Rogues' Gallery - the ones who didn't run fast enough! (with their time served)
Alan Salisbury (6 yrs); John Kirkham (6 weeks); Bob McElhaney (6 months); Wolfram Thome (17 yrs)
One good thing about frequent divorce: the husbands don't get any older. They stay forever young, as they were when you first met them. Wolfram was the only one who stayed the course, and as we aged happily alongside each other, I did not notice how much we were changing, until one day, looking at some old photos, I asked, "Did I do that to you?"
The Gambler
I first married at eighteen. I did not feel that was young. Indoctrinated by women's magazines, I already felt 'left on the shelf'. When we consider arranged marriages, I am sure that if someone had presented me with portraits of six men and asked which one I fancied spending the rest of my life with, I would have been quite happy. What I did was a plunge into the dark - I'd only known him three weeks, and had one date with him, when his live-in girlfriend found out and I woke up with a knife at my throat (See 'At Least She Never Drank Much'). We had to get my parents' permission to marry; turned out they only agreed because they thought I must be pregnant - but didn't like to ask! It was not a happy marriage, but in those faroff days I did not know there was an alternative - and stuck it out. When my daughter started school and my son was eligible for nursery, I left. I still don't like to think of the horror of that marriage, but I remember writing a letter to the 'Telegraph & Argus' saying there should be places where women could go and take shelter from their husbands - now, of course, there are.
The Womanizer
After eight months' recuperation, my brother came home from University and thought I needed a night out. Leaving his friend to babysit, we went to the King's Head in Bingley Main street, where wild jazz poured from open windows onto the summer air. I walked in and fell in love with the drummer. After a tempestuous courtship of three years, I attempted to end our relationship. Kirk (as he was known to his friends) had let it be known from the start that he was 'not the marrying kind'. I felt I would like to marry again. He was regularly unfaithful to me and, I figured, would one day leave me for good. He reacted badly to the breakup. I would not take his phone calls, and ignored his banging on my door in the midnight hours. In the end, one night he pushed the letterbox open and shouted, "All right, you bitch, I'll marry you!" Not a good basis for a marriage, and six weeks after the nuptials, he was on his way, saying he 'should never have done it'.
The Marathon Runner
The Kirkham marriage was over in 1969. I was single for a long time, at first working and looking after my children, then training and working as a head chef. I had many affairs with many lovely men, but did not marry any of them, for which no doubt they are grateful. In 1980 I went as Head Chef and Catering Manager to Harlaxton Hall, English campus of the University of Evansville, Indiana, and there I met Robert McElhaney of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a student at the college. I was 40, he was 27, the same age my first husband had been when I married him at 18. This was a little unnerving. He and I shacked up together in my cottage in the grounds, and when I left the college in 1981 and returned to Keighley, he came along. All I can say about this marriage is, it was akin to being kidnapped by the 'Moonies'. I was never allowed to be alone, he stuck to me like glue, and evaded all my attempts to get him into employment, preferring to live off me. He proved impossible to live with and had to go. With the aid of a friend, I fixed him up with a job at Grattan Catalogues, and after two weeks being ribbed by the staff he ran away back to America. I was alone again.
The Alchemical Marriage
I had quite done with marrying when I met Wolfram Thomé. It was 1986 and I was 45. I had come out of catering, entered on my career as a performance poet, and embarked on my studies in the mystical arts - witchcraft, astrology, tarot. I had a full and satisfying life - many men friends as well as lovers - never short of an escort and an opportunity to put the glad rags on and go out and stun the population. I was happy and content when a gypsy came to the door and told me things she should not have known - I asked her in and she told me I would soon be married again. I saw this as a devastating blow, and not something to be entertained! I asked her if she was sure, but she would not change her story.
Pluto was up to his tricks again, moving into a favourable angle with my Venus. I knew this meant I was about to meet the Love of my Life. What I did not know was that the man I was to meet had his Venus exactly opposite mine, so that Pluto formed favourable angles to both. What strange paths of Fate arranged for Wolfram to be born fourteen years after me, when I could have pushed him out in his pram, and for both of us to end up in this corner of the world at the same time, with Pluto closing in on our charts?
The alignments between our two natal charts were unbelievable, even down to his Sun and my Moon in the same degree of the Zodiac - 23 Aquarius. In ancient times, this was known as the hermetic marriage, the marriage of Sun and Moon, Gold and Silver, Man and Woman. Perfection. Still I resisted his requests to marry me, until one year later, when my son Graham, trying to arrange a date for his marriage, told us the only date availiable was 10th October. Now why did that date sound familiar? Yes, it was the occasion of my first date with Wolfram, and as we came out of his door, we saw a Shooting Star. I had made an astrological chart for the date, time and place. I rushed to get it. Several hours later, having drawn his, my and the Star's birth charts onto a huge piece of paper, and made many measurements and comparisons between the three sets of planets, I rushed downstairs - "You've got to marry me!" I said. It was all there in the charts - Part of Marriage - everything. We arranged to be married on 10th October 1987, at 11am in Burnley, then went on to my son's wedding in Silsden at 1pm. We did not tell anyone until we were at the Reception - we did not want to look as though we were stealing their thunder!
Ten years later, on 10th October 1997, we took a huge bouquet of flowers to the Registry Office, and asked the Registrar to give them to the couple who were married nearest 11am, and to wish them as much happiness as we had known.
Like all good things, it had to come to an end, but that is another story.
Pluto was up to his tricks again, moving into a favourable angle with my Venus. I knew this meant I was about to meet the Love of my Life. What I did not know was that the man I was to meet had his Venus exactly opposite mine, so that Pluto formed favourable angles to both. What strange paths of Fate arranged for Wolfram to be born fourteen years after me, when I could have pushed him out in his pram, and for both of us to end up in this corner of the world at the same time, with Pluto closing in on our charts?
The alignments between our two natal charts were unbelievable, even down to his Sun and my Moon in the same degree of the Zodiac - 23 Aquarius. In ancient times, this was known as the hermetic marriage, the marriage of Sun and Moon, Gold and Silver, Man and Woman. Perfection. Still I resisted his requests to marry me, until one year later, when my son Graham, trying to arrange a date for his marriage, told us the only date availiable was 10th October. Now why did that date sound familiar? Yes, it was the occasion of my first date with Wolfram, and as we came out of his door, we saw a Shooting Star. I had made an astrological chart for the date, time and place. I rushed to get it. Several hours later, having drawn his, my and the Star's birth charts onto a huge piece of paper, and made many measurements and comparisons between the three sets of planets, I rushed downstairs - "You've got to marry me!" I said. It was all there in the charts - Part of Marriage - everything. We arranged to be married on 10th October 1987, at 11am in Burnley, then went on to my son's wedding in Silsden at 1pm. We did not tell anyone until we were at the Reception - we did not want to look as though we were stealing their thunder!
Ten years later, on 10th October 1997, we took a huge bouquet of flowers to the Registry Office, and asked the Registrar to give them to the couple who were married nearest 11am, and to wish them as much happiness as we had known.
Like all good things, it had to come to an end, but that is another story.
