Smythe, Glenn Philip & Shirley Anne Interview

Today is the 1st of March 2017. I’m interviewing Glenn and Shirley Smythe of Sunnybank [Hastings] on their family in New Zealand. I’m Frank Cooper. Glenn, would you like to tell me something about the history of your family?

Well, my mum and dad were from Denniston down the South Island. My father was actually born in Birchfield which is not far from Westport, and my mum was born in the North Island, in Gracefield, Lower Hutt. And my dad became a miner when he was fourteen, working the coal mines in Denniston; and while they were there my mum used to run the Coalminers’ Club. And when they’d had enough of mining they moved up to the North Island in 1947. My sister was born down the South Island. My sister was Avis Jean Smythe, and she went to the Boys’ High, which used to be a co-ed [co-educational school] in Hastings; and she was nearly seventeen when I was born.

I was born on the 19th of September in 1950, and my father was then working at the hospital as a switchboard operator. And we lived in 5 Regent Flats in Queen Street in Hastings, which is still there. My backyard was very, very small and there were six flats. I was never lonely as a kid because we had a lot of people living in the flats and they all had grandchildren and children, so we had a pretty good time there really. And I lived there till I was thirteen. I went to Parkvale Kindergarten which used to be in Queen Street down the other end, and then I started Central School when I was five. I was actually expelled from the kindergarten for pushing another boy off the jungle gyms and breaking his arm; and imitating a Down Syndrome lad, so I was asked to be kept at home. And when I was five I started at Central School and I was sent home on the first day for swearing so my mum wondered what she’d struck. But then it got good and I did quite well at Central School. I played rugby at school, never very well, but I played in the Midgets and then graduated into the Juniors; and I always played prop – I don’t know why ‘cause I’m not very big – but never played very well. I quite enjoyed school, did quite well at school; I was really good at art. And when I started Intermediate when I was about eleven I really enjoyed that because it was like a step up from being a little kid; you were now a big boy. Really liked Intermediate. And I started high school at Hastings Boys’ High School when I was thirteen, in 1964, and I took French, art, maths, science, geography and English. I did really well in art and French; I got first in Form for both of those, and second in Form overall. I used to enjoy maths more than anything else.

It’s interesting that you took French and art – you must’ve had a real feeling for them …

Not particularly. It was because if you took Professional – you had Professional, General or Technical courses. All the best teachers were in the Professional grade, so if you took the Technical one you got [the] worst teachers; so I took Professional – not really interested in French at all but I did quite well at it. And I did my School Certificate in 1966, I think it was, and I passed in all subjects. And I got pretty good marks in School Cert – I got over three hundred for four subjects, and I thought I was pretty clever but when you hit the real world it’s different. I was accredited University Entrance the following year.

I still played rugby at the Boys’ High School, and I was in the eighth grade for the whole four years because I never grew. [Chuckle] I still played prop. And at school – the very first day you were there you were called a ‘turdie’ because you were Third Form – and the first thing that happened was that they bit the nob of your cap and tried to throw you in the trough; full of mud coming out of the art room for the pottery wheel. And the very first week at school every year was walking around the parade ground dressed up in serge Army uniforms playing Barracks, because those days compulsory military training was still going. And I was sent down to NCO [Non-commissioned Officers] training courses when I was about sixteen, in Linton Camp; I did two weeks down there and come back as a Corporal and Acting Sergeant of No 3 Platoon E Company, which were all the smallest guys in the school.

And when I got into the Sixth Form all my mates were going to go to university, but I couldn’t really see what I wanted to do so I thought it was time to find a job. So I left school about two months after I turned seventeen and my first interview was for a quantity surveying job. It was a two hour interview, but there was a bit of a downturn in the economy about that stage. And after the interview I had the job, but I had to find temporary work for six months before they could take me on. So I went to the freezing works and Wattie’s and all the places where they employed labourers, and because I was so small and quite young-looking they just sort of laughed at me and told me to come back when I grew up.

