
When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone who was pregnant. Nobody left home until they got married.
The sexual revolution was much more about not getting pregnant, rather than free love. The pill changed a lot of things.
My husband Lawrie and I met at work. It was one of my first jobs.
I was working in the Associated Newspaper offices, which were home to the Daily Mail and Evening Standard. He worked at the Daily Sketch, and one day, after spying him through the glass, I maneuvered to meet him at the tea trolley.
Our tea was provided by a woman named Betty, and she always had a huge pile of sticky buns, as well as tea, on her tray. We eventually got together, and then got married in 1967. I was nineteen.
We were so young then, yet we are still together. And a lot of our friends are still married, too. I wonder if a combination of celebrity culture and a more casual approach to sex, love and parenting have provided people with the wrong incentives for marriage and relationships now.
Lawrie grew up in Lambeth, south London, and his parents ran Sweetings, a fish restaurant in the City. His schooling suffered because of where he grew up. He didn’t get what he needed from the system there. However, this didn’t stop him from eventually running his own business.
We were married for five years before we had our first daughter, Simone, in 1972. That was the same year Lawrie started the first free London magazine. It was called Girl About Town.
Those were exciting times. He started the business with a £500 investment from each of three partners – Lawrie and two others. We had no idea how successful the magazine would be. He ended up employing a lot of people, mostly women, and over the years, gave a lot of friends’ daughters work experience. He eventually sold the business back to Associated Newspapers.