War, and their main jobs were driving horse drawn ammunition wagons.  A very dangerous occupation.