FUN AND GAMES
In addition to my accident another event during my four months at this factory stand out in my memory. I refer to a dinner invitation I had from George König, a photographer friend, whose girlfriend was sharing a flat with some other girls. George and his Mother organised a dinner party to which all the inhabitants of the flat, together with some fellows, were also invited. To make up pairs I was included and I had a pleasant evening with George and his various friends and an excellent meal.
Some weeks later, in August 1951, I was invited to a party the same girls were giving in their flat and I was again utilised to make up numbers; this time I was to be paired with George's girlfriend's sister who was visiting from Scotland. However, before I even had a chance to be introduced to my blind date, George told me that he now prefers the sister to his girlfriend and would I please look for somebody else amongst the multitude of guests.
One of the girls from the flat, whom I already met at George's dinner party I found attractive and good fun, but she was being attended by a New Zealand guy. When later in the evening we all adjourned to Battersey Fun Park, I made some enquiries and found that this fellow was just a friend, keeping an eye on Joy on behalf of her ex-boyfriend in New Zealand. I decided that if someone needs to keep an eye on her it may as well be me and thus a friendship commenced, which seemed to have withstood the ravages of time.
Joy Marshall was visiting England from New Zealand with a girlfriend, Theda Christensen. They were both school teachers and were working during school terms and sightseeing all over the British Isles and also on the Continent during their holidays. They lived in a fifth floor flat (no lift) in Weatherby Mansions in Earls Court and spent a lot of their time in "ye gods" i.e. in the top galleries of the theatres of London.
Even though we started to go out together, their visits to the theatres continued without my participation, because during the week I could not get myself clean enough to be able to take a girl out. Thus, during the week we conducted our love affair on the 'phone while we spent most of the weekend in each others company. There were parties, romantic dinners in the Czech Restaurant where the Chef was Tommy Lorand, an old army friend, gypsy music in the Hungarian Csárda and pub crawls along the Thames. For culture we visited galleries, theatres and the odd opera and concert.
That our backgrounds were completely different may have helped our falling in love with each other. The only similarity was that our mothers were better educated than our fathers, both of whom were self made and self taught. But that is were the similarity ended. Her family life was tranquil, mine was not; her parents respected each other and their children, mine never ceased to criticise; they lived in the country and in a peaceful happy World, we lived in the City and we never knew peace. Their country was God's own New Zealand and we were Stateless. However: she was woman and I was man. Vive la difference.
After my accident I had to get myself a white collar job and an engineering consultant required a junior draughtsman in his office in Richmond. I accepted the job more for the experience than for the salary. Little did I know that the salary will only seldom be paid by our boss, who did not receive his consulting fees from Allard Cars, whose expensive cars were not selling very well. It was soon realised that Allard and my boss and his employees are all in need of an income. It was suggested by Father that a friend of his and I establish a Company to import and market some agricultural accessories, which he will find on his frequent trips to European machinery shows. We started off as a mail order business marketing a farm mower sharpener. I worked on a part time basis and earned £4 per week, while my other boss continued not paying me my wages of £6 per week.
Joy and I were keen to listen to classical music and when one of her flat mates moved out with the only radio they shared, I suggested that she and I buy a radiogram together. My salary, even when paid by my boss was just enough for me to live on, provided I continued to live free of charge at my parent's flat and I could certainly not pay half of the £52 the radiogram would cost. However, Joy could advance the money as she was earning well, especially because due to a New Zealand – Great Britain reciprocal agreement she did not need to pay any income tax during her two years visit.
So we bought the radiogram (78 rpm of course) and I was paying it off at the rate of a quid a week. I just finished paying my half, when the time came for her to return to New Zealand. This caused a problem for me as I was to loose both my girl friend and also my half of the radiogram. To overcome my problems, I started to make cautious and very tentative enquiries by asking Joy what her reaction would be if I would one day, - not now, mind you, but one day in the future, always provided, etc. ask her to marry me and thus avert the problems of having to decide who gets the radiogram.
Joy didn't say yes in so many words, but allowed me to think that should I pop the question properly, her answer would not be in the negative and we left it at that. Poor lass, she did not know me well enough to realise that I will never ask her to marry me, but arrange matters in such a way that she never noticed being railroaded into becoming my wife.
It is said that during a leap year girls are allowed to ask men for their hand in marriage. I waited patiently until mid-February in the leap year of 1952 and when no request came I purchased a ring with two tiny sapphires and an equally tiny diamond and arranged to take Joy out to dinner on the evening of the 29th February 1952. Impatience was burning a hole in my pocket where the ring was and thus once we had a couple of drinks at the Denmark pub in Old Brompton Road, I could not resist stopping Joy on the pavement and putting the ring on her finger outside the pub. (It is now part of the wedding ring of our eldest granddaughter.)
That she accepted me as her fiancé was made obvious by the pride and excitement she showed her ring to the lady in charge of the cloakroom and toilets at the 96 Club, where Tommy Lorand's girlfriend, Jacqueline was performing as the resident singer and dancer.
The very next day Joy's cousin, Isobel Paterson arrived from New Zealand and soon I was writing a letter to her parents in which I asked to be allowed to marry their daughter. Having had some experience in writing applications for jobs, my letter to the Marshall's was in the form of an application for the job of son-in-law. To their credit they entered into the spirit of things and although they must have been disappointed that Joy married while away from New Zealand and a foreigner at that, they gave me the job and their blessing. I am glad to say that as years went on our relationship became stronger and ever friendlier.