And so I applied for a job at Whakatu Freezing Works as a pay clerk. When I got there they wanted an experienced guy, but they had a look at my school reports and said they would give me a job in the office. So I started end of 1967 in the office at Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Company as a trainee accountant. I did that for about two months; it wasn’t really what I wanted to do, but it was fun. And then Horace Norton who was the office Manager come [came] in one day; he said they were looking for two candidates to go to Wellington Polytech for a year on a block course. One was to do engineering and the other was to do computer studies. Well, at Whakatu they’d just bought a computer – it took up a whole room, and no one knew how to use it. And the other guy that went, David Khouri, he decided he wanted to do computing, and engineering sounded more interesting to me because I’d always had a go-kart when I was a kid and I had a motorbike when I was fourteen – which my father bought me when he was drunk and made me ride it home, otherwise I couldn’t have it. And I hid it behind the shed hoping my mother would never see it, but she wasn’t stupid, she knew it was there.

What sort of motorbike?

It was a Bowen … 98cc Bowen. They were made in Wales; they had a Villiers engine, two speed gearbox and girder forks. So I thought engineering was the way to go, so they sent me to Wellington Polytech and I found board down there with friends of my parents, who lived in Petone. And it was NZCE, or New Zealand Certificate of Engineering, which I was doing and I did twelve subjects in the first year, and the only one I failed was Tech Drawing [Technical Drawing] because I wasn’t supposed to sit it. You had to have a prerequisite which I didn’t have, but I sat it anyway. And I had a job down there every second Friday, working for an engineering consultant called Kerslake & Partners, on a Friday. I used to take off plans and just draw simple things for them, and watch all the draftsmen work. And I didn’t get paid.

And when I got back at the end of the year Horace Norton who had sent me down there, had died, and no one else knew what I was supposed to be doing. So I was put in the drawing office and I spent two years as a drafting cadet, which I didn’t really enjoy at all. And part of the NZCE course was doing experience in the boiler house and the engine room, and also the company workshops. And I did that and I really enjoyed that, so I asked for a transfer of apprenticeship. So that gave me an adult apprenticeship – I was nearly twenty – as a fitter and turner, and because I was almost an adult I was put in the rendering department; a sort of punishment I think, for changing my course. But it’s the smelliest, noisiest, dirtiest place in the Works – it was a horrible joint. And I spent a couple of years working in the rendering – as a result I’m half deaf these days. No one wore ear muffs or ear plugs, and it was normally over a hundred degrees fahrenheit in there, and we used to have salt tablets every hour for the amount of sweat you lost.

And eventually … I was supposed to do a welding course, but the welding instructor had also died, so I never did any welding as an apprentice. I was sent straight into the machine shop because I seemed to have a bit of a flair for machining, they left me in there and I spent the rest of my time at Whakatu working in the machine shop, and occasional breakdowns in the factory. And when the Works closed in about 1986, I was out on the street looking for a job like everyone else.

Were you married at this stage?

Yes, I was, yep.

You’d better drop back to where you …

Yep, okay. When I was at Whakatu one of the guys at work had a pyjama party – this is back in 1972 – and I’d been invited to a wedding. I went to Wayne Lee’s wedding. I didn’t know any people there, so I left the wedding pretty early and went to a pyjama party where I met Shirley Anne Butler, who had only been in Hastings one day. Yeah [chuckle] – she’d arrived that day. So we hit it off pretty well and that was the end of that. We got married in September that year … 30th of September.

Right – well you can have a breather now, because Shirley’s going to tell us where her people came from.

Okay, yeah.

Righto, Shirley …

Shirley: Okay. My mum and dad lived in Taranaki, and my dad was a shepherd practically all his life ‘til he got a sore knee and ended up going to Maata Cheese Factory which is just slightly out of Eltham. And my mum and dad moved from there when I was probably about nine. So we went into town as such after living out in the country for years. So that would’ve been … yeah, when I was about nine. And we went to the Manager’s house at the Cheese Factory in Eltham, so it was about a mile out of town; so that was close to town for us kids. And we had our own bedroom; us girls had a bedroom, ‘cause I had one sister and two brothers, so we were really thrilled to be in a huge house cause us four kids slept in one room at Maata, so that was really good.

