1989

So Jackki returned to Liverpool after our summer in Bedford and holiday in Cornwall and I was very uncomfortable about her house sharing with 2 lads and her friend Katherine. This discomfort was ridiculous, unfair and misplaced but Jackki brushed it off by largely ignoring it and our pattern of letter writing, phone calls and weekends continued at pace. I would do midweek phone calls from a phone box on Clapham Road and weekend phone calls from work where I was generally found piling in the overtime doing server backups.

Our most popular weekend break was our trips to see my parents in Scarborough, visiting as adults meant sharing pizza and red wine at the house and then a wander over to the Blacksmiths for a few drinks. The bar staff were generally hopeless with mixing drinks so Mum would frequently receive a vodka and coke to accompany Jackki’s malibu and tonic, I was obviously drinking pints in a local pub with my Dad and sometimes arkid who was mostly away at university. Jackki would arrive by train and I would hammer up the A1 to meet her on a Friday night and then drop her back at the station on Sunday before driving south. We would walk labradors Mandy and Lucy on the beach whatever the weather, with Cayton Bay a clear favourite although the bacon baps and mugs of tea were better from the Tea Pot in Scarborough. A transition had happened when it came to making weekend plans, it was always a default of us being together and going to visit family or friends, the occasions when we did things separately became the exception, on trips to Manchester we would do the family visiting rounds together.

The Rock ‘n’ Roll back in Swinton still featured in our social calendar with various options for free accommodation on offer along with the complex logistics of meeting up and also visiting as many family members as we could over the weekend. Gez and Nikki were still hogging the headlines when the secret broke that they were sneaking off to get married in Scotland and although we weren’t attending that family celebration, we were both delighted for them, it also set off a lot of discussion between us about getting engaged and our future together.

I really wanted Jackki to enjoy a Christmas in Coe style, even though that would mean her spending time away from her family I was sure she deserved a different Christmas to the awful time she had the previous year. After consulting with her Dad, who was in the early days of a new relationship that Jackki had reservations about, she agreed that Christmas in Scarborough was infinitely preferable to cooking and cleaning at Brentwood. I can’t remember too many small details from that Christmas, but I think that was probably where Jackki really fell in love with it as a family holiday as she enthusiastically made it her own in the following years. We then headed to Manchester for her Dad’s birthday and New Year/Jackki’s birthday with friends.

1990

My Gran would frequently accuse us of burning the candle at both ends over the years and I reckon this must have started around this time. We were either working long hours or flitting around the country doing something or visiting someone. We had a few trips to London from Bedford which highlighted a very recognisable Jackki trait when I took her to Oxford Street for some shopping, she was very excited when she walked into the biggest Top Shop she’d ever seen to buy a new outfit for my upcoming 21st. Later that night we were sitting in the bath together on the ground floor of the bedsit house on Clapham Road when Jackki let the secret slip that she had booked me a flying lesson as a birthday present, she had tried so hard not to tell me, but she was such a chatterbox.

Courtesy of my parents we had an amazing weekend in Scarborough to celebrate my 21st birthday with a great bunch of friends from Swinton and from university all together with my family. As is customary we got properly hammered and somehow got back to the caravan very late with people crashed all over the place. Jackki was very drunk and locked in the toilet at one point, I was less than polite about her drunken state and she came out of there absolutely furious with me, so I spent the last few minutes of my birthday being full on punched in the face and having to apologise. I’d like to say we learned our lesson and didn’t get so drunk ever again but…….that wouldn’t be entirely true. All was well by the morning, and I even sobered up enough to drive to York for the secret flying lesson.

Although missing each other during the 2-3 weeks between our weekends away was becoming quite tough we were both very focused on working hard and investing in our futures, there was a lot of tension surrounding summer plans with me finally confirming that I would stay in Bedford for the summer just as Jackki accepted a paid internship with ICI in Manchester. The prospect of a summer apart was not a popular topic as we said our farewells so frequently on the Milton Keynes train station platform late on Sunday evenings but we knew it was the right thing to do. She was very proud of her input to the development of cyan coloured inks for the emerging technology of photographic quality printers that summer. Jackki finally passed her driving test in May 1990 at the 7th attempt but was a long way off from being able to afford a car, she was delighted to receive a congratulations card from my mum though and was firmly a part of the family now, loved particularly by my Gran and Grandad.

The main focus of the summer was to get together some cash to finance our final year at university, Jackki lived with her gran on Chelford Drive to that end, only 12 doors away from where I had lived for my first 16 years. The summer also included a pilgrimage to the Milton Keynes Bowl to see David Bowie on 5th August on the Sound & Vision tour along with Jason and his girlfriend. The crush as Bowie came on stage was quite bad and I was more concerned about Jackki than I was excited to see the stage so I scooped her up and pushed our way further back to a spot we could both relax and enjoy the show. She didn’t really need rescuing, but my instinct was to look after her and I can’t actually remember too much of the show itself. I do remember it was a very hot day and security was confiscating all drinks on the way in including our bottles of water, being scalped in the name of security was already a feature of such events even back then.

September soon rolled around and we returned to university for our final year studies. Jackki was in a happier house in Wavertree with 3 friends, all female this time, and I was back sharing a room in a Morecambe holiday apartment with Gordon who was staying on to study a Masters. Gordon and Jason had shared a house together the previous year while I was down in Bedford and had fallen out in the absence of my calming influence, so we didn’t get many visits from Jas that year as he started his career having graduated already. Marine Road Central Holiday Apartments was located right on the seafront of a mostly closed Morecambe but there were pubs, arcades and cheap takeaways nearby so it worked okay, Gordon and I made sharing a room work somehow and giving him a lift to campus each day made sure I got my arse out of bed to drive to Lancaster, when Jackki visited we had the sofa bed in the lounge. By this time my Gran and Grandad had moved to Heysham as well as Aunty Elsie & Uncle Charles so a lot of time was spent visiting them, not just to get my washing done I promise. Sundays were spent walking along the freezing cold promenade because it was free before heading into Lancaster to drop Jackki off for her train back to Liverpool. On the weekends we spent in Liverpool we would make use of the waterfront and Albert Dock area for a similarly free Sunday pastime. Having been a lot further apart while I was in Bedford it was now much easier and cheaper to see each other most weekends unless our workload prevented it and I also had the luxury of a payphone on the stairs in the apartment building.

Christmas Day 1990 was the day I knew beyond all other days that this woman was a keeper when she bought me a Scalextric, I still don’t know where she found the money. That gift became a feature of the Morecambe apartment and was used as free entertainment and stress relief for the duration of our time there and still resides in the loft at Lanehead. The last day of 1990 was also Jackki’s 21st birthday and we broke with the NYE tradition of heading into town clubbing the night away and had a little party at Jackki’s dad’s house in Cadishead. Other than our friends Lynne and Chris I am not sure who else was there that night, Jackki was a little disappointed by the small turn out but had grown up getting used to her birthday being a difficult date for people to celebrate.

1991

We returned for the winter term of our final year at university and were both feeling the pressure of final year projects and the dreaded final exams, knowing that the luxury of long easter holidays was unlikely to happen meant a lot more time apart. Our letter writing all but dried up since we both had the luxury of pay phones in our flats/houses and just didn’t have the time to write. With the end of our university years approaching and plans having to be made for job applications I could feel a growing uncertainty with Jackki about what would come next, we had seen many couples split around this time for varying reasons and I could tell she was worried. All that worry was removed on Valentines Day but I’ll save that story for the next chapter….