To all who missed the party because of snow - sorry, you missed a good gig, dancing, singing, clog & morris & Indian Kathak shows, and super food by Diane & Steve, and real Quackerjack Ale by Phil and the Mallard Brewery, and a good socialist song by Ken.

My speech for our 40th party was "Thanks for coming" repeated 4 times. But that was a surprise party organised by our wonderful kids, and I was totally surprised and gobsmacked. My speech this time has been better prepared, and went roughly as follows, but various bits were omitted to give more time for dancing.

This time I'm prepared, so you'll get my standard 50 minutes as usual.

I can hardly believe it was 50 years ago, yes, 50 years seems like a lifetime away, but when I kick myself I realise it's true. Yes, it really is the 50 anniversary this year of (pause) Freds Folks Band ..... Sorry, wrong anniversary, but a big thank you to the band and MC anyway. (Applause.)

I can hardly believe it was 50 years since Joy promised to love honour & obey ....
So I will speak, and Joy will interrupt ... (and she did!)

First we start with some ancient history.

1935 Joy was born at an early age in Thatcherville, the first child of Jeannie & Lawrence. The nursing home where she was born is now an Old Folks home. I'm thinking of booking her in quite soon... There is no blue plaque there as yet, but we may have a whip-round later tonight. Her little brother Russell arrived about 2 years later, and has been bossed around by his big sister ever since.

1937 Nearly two years after Joy's arrival I appeared in Torqay, Devon. And yes, that makes me a "Joy Toy boy" by nearly 2 years. My Mum & Dad already had 2 boys, first Arthur & then Owen. My arrival was apparently greeted by the neighbours with "What is it?" "It's another boy". "Oh I'm so sorry." I was to have been christened "Jane".

1950-ish: Joy knocked her teeth out cycling down a very steep hill with Russell, but she was on Russell's bike. I am reliably informed that Russell was more worried about possible damage to the bike rather than his 15-year-old beauty-conscious sister losing her teeth. But luckily for me Joy has retained her angelic beauty to this day.

1955 Eric's S-levels and A-levels all went OK, and I was offered a place at Nottingham. I stayed on at school for a "third year sixth form", and failed various entrance exams at Oxbridge.
The good news: Thank goodness I failed, I wouldn't have met Joy if I'd passed.
The bad news: I took the Nottingham place a year late (having got a "State Scholarship" I was permitted to delay it a year only in the event of "death or National Service") to start late September 1956. One wonders how I would take it up in the event of "death"!

To fill in time I had a super research job for 6 months near home. ("Paint Research Station", Teddington, the first problem I was given was "measure the speed of sound in a film of paint").

1956 September: I was morris dancing with Thames Valley Morris Men and attended a Morris Ring meeting at Abingdon - I met the Foresters Morris Men , who were being admitted as new members of the ring. They welcomed me to join them in Nottingham.

1956 October: I came up as a "wet-behind the ears" innocent fresher to Nottm University Mathematics Department. In my first fortnight there were two happenings for freshers.

1. A meeting of Mathematics staff with the new freshers - one of the staff (Alan Rose) was looking for a volunteer to build some logic circuits to demonstrate basic computer principles. Dad had brought me up playing in my shed with old ex-army electronic bits & pieces, so I volunteered & was then allowed to take 2 different degrees in parallel at the same time and given additional vacation digital electronics training at Ericsons Telephones factory in Beeston. At the end of my Bachelor's degree they needed a PhD volunteer to build a computer to do logic, someone who needed to know electronics and logic. Who else? The rest of a life in computing is history ... from the old days when I built one to now when they are everywhere.

2. Also during my first week at Nottingham I went taking my accordion (of course) to ClogSoc = Folk Dance Society. There was a girl there (not a student, an infiltrator, a local primary school teacher who found the ordinary Nottingham Folk Dance club in town too old and fuddy-duddy), and she wanted an accordion player to help her teach folk dancing to youth clubs.
   The good news and the bad news:
   Bad news - she had a boy friend called George.
   Good news - her mum Jeannie was a fantastic cook and I was sure these skills pass on.
   So it all happened - I ignored the only fatherly advice my dad ever gave me as I was growing up, "Don't marry a teacher, we have enough in the family already".
   While I was a student I lived in Hugh Stuart Hall of residence. We met & went folk dancing with Mary & Don & Joan & Gerry , both Don & Gerry were working up here in the mines avoiding national service.

