This week Marion tells us all about her secong husband Derek

When my second husband Derek moved to Stockwood he was already a familiar face to those people who had come to the area from Kingsdown.

For those readers who don’t already know his story, I will share it with you now.

For a start Derek is passionately, no obsessively, interested in family history.

Many of you will have seen the popular TV programme “Who do you think you are?”

Well, Derek knows full well who he is – a Kingdown boy – and very proud of his roots there.

Born in Salmon Street in 1930 and brought up in a terraced row of three storey houses, semi-basement with an attic, he attended St Michael’s city school.

His family were relatively poor and since his brother and sister were a lot older tended to regard himself as something of an only child.

But because Kingsdown in those days was a close community he had plenty of friends – friends he still has today.

One of his funnier memories (although not at the time) recalls the time when he and his mum and dad were sitting in the kitchen when they heard a rumbling noise from the back garden.

Rushing out they discovered a big hole where the chicken coop – complete with chickens and the outside toilet – had disappeared into a well they never knew they had.

They never saw the chickens again but their kindly neighbour did let them use his toilet until the landlord was able to fill in the well and build a new one.

During the late 1930s he remembers going down with his mum to a place in Portland Square where they issued free blankets. There was no shame there – a lot of people were in the same boat in those days.

Derek was evacuated to Truro during the war where he was very unhappy. He was placed on a farm where he was made to work very hard – so hard in fact that he never went to school during the whole time he was there.

On his return he was reunited with his friends. Derek left school at fourteen to start work and at eighteen was called up to do his national service.

He married his first wife, Dorothy, in 1953 and together they raised a family.

About twenty five years later curiosity led Derek to research his ancestry – which was quite difficult at the time because he didn’t have a computer and it was all done by searching parish records.

A word of warning, however, to those of you who may do the same – you could be shocked.

Derek’s great-great-grandfather, it turns out, was a criminal. Prosecuted in 1841 on the charge of stealing a quantity of lead from a roof, he was found guilty and sentenced to be transported for life to Tasmania.

Derek was able to discover the name of the convict ship he went on, the Neptune. On arrival in Tasmania he was put in a chain gang and suffered a very harsh regime. Released after nine years on a conditional pardon he went on to marry a fellow convict, Mary Ann Lynn.

Derek never discovered what her crime was – only that she had been transported after being sentenced in the same way, in Jedburgh, Scotland.

In 1997, when Derek and his first wife made a three-week world tour, he made sure Tasmania was included.

He was able to visit the penal settlement where his great-great-grandfather had been imprisoned and also to obtain a copy of the surgeon’s log of the Neptune.

When I met Derek he told me about his interest in family history but I certainly could not have envisaged the extent of that interest.

Gradually, but quite deliberately, he infiltrated what had been my utility room and began to reveal some of his treasures.

One of these was the mortuary label which had been attached to his grandfather’s big toe.

After this we came to a fairly amicable arrangement whereby he now dusts his room himself.

He also has three enormous family trees on the walls and is prone to asking visitors if they would like to see them.

Sometimes he forgets and asks them more than once at which a look of panic usually comes over their faces.

Of course, fellow enthusiasts are only too pleased to enter his hideaway.

He also has spent shells from the Somme donated by a guide.

Most of our friends say how laid back Derek and I are but when I met him ten years ago life for me was difficult and growing more so.

No wise man would have ventured out of his depth in the turbulent waters of a second marriage if he had known how rough the seas would be.

But now, thank goodness, we are safely moored.

Bye for now - see you next week.

God bless, Marion.