But originally my mum’s family came from … her dad, on her dad’s side, was from Ireland, and on her mum’s side … would’ve been Scottish and English, so we got a wee bit of a mixture in all of us.

But yeah, I grew up in Eltham; went to Eltham Primary School as all our brothers and my sister did. We went to Eltham Primary and then to Stratford High School. And then by the time I left school my dad was working at Hutton’s by then – J C Hutton Ltd (smallgoods firm), and I didn’t even have to look for a job. The boss of the office asked my dad if I’d like to go and work in the office. Originally I intended to be a nurse and go back to school for another year, but I decided, ‘Well, got offered a job’; took the office job and was there for nearly three years before coming to Hastings and meeting Glenn.

So what brought you to Hastings, did your family move here?

No. No, no, none of my family were over here at all. No, I had no one over here.

So you were just on an adventure?

Yes – I had a broken engagement in Eltham, and I was originally going down to Wellington ‘cause I’ve got a pen friend that I had in Wellington. Met her – Jan was a pupil of Taita Primary School, and when we were about ten we wrote to Taita Primary School, and Jan and I’ve been pen friends since we were about ten, and we’re still in touch now. So I was going down to stay with her in Wellington and work in Wellington, but she decided to come over to Hawke’s Bay to her sister … older sister. So Jan and I stayed in a caravan in … Elaine Minogue, her older sister … we stayed there. So that’s why I came to Hawke’s Bay.

Elaine Minogue – no relation to Pat Minogue?

Yes.

Glenn: Ex-wife.

Shirley: Ex-wife, yes. Pat drove the wedding car for us. [Chuckle] Yeah, yeah. Pat and Elaine were at our wedding; so they all came to our wedding ‘cause we’d been staying with Pat and Elaine for a few months probably, in a caravan. Yeah. ‘Cause Pat had a garage down Railway … yeah. So they’ve been friends since I came over here. And I’m still friends with Elaine, and I don’t see Pat very often now. Yes … been a long time, but yeah. But Pat, I only see him if I bump into him in Havelock, or occasionally in the supermarket. Yes – he used to call me ‘Curly-wurly’.

Did you have curly hair?

No. Oh I did a wee bit, I had a wee bit of a perm, but because I’m Shirley, he you know, the curly wurly bars? So he … yeah. And I did a bit of work for him when he had the Windsor Service Station when the kids were young.

It’s interesting how these names cross. And so after the pyjama party and one day…

Yes, I’d only just arrived.

… you swept him off his feet.

Mmm. Yeah, must’ve done, ‘cause my parents made a big adventure, and they bought me over here with a trailer so they could take fruit back for the local grocer there, old Jack Stark in Eltham. He said, “Oh, take the trailer and bring me fruit back”, ‘cause it was hard to get when I first came over. Yeah – so they brought the trailer and then took a load of fruit back for Jack.

And so you then carried on with children and working?

Yes, we had two of the kids.

Glenn: Yeah, we bought our first house in Heretaunga Street – 1015 Heretaunga Street East – a little bungalow, and we bought it off Terry and Brian Lawrence. Robert, our first son, was born in 1973, in March – the 11th – and at that stage I was working in the rendering at Whakatu and I was also playing in a band, I’d been playing in a band since I was seventeen. Used to play for the Premieres, and our work started out at the Cabana Hotel and we did a three-month stint there, and then we went to the Pacific – did three months there; Stortford Lodge and the Albert Hotel. And when we got married first, I was earning more in the band than I was at work sometimes ‘cause I was still an apprentice. And yeah, from the band I sort of carried on for years and I gave up for a while when Heather was born; Heather was born in 1974 on October 14th, our daughter, and we were still living in Heretaunga Street.

