Oh Carole

This is a non-fiction love story with a tragic end, played out in the 1960s and 70s in Worcestershire, on the Hampshire-Surrey border, in the old county of Huntingdonshire and in Wiltshire.

On the way, the author sheds light on the Worcester of their courtship in the early 1960s with its pubs, coffee bars, new innovative Chinese and Indian restaurants, funfairs, a jazz club, concerts at the Gaumont Cinema and the Victor Sylvester Dance Studio free sessions on Friday nights, as well as the Cambridge of the mid-1970s and its noted resident Syd Barrett.

The author is not immune to getting sidetracked into waxing lyrical about his other main interests: music and cars.

Carole, with her quirky, childlike personality and lilting West Country banter, could turn any situation into a joyous, enchanting memory, and the author has tried to reflect this in her story. She had her own unique way of dealing with life’s challenges, like marriage, cooking, childbirth, motherhood, her husband’s “career moves” from one end of the country to the other, driving lessons, learning to swim, DIY, and being a parish councillor.

In meeting her final daunting challenge, she showed great fortitude, courage and consideration for others.

Michael Bowles was born on the 24^thof March 1940, which was Easter Sunday that year, at the Bird in Hand pub at Stoulton near Worcester. There was a lot going on in 1940 of which he was totally unaware, the Dunkirk evacuation, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the suicide of Virginia Woolf, for starters.

He was educated at Bredicot village primary school and Pershore Secondary Modern School before taking up a mechanical engineering apprenticeship at the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE) and College of Electronics at Malvern. He then embarked on a career as a chartered engineer at RRE Malvern and Pershore, the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Farnborough and Bedford and the Aircraft and Armament Evaluation Establishment (A&AEE) Boscombe Down, which is described in his first published book, “WORK (and play).”

Having retired in 2002, his main preoccupations now are acting as a carer for his wife, Irene, painting in acrylics and multimedia and writing books. This book was in fact his first book to be written but the second to be published. The first to be published was WORK (and play) and he has a third, Growing Up, completed and ready for publication and a fourth, What we did on our holidays, as a work in progress.