Old history revisited

When I was 21 years old, I did something stupid?/brave?/ridicules? (choose whichever you think is applicable); I left Britain, the newspaper job that I loved, all my friends, even my language and went to Germany to marry a man I had only known for ten days. I did not speak a word of German.

Why? You may wonder. Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing and explains away many of the follies we might commit in our youth.

In my case it was simply a reaction to the death of my parents, who died within three months of each other in the year 1971.

Sometimes the life that we wish for - wife and mother - is not the life we get, no matter how well we think we have planned it. I thought I would be a wife and mother. It didn't happen that way.

However, I left Britain with hope in my heart and a van-full of personal items.

I should have realised what I was getting myself into when I arrived on 5th November 1972, to find my future mother-in-law had already booked the wedding date for 1st December.

She had found us an apartment, I was told, booked the local 'Gasthaus' for the reception, chosen the food and, because the bedroom suite (including the bed!) she had ordered for us, had not arrived in time for the big day, she arranged it so we could spend the first night of our marriage in her bed in her small flat with herself just on the other side of the bedroom wall in case we needed anything.

You get the picture? And remember I was only 21, couldn't protest about anything because I didn't speak any German and also I did not want to appear ungrateful. I just thought this was the way they did things in this land.

The second day of my marriage, my husband took me to the bank to put my name on his account. He told me that Mama had always handled the money and now I should see to all our finances and just give him five Deutschmarks a day for lunch and cigarettes as he wasn't very good at managing his money.

My first solo excursion in my husband's old left-hand drive car also brought me to the US Army Kaserne (Barracks). I drove in, parked the car, walked into the administration office asked who did the hiring and came out one hour later with a contract in my hand - secretary to the commander.

I upped my husband's daily allowance to six Deutschmarks, took over the reins to our lives, and so we trundled on for five years; always with Mama in the background complaining that I did not look after her son well enough.

I did not speak enough German to ever tell Mama that her great love for her son had made out of him a helpless man who couldn't do anything for himself. And by the age of 26, I finally gave up looking after him and we divorced.

But we remained friends. Hard to argue or have emotional conversations when each party speaks the other's language only to a minimal level.

I would have liked to return to England at that point; would have liked my old job back; seen my old and trusted friends, but I had taken my Springer Spaniel, Brandy, with me to Germany, and Britain had strict and very expensive quarantine laws. So I stayed in Germany. Hans Joachim and I remained good friends but eventually we went our separate ways and I thought I would never see him again when he moved to Munich with his new girlfriend. He wasn't one to write letters (no computers or smart phones in those days, remember). And as time passed we lost touch.

So it came as a total surprise when, some 43 years later, I received an email from him. But more about that and what followed next week...