And while the kids were young they kept nagging about wanting a dog and more room, because it was only a very small section. And while we were there I learned how to be a handyman, ‘cause I’d never done any in my life; but we had to re-roof the place, put new fences in; we broke up the old drive – two of them – and laid new concrete. I bought a concrete mixer and that’s what I did most weekends. We repainted the place, put in new drains, new windows. We spent a lot of time and a lot of money, we’d been there for twelve years, and then we moved to Albert Street … 604 Albert Street. It had a pool and a big section so the first priority for the kids was a dog. We ended up getting a Labrador/Corgi cross called Katie who we had for fifteen and a half years.

Shirley: And a cat.

Glenn: And a cat, yeah. Well, we had several cats in Heretaunga Street, they mainly got run over because it was on a main road.

While we were in Albert Street the Works closed, and I was looking for a job. And I was fortunate enough to find one just round the corner at Baybrite Stainless Steel, so I was only out of work for one day, and I was there for three and a half years. And at that stage I joined another band called ‘TP and the Hot Shots’ – Tom Patrick’s band – and was also in the Orphans Club those days, so I joined the Orphans Club band as well, and we were doing quite well.

Baybrite’s actually closed the doors so I was made redundant once again, and from there I went to Rowe Engineering in Flaxmere which I didn’t like at all. I was only there for about two or three months, and I didn’t get on with the boss and he didn’t get on with anyone, so I looked round for a job and I was offered a job out at McDonald Engineering. And my job interview there was, “What sort of beer do you drink?” And I said, “Tui”. He said, “You’ve got the job”, and that was it. So I stayed there for three and a half years until McDonald Engineering closed the doors as well; and I was doing fruit grading equipment, and pack house maintenance and welding basically most of the time; no machining – only a little bit – and when they closed I was once again unemployed. I was beginning to think it was my fault.

So at that stage our children were … Robert would’ve been nearly at high school then, wouldn’t he? And they went to Parkvale School which was just round the corner from us.

Shirley: And Hastings Intermediate.

Glenn: And after McDonald Engineering I got a job at Wattie’s can plant – it was then called container packaging – as a machinist and can maker, and I did that for a year. I was offered a full-time job there which was really good, ‘cause the money was brilliant and we got staff sales and health insurance and all other benefits you get at a big company. But I had [a] problem with my hearing, and it was so noisy I couldn’t hear anyone talk there, so … once again looking for a job. And I started at Falcon Engineering … Falcon Pacific … as a welder/fabricator, once again doing fruit graders and orchard equipment.

And by then I’d moved on to a different band which was the sort of band I enjoyed, it was a rock band called ‘Havana’. In the meantime music-wise, I had played for dining room music-type bands with Janet Totty, Joan Hansen and Hughie Tuckwell. And I played for the Les Culver’s Combo, and his son’s band called ‘Quando’, and several country and western bands. I played for ‘Legend’, and ‘The Georgie Boys’, and ‘Delta’; it was good money, it really was. It wasn’t helping my hearing so eventually I gave that up.

But while I was at Falcon Engineering we had shares in AMP which changed companies, and we were given about … how much was it, $16,000?

Shirley: Nine.

Glenn: $9,000 in shares. So at that stage my son attended Massey and he had finished his course at Massey as [in] production engineering and … packaging, was it?

Shirley: Packaging and marketing.

Glenn: So he did his big OE [overseas experience] and went over to England first, to London, and met his future wife over there; we didn’t know that at the time. But our daughter was also doing her OE and she was in London about the time we got this money, so I took leave from Falcon Engineering to go and visit them and we had [the] opportunity to stay at her place. Falcon didn’t see it that way and terminated my employment, so I went over there not knowing what I was going to be doing when I got home. But we had a blast – we did a week in London, and we did a European tour with Insight visiting Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Austria. And then we hired a car in Ireland; went right round Ireland, into Wales and eventually up to Scotland where we met my son’s future mother-in-law, and stayed with her.

