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!

Dad and the Coronation

Morning of Saturday 30 May 1953 Neville Day marches into the kitchen carrying a large and clearly heavy cardboard box and deposits it upon the kitchen table.

Mother, Neville's eldest son Robin and I gather around, surprised and curious as to the contents.

The box duly removed and to our surprise it's a television.

Particularly surprising because, as Mother quickly points out, the house has no electricity. As neither does the rest of the village.
Click

"Follow me." Says Neville and off we all duly trot towards the farmyard some fifty yards behind the house. In the corner of the yard stood a new small asbestos sheet clad shed. Inside the shed we were introduced to a single cylinder Lister diesel generator. "Wow!" being the only appropriate exclamation.

"For the chickens." Neville explains. "To keep them and their chicks warm next winter."

The rest of the day was spent uncoiling a couple of thirty yard rolls of insulated cable and slinging it between trees and hastily erected precarious posts, leading all the way to the house.

Monday morning and a man turns up in a van with an enormous ladder to fit a rooftop TV aerial seemingly as big as a set of rugby posts to our chimney. I since worked out the complete TV installation cost as much as a workman's wages for six months. Life was good for us in the early Fifties. Through no fault of Neville Day whatsoever it didn't last. Less than a decade later we were almost bankrupt.

Tuesday 2 June 1953 we all sat around the flickering 14" black and white screen of our state of the art Ekco TV. To watch HM Queen Elizabeth's Coronation, with tea, shortbread and biscuits. She wasn't facing bankruptcy!

Neville and my Mother married on Saturday 15 August 1953 and thus Neville Day became my Stepfather. At 5' 8" tall not a giant of a man, but in my eyes he will always be so.
Click
Almost two years later, on 5 August 1955, my half sister Suzanne was born, at home in the farmhouse. I was sent away to stay for a week with Grandpa and Nana Day in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, six miles down the road, for that happy event.

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