Which Witch Which Witch Doctor??

1990 was full of frustration and a feeling, after Lee Micromatics
and all that responsibility – of being ‘under-used’.
My Father, Bill, of course, meanwhile felt totally under-used
– until he got a new job far from home in Berkshire, involving a
55 mile drive each way to work, in early 1990! In the
meantime he was supported by my mother, in her job as the
head of the medical centre at the University (then Polytechnic)
just down the road from their house in Hatfield.
I let Helen down in a strong way, meanwhile, for both her
BSAVA Conferences – by having ‘a turn’ and being ‘high’
slightly on both occasions, in April 1989 (at Birmingham, as I
recall) and in April 1990 (in Harrogate – again – as I recall).
In the meantime, in the early Spring of 1990, having been
installed at Dane End for over six months, Helen and I at last
decided to try to start a family – so she ‘came off the pill’.
Three months later, in May, she came into the bedroom one
morning very excited – carrying a pregnancy testing kit
definitely showing ‘positive’! Soon it was time for regular visits
to the Doctor, and eventually scans, and the baby was worked
out to be due around my sister Libby’s 30 th birthday – 22 nd
February 1991. There was great excitement in both families –
Helen and I already had her sister’s boy as a nephew – but this
was to be my parents’ first grandchild! Then a couple of
months later my brother’s partner Jane also announced she too
was pregnant – so the excitement for my mother in particular
was redoubled!
Helen and I went on a holiday to Lynmouth in Devon with
both dogs that August, and stayed in a hotel that allowed for
people like us with dogs. We had a great time, Helen taking it
easy with the baby inside her, and did a lot of walking and
exploring Lynton and Lynmouth, and the North Devon beaches.
Back at work, she braced herself for not being given any
maternity pay, under the revised terms of her contract after
she had glandular fever when she started – and so to be off
work for only as short a time as possible. Although there was a
major global recession starting to bite hard around the end of
1990, my job was secure and sufficiently well-paid for us to be
able to live for those few weeks around the birth, without
suffering at all. So I continued to commute to the National Grid
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