And when I got back to New Zealand I was offered a job immediately at a place called Spectratech Engineering, which was once again fruit graders with photographic equipment involved. And I worked for them for a year, and they sent me to Australia to install a whole pack house and get it up and running. So I spent a year in a little place in Aussie called Gayndah. We were doing twelve hour days for twenty-eight days straight – just two of us.

And when I came back they had no work on either, so I was once again out of a job. So a mate of mine, George Lane in Hastings, said he had a job for me at New Line Engineering, which was once again fruit equipment. So I did quite a bit of time in the fruit industry. And he went bust after about … five months, I think I was there; so he organised work for all his staff so I ended up working on a labour only basis at what used to be Plix – it was Carter Holt Harvey Plastics. I did a couple of months there and they offered me a full-time job, but there was another guy that I worked with who was older than me who really needed the job, so my interview consisted of, “Give him the job”, so they did.

And I had another one jacked up already at what was then called Hawke’s Bay Wind Machines, putting wind fans in the orchards. And I welded up the towers, and assembled the gearboxes, and put the motors and all the control gear in them, and the crane driver and I used to install them in the orchards – mainly kiwifruit orchards. We spent quite a bit of time away up in Te Puke. But once again they went bust, so I was once more out of a job. So I walked down the road and ended up at ATI Engineering, which I stayed at until I retired; I was there for sixteen years doing mainly machining and CNC [computer numerical control] work in stainless steel tanks and that type of thing.

And in the meantime, band-wise I ended up playing for ‘Mid Life Crisis’, and we used to play at the Rose and Shamrock and Diva’s Bar. And I finally retired from work in 2016 aged sixty-five and a half, and that’s the stage I’m at now. And we moved to the house we’re at in 2001 in Camberley, and we’re still here.

Now before we go back to you, Shirley, you’ve been on another tour or two overseas since your first one, haven’t you?

Yes, we’ve been on five. Shirley’s been six times to Scotland I think; she went over for my son’s wedding, and I’ve been on five trips. And one of those trips my son took us both to the Isle of Man, which is somewhere I’ve always wanted to go as a motorcyclist. The racing wasn’t on at that stage, but since then we’ve been on another trip over there, and I ended up going to the Isle of Man and staying in a tent and watching the racing, which was great because I’ve always been into motorcycles.

Well, could you tell us something about your involvement with motorcycles and what you’ve ended up with?

Yeah, well I started motorcycling when I was fourteen. I got my licence as soon as I was fifteen, and I sold the Bowen quite quickly and bought a BSA Golden Flash. And when I was at Wellington Polytech I used to come home every second weekend on the Golden Flash. While I was down there I was being paid $9 a week by Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company. My accommodation was $6 a week and it was $1.28 train fare, and I used to walk a mile to Petone Station, catch a train into Wellington, then walk another two miles up to the Polytech and that same trip back every night. I didn’t have much money; didn’t eat much. But while I was down there a friend of mine run [ran] into me, and he was into motorcyclists [motorcycles] and he lived in Eastbourne. So we formed an unofficial motorcycle club called the Eastbourne Motorcycle Club, and we used to ride round the bays all the time with what money I had. And we had quite a good time.

When I came back to Hastings I sold the BSA and bought a Norton Single, a 500 Single, which I had for quite a while. And I blew the gearbox and ended up buying another one, so I had two Norton Singles at one stage. And after we got married I sort of gave up on bikes for a little while, and … it was still in the back of my mind, but we had priorities so the bikes went on the miss for a while. And then I bought a little Jawa to go to work on at Whakatu and it got me the bug again, and I ended up buying my first Japanese bike which was a Yamaha XV 400, which was a terrible machine really. And I graduated up to a Suzuki 750 Katana and then a Honda 900 Bol D’or, and at that stage I’d joined the Ulysses Club which was a motorcycle club for old people; I’m still a member. And there’ve been several bikes since then – I’ve had a Kawasaki 1100; a Kawasaki Z1000; I got into adventure riding for a while and bought a 650 Kawasaki trail bike and rode that round all the shingle roads we could find for quite a number of years. That bike actually ended up causing me to have a plate in my left wrist, as I fell off on the Whangamomona Road and broke my wrist really badly and … so I had a steel plate in there; and also a plate in my thumb from arthritis. And recently I broke my right wrist and had two more plates put in so I’ve got matching plates on both wrists.

