After moving to Newton Flotman near Norwich we went to Norway with Roy’s brother, Ted Reason, which was to become our last holiday with him.
Also in 1989 our son, Peter, bought a Midas Gold kit car and because he had no garage, we said he could use ours.
It was based on reconditioned mini engine parts and as Peter was living in Diss, Norfolk at the time he had to travel to ours and work on it at the weekends (Roy also got involved!)
In 1992 Peter bought a three acre field in Bluntisham to start a horticultural nursery.
It had no water, no hedges and was full of head height Wild Oats!
But it did have a large shed or barn with a pan tile roof which was collapsing down and pushing the walls out!
The field had been a line of one and a half acre strips for the soldiers returning from World War One and this barn had been built at that time for the storage of plums and equipment.
It was too heavy to jack the roof up, so about three quarters of the heavy clay tiles had to be removed prior to using Acro Props to jack up the roof and bring the walls back to vertical.
Notice on the photo, the ancient ladder used for picking the plums and yes it does have a missing rung!
Then Peter’s next task was to plant hedges, erect rabbit proof fences and then put up two large polythene tunnels which we helped him with:
Peter’s plan was to grow a selection of alpines and herbs and then visit the local Garden Centres to tempt them to buy from him.
On approaching them, he discovered that they wanted a complete range of plants, so he had to rapidly increase the range.
This meant buying more plants to be used for stock plants for cuttings and buying a bigger range of seeds.
The local Garden Centres quickly started buying the increased range of plants and Peter was then able to build up his customer base.
The picture above shows the completed Midas kit car in the far north of Scotland while being driven around most of the Scottish coastline.
More of Christine Reason true life story in these articles:
[1] 1922 to 1930
Born 1930 in London. Moved to Terling, Essex as a young woman.
Married 1955 and moved to Lawford, Essex, then Ardleigh, Essex.
Pre-retirement ran an Ironmongers shop in Lowestoft.
Retired to Newton Flotman, Norwich and then Bluntisham, Cambridgeshire.
Died 2019.