I was born in Walton Hospital Liverpool on 4th February 1935 into a working-class family. We lived in my Mother's family home at 54 Eton Street, Walton, Liverpool, 4. My father John Owen Evans was a career-soldier who joined the British Army at the age of fourteen as a drummer-boy in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He spent most of his time in the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan and in the North of India. He spent 14 years in the East and didn't see England again until he was demobbed in 1934 at the age of 29. My mother Annie Elizabeth worked as a machinist in The Dunlop Rubber Company making canvass footwear. They met on the bridge over the boating lake at Stanley Park and after they married they went to live with my mother's parents at 54 Eton Street in Walton Liverpool. I attended Nursery School at Gwladys Street Infants in Walton.

My Brother's Death.
My elder brother Frankie was tragically killed when he pulled a kettle of boiling water over his bare chest. Like all working class homes in those days there was no hot water system and everybody kept a kettle permanently on the hob. There is no doubt that my parents were negligent, for the fireplace was without a guard.  My distraught father wrapped the baby Frankie in a blanket and ran to the hospital with him [we had no telephone] but poor Frankie died of pneumonia shortly afterwards.  Later I fell down stairs and damaged my eye muscles - again there was no stair-gate to protect me. It meant that I needed to wear spectacles up to the age of fifteen because the fall resulted in me having a turn in my eye. The incidents drove a wedge between them, for they both felt guilty and blamed each other and their relationship was never the same after that. Later my father left us for another woman. I don't blame him.

The 1939-1945 World War. Tenbury Wells and Burford.

At the outbreak of the World War, when I was 4 years old, I was evacuated to the countryside of Shropshire, which is a beautiful rural area in the centre of England. Clutching my gas mask, I was taken by train with my school-children friends to the small market town of Tenbury Wells, where I was lodged for six years. Part of my time was spent at Burford Gardens, which is now a well-known visitor centre for gardening enthusiasts, and is often featured on television. At that time the brewery family of Lord and Lady Whitbread owned it and I was lodged with the head gardener Charlie Horton and his wife Edith Horton.

My mother had to remain in Liverpool to work. As this was the formative period of my life I was greatly affected by the benign influence of my foster-parents. They left an impression upon my character and my appetite, which remains to this day, with my love of literature, history, poetry, music, and all the cultural things of life. In 1944 my mother left Liverpool and joined me in the countryside. We went to live with an old spinster-woman named Dinah Morris in Boraston Mill, which is about two miles from Tenbury Wells.

A Broken Home.

After the war, I returned to Liverpool to a broken home, for my parents had split up, and my mother brought me up alone. It was a great economic struggle for her. I wasn't a high achiever at school - always in the top class - but never outstanding. I left Priory Road Secondary Modern School without any qualifications and went into menial shop jobs, first working in an electrical shop and later in a cycle shop in Liverpool, which was the main agent for Raleigh bikes.

The British Army 1952 - 1955.

In 1952, I was 17½ at the time, in order to escape the slums and the hopelessness, together with one of my workmates George Henaghan, I joined The Gloucestershire Regiment of the British Army. The regiment had just returned from Korea. In the Army, I was a barman in the Officer's Mess, the regiment was posted to Egypt, and there was I serving chilled champagne to a background of palm-trees and camels for three years. It was valuable in that I picked up a lot by watching how the middle-class officers behaved and interacted when they were off-duty and having a drink.





Back to Civilian Life.

On leaving the Army as a full corporal in 1955, it was back to the slums again, and work in the ATM, which was a telecommunications factory in Edge Lane Liverpool. It was then that I started to study various subjects at 'evening classes' - economics - poetry - literature - philosophy and many other subjects. Leaving the factory in 1957, I got a job on the 6th of June 1957 in a Ford Garage washing cars. One night, as I was leaving work, the boss - a decent man - stopped me because I was carrying a briefcase. He thought that I had stolen it from one of the customers' cars! When I explained that it was my own case, and that I was on my way to Night Classes to improve my education, he was so surprised at my articulation that he offered me a job as a trainee car-salesman. In 1958, I married a schoolteacher called Joan Calder and we had five very good looking and as it turned out very intelligent children. Their names are Sven, Freja, Leif, Kirsti and Björn. I will say more about them in later essays. I worked in the car trade at A. W. Webb Ltd in Berry Street, Liverpool for nine years. Then, in 1966, I invented something - which I will speak about in a separate piece later.

