Your parents courtship

I did start to write my life story, because it has been unusual, but when I read it back it seemed awfully tedious and badly written, so I deleted it.
Thanks for kind comments ladies.

My parents met while accompanying each of their fathers at a sporting event both their fathers who sort of 'knew' each other regularly went to. Dad told friends the next day he'd met the girl he was going to marry, and indeed they did just 6 months later. They were married for 58 years when mum died. When DH and I announced our engagement 4 weeks after we met and he asked for my parents' blessing, they didn't blink an eye, were just happy and supportive. They knew about 'love at first sight'.

They must have done.
Isn't it strange, though, do you think, to love someone the minute you clap eyes on them?

MissAdventure

They must have done.
Isn't it strange, though, do you think, to love someone the minute you clap eyes on them?

I think it's totally bizarre! I'd never have thought it possible despite knowing my parents' history, but after two dates I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with DH. Luckily he felt the same, and decades later we're still together, although there have been times I could cheerfully have strangled him!! 🤣🤣

I've heard of a good few people, though, who have spotted someone and just known that is "their person".
It is quite a bizarre concept, but it works out they're right.

Soul mates, maybe, or twin flames?

My parents met in the early 40’s while both were student nurses in a psychiatric hospital in the south of England. My Mum had travelled from her home in rural Ireland with 2 of her sisters and a cousin and they all started their nurse training together in what was then known as the asylum.

My parents were happily married and devoted to each other for 60 years.

Blind luck I'd say. If I hadn't met DH (and that's another convoluted story) I'm pretty sure I'd eventually have met someone else who I'd think was my 'one and only' Whether or not that would have proved be to be true..... glad I didn't have to put that to the test. He might be an 'awkward bugger' at times but he's my 'awkward bugger' and I'm grateful.

My reply to MissA

They met whilst serving in the RAF in World War 2 and married straight after the war in 1946. Mum was from Yorkshire, Dad a Londoner which caused quite a few problems because Mum thought the Londoners were unfriendly. Probably right I suppose because she had a Yorkshire accent cent and everyone else had a Southern one.

My parents lived nextdoor to each other. Dad always told the story that his first memory of Mum was of her toddling down the path with her nappy hanging down. When he told this story, she always gave him "a look" !

My parents got together after the war had ended. I think everyone was going a bit mad then! They had both returned to their hometown after being in the forces and were just wanting to enjoy themselves.
My mother got pregnant, so they nipped into a registry office and got married.
Not very romantic!

I think that's when a lot of babies were conceived, during the celebrations.
Was the baby you?

MissAdventure

I think that's when a lot of babies were conceived, during the celebrations.
Was the baby you?

1946 was a baby boom year.

No, that is not my birth year.

Certainly not love, more like lust in July.
End of the war, shotgun wedding as I was born in the spring of the next year.
Mother sweet on someone else and father knew it.
Not a success to put it mildly.

My parents were at school, different years, and church. My mother watched him go out with other people but one day he asked her out to the cinema they were married in war time and together for 49 years. My grandmother was appalled when she found out mum was going out with him as she said he was so noisy, they were complete opposites.

He was 18 and she was a 23 year old divorcee...They were both in the RN. A peanut butter sandwich picnic in a field in Ireland was the scene of my conception. He was 19 when I was born in 1950 and away to the Korean war 4 years later. Came back a changed man. They divorced about 30 years later.

My father was English and in the mid 1930s went on walking holidays in Germany. Dad met my Mum, a German girl, and fell in love and wanted to get married. This was in Nazi Germany and Mum applied for a visa to leave Germany which was refused several times. A friend then told her the only way she could leave Germany was go and camp in the British Ambassador's garden in Berlin as every time he returned to England he took all the campers with him as she was technically living on British soil. This happened in 1938 and my parents were married in a church in Kent.

This whole process and WW2 was never spoken about until the 1980s when Dad told my eldest brother. We have no paperwork but we assume that Mum became a British citizen immediately otherwise she would have been interned during the war in England. My Dad became a Lancaster bomber pilot in 1944 so the war never discussed in the family home.

I am loving this thread!
Thank you Miss Adventure

My father too flew in Lancasters choclatepudding, he was a Navigator, and was killed over the Netherlands a few weeks before I was born. Four years later, my mother and stepfather met in a Pub! She went out with her parents for a drink, and my stepfather was with his father doing the same, having not long been back from being a Japanese POW. Both father's vaguely knew each other (business) and started chatting, my stepfather went over to where the lady's were sitting and asked them what they would like to drink! Later he asked my mother of he could take her home, and on doing that he asked her if she would marry him!! She said firmly NO! He then suggested Dinner, to which she explained her situation, so he said to make it lunch and bring me along too! This is what we did, and the rest was history. It was it fact our extremely lucky day. He was a lovely man and we couldn't have asked for a better.

Chocolate pudding I have been to the British ambassadors house in Berlin. It does have a nice garden…we went to a party there. We took a tray of Ferrero Roche on a tray, but he had not seen the tv ad so looked rather surprised.😳 and didn’t get the joke.
Coincidentally my mum was German and lived in Kent too. I think your mum will have become British upon marriage,

I think it’s called a residence not a house,…

I know my parents met at the church youth club and bonded in the walking group and playing tennis, they were both very sporty. But whether it was love at first sght, I doubt, my father was one of several suitors, and in the end he was the winner and I do not think he ever regretted his success.

When my mother, a Yorkshire farmer's daughter, was posted in the Cotswolds with the Land Army, my father used to see her delivering milk with a pony and cart. He admired her from afar, then made a three-legged milking stool for her. The romance went from there and she never moved back up north.

My Dad spotted my beautiful Mum in the local market in 1939 and, as he was due to leave the area to start his apprenticeship with Rolls Royce in Wales to work on the Merlin engines, he asked her if she would write to him. He was 18, she was 14 and she had just left school and was an apprentice Court Dressmaker.

She wrote to him for the next few years and they "courted" when he was on leave. They got engaged five years after their first meeting, just as he had decided to join the RAF to become a pilot after completing his apprenticeship (he would have been in a "protected trade" as an aero engineer but always dreamed of flying planes.) They wanted to marry before he was deployed, but he was the third of six children and his Mum insisted that she needed his wage contribution so he arranged for the majority of his salary to be assigned to her and my Mum had to wait. He was sent to the far East with the RAF and was told during his flying training that he certainly wouldn't be a pilot, as qualified engineers were in scarce supply and were needed to service the planes - his favourite and speciality were the Spitfires but he worked with Lancashire Bombers and Hurricanes as well during the campaign.

VE Day came and went and VJ Day eventually arrived, but Dad was then sent with his squadron as part of some sort of peace-keeping mission (I think in Java and Sumatra), so they weren't re-united and married until May 1948 - nine years after that first meeting in the market. He was my Mum's first and only love and she was my Dad's. They were very happily married for 64 years when my Mum died. A true love story and one which always warms my heart.

AskAlice ❤