Neville John William Day 7 March 1922 - 26 November 1990

	Preface		Dad and the Cranes
	Neville Day The early years		Dad and his duty to the Crown. Including the one on the can!
	Dad's Dad's Army		Dad’s driving lessons (and some)
	Help from Neville’s Father John Day		Dad and the Mercedes G Wagon
	The Day I met Day		Dad, four tonnes of concrete and the gravel tsunami
	Dad and the Coronation		Norfolk is flat (not!)
	Neville Day’s admirable tutoring		No pheasant in here Charles
	Promotion to Chauffeur		You can drive when you're eighty!
	Dad and THE holiday		Dad and the North Sea Gas pipeline
	Dad’s pigs and the Onion Dance		Dad's Butt pricking
	Dad and me and the Farm Fire		Dad’s idyllic office and the end of Neville Day Plant Hire Ltd
	Fluffy dog meets Steam Engine (fluffy no more)		Dad’s little known speech impediment
	Helping with the pruning and tree felling		Dad and the not a Volkswagen
	Neville Day The early years and the final hour		Dad’s wheelies
	Dad and Fairstead		Dad would have laughed!

Help from Neville’s Father. John William Day: 25 December 1896 - 5 December 1986.

At the time John Day was trying to help with his son Neville's problems, my own Father, a former WWII RAF elite Pathfinder Squadron 7 Lancaster bomber pilot was killed in a tragic accident. On 16 April 1950 in Switzerland in a high mountain air crash attributed, though disputed by some conspiracy theorists, to navigator error, along with inclement weather. My late Father piloting a Handley Page Halton, four engine, freighter aircraft fuselage number G-AHDX. Leaving my Mother and me, as only child, bereft of husband and Father but also of breadwinner. Difficult in those days for a young widow of twenty five with a nine month old child in tow.

John Day’s vocation took him to farmers’ markets around the Cambridgeshire Fens and in the neighbouring counties of Lincolnshire and Norfolk. One such regular trip took him to Norfolk's fine capital city Norwich and the great agricultural market there, in his at that time, quite prestigious large, black Vauxhall saloon. The venue where it was customary to meet one's peers and contemporaries was the Bell Hotel, for libations. Plus more libations.

One such peer was my maternal Grandfather, Harry Hopkins 1897-1962, appointed one of, if not probably the country's first County Council Planning Officer, following the recent implimentation of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947.

Harry Hopkins and John Day also always drove the same model Vauxhall motor cars. This probably aided in cementing their lifelong friendship, despite actually having quite different, albeit amiable personalities. That and the whisky. Fortunately large Vauxhall motor cars of those days knew their own way home.

John and Harry compared notes of their progenies' misfortunes and commiserated. A plan was conceived. Barbara, Harry's widowed daughter, needed a home and an income. Neville needed domestic help and especially a childminder.

Thus a marriage (eventually) was spawned in the lounge bar of the Bell Hotel, Norwich. With the help of renowned distillers Matthew Gloag & Son.

The first rendezvous for Neville, Barbara and me, her son, was thus arranged for some date in late 1952, on the platform of Wisbech Railway Station.
Click image to enlarge

Understandably the, at the time, largely God-fearing villagers of Neville Day's home village of Marshland St James would have been in shock following this auspicious, not to say somewhat scandalous event but eventually it seems overcame their horror. Neville Day's copious affability undoubtedly providing the antidote.

Chris Latham-Smith 2022.

Any person wishing to have mention of them deleted from this tribute then please click here.
Your details will be removed without question. No further correspondence will be entered into.

Return to Index Next chapter Back Final chapter