My father died of a heart attack on the 2nd of December 1971. I went down to London for the funeral and met my Dad's partner Audrey and my half sister. In 1978, my marriage to Joan ended after twenty years and we got divorced. The children were grown up by this time, so they weren't hurt so much. Joan then married a Swedish friend of mine and went to live in Sweden.  (This is ironic - for I speak Swedish!) 
In 1979 I left my nightclub business, and my business partner agreed to buy me out over a long period. 

University at 43

This provided me with the money to live on, which allowed me to go to University in Liverpool    (after I had completed a year taking a course to give me the entry qualifications) I studied my favourite subjects - Swedish Language, Linguistics, and English Literature.  In 1980 I met and married my second wife whose name was Sue Bebbington. Sue came from Chorleton-cum-Hardy in Manchester and we lived in a rented flat in Oxton on the Wirral peninsula.

Wimpey Homes

   I left Liverppol University, and it was then that I got the job selling houses for Wimpey Homes.  -  Britain's largest House-Builder.  After my initial training at Runcorn I was given an upmarket estate  of homes    to sell called Eleanor Park in Bidston on the Wirral.  From there I went to an Urban Renewal Site in my home-ground of Walton, Liverpool called Rockley Green.  Following that they promoted me to Urban-Renewal Sales manager and I travelled all over the North West supervising the widespread  sales force on the many urban renewal projects in the area. It was at that time that Ibought a Prout  ocean-going Catamaran that I named 'Nine Lives' and gradually built myself up again after all that I had lost through the divorce. My second wife Sue and I bought a succession of bungalows on the Wirral and then bought a house in a semi-rural area and moved in on the 30th of July 1981 in order to be nearer to the catamaran, which was berthed in the Douglas Boatyard within easy walking distance.

Turkey

 In 1987, I left Wimpey and bought a hotel in Turkey (the tourist industry there was just taking off!)  Then, like a bombshell, the Turkish government passed a law inhibiting foreigners from holding majority-shareholdings in firms under a certain size, it cost me dearly, and I was forced to sell it at a loss.

Working in the Lake District.

  I returned to England, and in 1987 I got a job with Embra Investments as the Sales Manager of a large 'Mobile-Home Park’ up on Walney Island near Barrow-in-Furness in the Lake District. The boss was a man called Ged Burke and we got on very well together. Later Ged left and I was made the manager.  Tragically my wife Sue developed breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy.  We'd by this time bought and moved to our third house here in Hesketh Bank.  I was forced to leave the job on the Mobile Home Park, and return to Hesketh Bank to look after and be near to my sick wife.

The Chamber of Commerce & Industry

I got a position as an Information Officer with the Chamber of Commerce.  My poor wife developed secondary out-breaks of cancer, and I had to give up my work November 1992 in order to nurse her.  She died peacefully on the 28th of April 1995 with me holding her hand. We were married for twenty years.

Clare
My third wife Clare came into my life after her husband died of the same disease. They'd lived on the Mobile Home Park up in Cumbria, and she'd heard (‘through the grape-vine' as we say,) that I was now a widower. We'd known each other on the Park - but only as acquaintances, for I was a friend of her husband. We met more out of mutual sympathy and support more than anything else, but in spite of the age gap (she was 35 and I was 60) we fell in love and married. Clare, who had the distinction of being designated Beauty Therapy Student of the Year 1995 at Southport College, is a fully qualified Beauty Therapist and for some years she carried out beauty treatments on women in a salon that we had built on to back of our home.

Both Clare and I are members of the International Health and Beauty Council.  I myself went to Bootle College for a year and qualified as an Electrologist and Aromatherapist, and I carried out 'Non-surgical face-lift' treatments on women in the salon.  Therefore, Clare and I were business partners too!  We were blessed with a beautiful baby boy who we named Cameron 27.07.1996 and two more boys followed soon after: Connor 10.08.1998 and Marius four days after Christmas Day of 1999.