But apart from that I’ve owned a Yamaha 400 Single Cafe Racer; and I was given a Jawa several years ago for nothing off a friend of mine, Gordon Kippax, who lives in Feilding, and I picked it up; it was in bits so I rebuilt that and joined the Classic Motorcycle Club. And since then I’ve become ‘Jawa Glenn’, ‘cause I’ve since then bought another one – a later model 350 Jawa. And … still quite hooked on motorcycles. Presently I ride a 650 Kawasaki twin, and still have two Jawas. And I’m restoring a Bultaco 250 for a friend of mine out in the shed at the moment. That’s about my motorcycling career.

Okay, you mentioned Gordon Kippax – he would be older than you?

Yeah, he’s eighty. He worked at Wattie’s as a draftsman.

Big man, yes.

Well his brother-in-law was my best friend at school, and he used to ride in Wellington with me in the Eastbourne Motorcycle Club – Bob Northrop.

Okay, well now we’ll pick up Shirley, with the children, and when you went back to work and what you did; and what other interests you had.

Shirley: Okay. Well when Rob and Heather were little we lived in Heretaunga Street, so I didn’t really go back to work part-time ‘til they were probably seven and nine. But before that I’d been doing … like, some typing for Pat Minogue at his garage; home care for a couple of ladies; and kindy cleaning. Used to mother help a lot at kindy because I had one little daughter that wouldn’t stay without her mum, so I used to be mother help at kindy and I was involved with the Parkvale Kindergarten Mothers’ Club and we did a few musicals. I think I only went in one, ‘cause I’m not musical at all.

And then I probably started at the Herald-Tribune in the circulation department inserting pamphlets, so I was there probably, I don’t know … probably about … hang on … ‘til we went to Albert Street, I think. And I used to go with Veronica Wrigley, and there was quite a good group of us there that used to do pamphlets, so we formed a quite little [quite a little] circle. And then we also … upstairs we did the magazine for the RSA; so we used to do that as extra money. And then when the kids were a bit older I got a job at the National Bank part-time, just in the afternoons, working … and at that stage all I was doing was loading automatic payments, and it was a huge job in those days loading automatic payments by hand. And two of us did that, and I did a bit of security encoding. And then when they got those online I went over to the encoding centre, so the children would’ve been about fourteen and twelve, something like that. And I remember I had a son that didn’t like me working too late, and if I was home late, “Where’ve you been, Mum?” But yeah, so they were pretty good about me working; I used to be home reasonably earlyish ‘cause I worked from about ten-thirty ‘til two.

And then I got a full-time job later on when the children were a bit older, so I worked full-time and by then I was a teller, so I did teller. And tellers became not just tellers – they did everything. So I worked there for twenty-one years at the National Bank in Hastings. And by that stage both the children had left school so by the time I left the bank they were [dog barking] at … Heather was already working; so in the sixth form she decided that she didn’t like school, so I told her if she got a job she could. But by that stage she already had two part-time jobs, so she left and did two part-time jobs before going to work for FL Bone.

‘Course our son was down at Massey University. He used to come home every weekend. Yeah, so he was all right and he used to come home and bring his washing. So I just continued working at the bank when he went off to the UK, and my daughter finally decided she’d do a big OE, so … Luckily for us she came home when Glenn was fifty, as a surprise; turned back up home for Glenn’s 50th when were in Albert Street. So she stayed, so that’s good. So she got married in 2006 … something like that, yeah …

Glenn: Yeah, it was.

Shirley: … to Shaun Logan, so we have two lovely little grandchildren here.