Being engaged was great and while I was keen to be married, I was quite slow to suggest when. It never occurred to me to even discuss it with Joy, we were too busy enjoying ourselves. Joy lived with three other girls in a flat on the fifth floor of Weatherby Mansions in Earls Court (also referred to as Kangaroo Valley) and although there was no lift in the building, we were young and did not mind the exercise. I was living at home, but we spent all of our free time together.
There was lots to do in London and with all our friends being young, unmarried, carefree and broke, we had a great deal of fun. We went to the flicks (movies) and to the theatre, - mostly to Richmond Repertory on Mondays, when the actors did not as yet knew all the lines and thus the cost of a ticket was more affordable.
One evening Joy's cousin Gold and her flat mates were entertaining us in their Hampstead flat when after dinner we all went to nearby Hampstead Heath for a walk. We had a few drinks and thus I was not at all surprised when our group of girls started to fool around and I found myself on the grass and being held down until I was to name the date of the wedding. It was no excuse that I had no calendar available, because the girls brought one along and thus we all agreed that the 30th August would be the Saturday to get spliced.
Naming a date and preparing for it were two completely non-related matters. One was easy and the other was not. It did not help me that the first wedding in my life I was to attend was to be my own and therefore I knew very little of the customs and conventions of any wedding, not to mention an Anglo-Saxon type. But I was ready to learn.
I also decided to change my name from Kalman to Colman. I knew of the complications of changing a name through Deed Poll and was prepared for all the problems and expenses to save Joy from having to spell her new name every time. I wrote to the Home Office and to my amusement all I had to do was to "assume" a new name and ask for a new Ration Book from the Food Office. Had I been British born or at least naturalised I would have had to go through the rigmaroles of the Deed Poll, but not being a "natural born British person", I could do whatever I liked with my name. There you are, being unnaturally born had some advantages.
Joy's parents from New Zealand sent us 50 Pounds Sterling and their regrets that they could not attend our wedding. They suggested Mrs Marshall's cousin, Group Captain George Watt, a WWII hero and soon to be Director of Rolls Royce as a suitable person to give away Joy and on their suggestion we visited a church in the country as a possible venue. However, we decided to marry in Richmond, where Father Chambers at St. John's was prepared to marry us, provided we became proper church goers. We were prepared to give it a go, but even than I could not become a sincere believer and since those days, I have never made the absence of religious beliefs a secret.
I even received a charming letter from my Mother-in-Law-to-be, suggesting that I should give up my Roman Catholic religion and become an Anglican for the sake of all the little Colman children to come and for her peace of mind. In an equally charming letter, I assured her, that I will not mind the children becoming good Anglicans, but I will not change my religion, since I feel it of no great importance which church I am not attending.
We booked the church and we booked our reception in a Richmond hotel and arranged for the printing of our invitations. No sooner did we start to relax, the hotel cancelled the reception and we started all over again. This time we booked in a Cafe/Reception place situated on the same round-about as the church.
We started to look for somewhere to live and we rented the first flat we looked at. It was referred by the owner as a "garden flat" since the back door led into a garden. In the event it was a basement flat, as used by the servants of the house in the days, when a well to do family in 3 Royston Road, Richmond, Surrey would live upstairs and "they" would be "downstairs".
Joy moved in and started to clean the flat 2 weeks before the wedding and during one of my visits, while relaxing to the tune of Mozart my eye caught a toilet-brush under the settee. I was quite disappointed to notice that my future wife should leave such piece of equipment lying about in the sitting room and was wondering how I should tell her, when I perceived that the toilet-brush moved. After a while it moved again and my disappointment gave way to admiration while I watched Joy coaxing with a trail of milk the little hedgehog, which our toilet-brush turned out to be.
The week before the wedding Joy and Gold moved out of London to stay with her relation, George Watt, CBE, AFC, etc. and his wife Pat were stationed at Slough and the plan was that on the day of the wedding they will drive to Richmond where they will dress at my parents' flat.
In the morning of Saturday, 30th August 1952 I left Richmond and took delivery of the cheapest hire Ford Anglia at the other end of London and joined Gilly and John Kalman in their flat to change into our Moss Bros supplied morning coats, commonly known as monkey suits.
With my best man, brother John, we did not need to wait long before the organ sounds suggested that my bride is coming towards the altar and to this day I am enchanted with the picture my beautiful bride and George made as they walked down the isle. All went well, neither of us fluffed our lines and we were well and truly married. 
The only problem, which could have marred proceedings was the fact that one of the fairly large guests (who years later got photoshopped out of the picture) got stuck in the doorway of the church while the guests were waiting to exit. It happened while we were photographed prior to us entering our Rolls-Royce for the 100 meter trip to Matthiae's Cafe, where afternoon tea, sandwiches, cakes and Hungarian wine from Tokaj were served.
Although the majority of guest were friends of ours or my parents', the Kiwi group included two of Joy's cousins , 4 of her classmates, her "mate" Theda and many others including one lady who was present at her parents' wedding. They were all New Zealanders, while on my side of the church were my friends and all the friends my mother could muster, including some people she invited by phone on the morning of the wedding.
Also I had the interesting experience of one fellow, whom I last saw or heard of in 1943 ring me and tell me that he will come to my wedding. He came, but I have not heard from him since, which worries me, as he promised to bring along his wedding present.