And in Scotland you have …

Yeah, we’ve got two in Scotland. Ruben is eleven at this stage, so he was born ages ago; he’ll be twelve this year. They got married in 2000, and that’s when I went for my second trip over to Scotland, because I went over and surprised them and turned up for their wedding. [Chuckles] Yeah. So … no, that was good, so I spent a bit of time with them, helped them you know, clean up their flat and everything, yeah; ‘cause they were just painting and decorating their flat. So they were lovely. So we’ve got Ruben who’s twelve and Elsie who’s just turned seven, and they live in Renfrew in Glasgow, which is ‘bout ten minutes from the airport. And we’ve got the two little boys here that I look after. So I gave up work to look after the two boys – well, Angus, when he was one ‘cause my daughter went back to work.

Do you have any other interests?

I’ve started on the family tree, which I picked up when Rob was fifteen. And we knew nothing about our family because my mum was brought up in a Salvation Army Home from the time she was three, so we didn’t really know much about Mum’s family. But we managed to get a little bit and I continued on that, doing the family tree. And now that I’ve got a bit more spare time a friend put me on Legacy, so I’m adding all my information I collected when Rob was fifteen – I carried on for about ten years doing that. So I collected quite a bit of information, and I ended up stopping after about ten years ‘cause I was working full-time.

And I also found out that my dad was adopted, so I wasn’t too sure what you did when there’s an adoption – which line you go. I have since found his mother who was alive at the time, and we don’t know who the father was, but we know the mother, and I found a half-sister for him. Yeah, so Dad had always wanted a sister so he was quite delighted about finding Jill. But Jill was an only child, and the mother had only had the two children; and she was not very good to start with because she was adamant she was an only child until I produced … yeah. So it was kind of a hard situation. But the mother outlived her two children, ‘cause my dad died at sixty-five, and Jill was sixty-five as well. So they both died at sixty-five, and there was a … kind of like an eighteen-year gap.

Yes, I think if you keep looking it’s surprising how much you can find out in genealogy.

Yes. Yes, well that’s what I found out about Dad. I found out about it the same time as my Aunty Marge, and she swore to her sisters that, “No, Teddy” … ‘cause she used to call him Teddy … “Teddy, that’s Aunty May’s. No.” But no, and I said, “Well you found out at the same time as me.” We both found out the same year and about a month apart. And she couldn’t believe it either ‘cause she’d grown up … her family knew about it, and she can’t ask them now because all the people we could ask have all gone. So we found out too late for my dad.

So anyway, well that pretty well covers your side. Is there anything else you can think of that you ..?

Glenn: Oh, I have a half-brother; I did have a half-brother in Graham Stanley, or Stan, we called him, who I’d thought was my uncle until I was a teenager because Mum had had him before she was married. And the father was her stepfather, and she was sent away from Denniston to live in a home for unmarried mothers in Wellington which they did in those days as if it was her fault. And he was brought up as my uncle, but he was always pretty good to me and I never found out ‘til I was a teenager that he was my half-brother. And he only lived round the corner so we got on really well.

One of my interests when I was younger was marathon running. I was right into running for quite a while. Shirley started me off on that; we started sort of jogging round the block.

Was this to try and keep up with her?

Yeah, I think so.

Shirley: Oh, no, it was for me to lose some weight actually, Frank. [Chuckle]

Glenn: Well, she started running round the block and I kept going, and became quite hooked on it. I used to bike to Whakatu every day and run at lunchtime, and run up Te Mata Peak before breakfast; and I did one marathon – three hours thirty-one, with my first one. I did three half marathons, and I was actually training for the Rotorua Marathon big time when I stood in a hole at the back of Havelock one night when a car came towards me with its lights on full, and broke my foot and tore my plantar facsia ligament off my heel. And I had trouble with my foot for thirty-odd years, and it’s only just come right since I retired.

Yes, okay. All right, well thanks Glenn and Shirley for sharing with us and fortunately you must’ve been good at your job … always someone sitting around the corner to take you on.

My last job involved mainly wine tanks and brewing machinery, and Wattie’s repairs, so they’re sort of ongoing at the moment.

Okay, well look – thank you very much.