1958 Eric's first ever paid accordion gig was at Pyrford Village Hall (near where Mary now lives) with Peter Dashwood and Denis Salt (who dances with Rory's morris team). The accordion was carried like a rucksack on Joy's back on the back of the motorbike.

1959 On the day of my BSc graduation, after the ceremony I took Joy aside and asked her to marry me. She first said "I'll think about it", but she soon came round to my way of thinking.

Summer holiday camping was with Clare (school friend of Joy's, she lived in the house we now inhabit) & Alan (a mathematics student with me) on 2 motorbikes round Scotland - no camp sites, you just looked for a flat space and pitched the tent!

1960: Freds Folk Five first broadcast was recorded in April and broadcast in May on the "Home Service" for the programme "Dancing English". Leader was Kevin Briggs, drummer Kath Woods, bass Stuart Woodhouse, guitar Sam Brown, MC was Kenneth Clark.

Eric moved to a flat near the Forest.

1960 July 30 - Wedding day at the Albert Hall, Nottingham - (you see that this celebration is a bit late, but we did celebrate earlier this year in France on the correct date). Best man was Don, he & I went from my flat near the Goose Fair site to the Albert Hall on a trolleybus.
Brother Arthur and sister-in-law Janet couldn't come to the wedding as she'd just given birth to Susan ... so we always know how old Susan is!
For honeymoon we were taken to Derby Airport (a field now occupied by Toyota) by Gerry, flew in an old Dakota at tree-top height to Jersey and stayed at a B&B run by friends of Mary & Don.

1960 September We started the first Nottingham Folk Song club weekly at our flat. Others came into existence at coffee bars in town. The "folk revival" was starting.

1960 December National Service ended, I needed no more annual excuses. Even if I had been forced into National Service, the Squire of Thames Valley Morris would have arranged two years as a statistician in his War Office department instead.

1961 September - we met Chris (in the band tonight) and parents at a folk course in Barford. And about then we found that Joy's skirt didn't fit ...

1961 October - we moved from the flat to our own house in West Bridgford near violin/viola maker Wilfred Saunders and family.

1961 November - we organised a Pete Seeger concert in Nottingham, his fee was £50, the tickets were 5 shillings. We held it at the Co-op hall offered free to us, and collected £49 10 shillings in ticket money.

1962 May 1st - My PhD thesis was due to be handed in on the same day as Angus was due to arrive. The thesis was handed in early, and Angus arrived late, weighing in at 7+ pounds. My PhD viva was in June and all went OK, so now I'm a doctor. I'd already been accidentally appointed to Maths Dept staff earlier than I should have been.

1964 January Along came Rory , 8+ pounds
1965 July Along came Hamish , 9+ pounds - we stopped at three even though we had planned on four kids

1964-ish Chris McDouall came to stay - we'd met his Mum & Dad & him on a folk course at Barford in 1961. As part of his teacher training he did a childhood study on Angus ...

1965-ish New colleage David Burgess arrived at Eric's work, we were asked to befriend him & Joan & family as they had two boys including Martin of a similar age to ours.

1965 - Eric taught Computer classes at Ericssons factory (weekly after work) with John Fyfe .

1967 - was a memorable year!

In March the whole family went to Vienna for Eric's work as a professor at the Institute for Higher Studies, our first time abroad. Marion came too, wonderful experience. My first lecture was given in German, but they couldn't understand my excellent German! So the rest was in English ... We are still in regular touch with my boss Roland's widow Eugene.

On 1st July we moved house to where we are now at Greenfield Street, we negotiated the price with Clare's mum. Methodist Society students helped us clean the house and unpack crockery for a "squash" Methodist student party here a few days later. We had regular "squashes" at the house with Christian students, eating & singing. The maximum number was 70 or 80, in the hall and up the stairs. Rory organised puppet shows for them. Romances among the students flowered, including Sylvia & Sheridan, Liz & Peter, Diane & Steve ...

On 1st July Eric started a new job, a promotion.

1969 Barrie arrived as a student at number 31! Polytech regulations said among other things "Students must make their own bed" - so we gave him some wood and a saw ...

Babysitters over the years: We often took the kids across town to Joy's mum's. Others included Sylvia Ingham, Dave Scott (taught them CivEng), Jeannie Laughlin (taught them medicine), Diane & Steve.

Many years from 1969: family holidays were camping around Europe, first all 5 in one big frame tent then two tents then three. Accompanied many times by Sylvia Ingham & Barrie.
Some holidays included some Eric work in Copenhagen, Denmark (1969) and Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (1971), and we included communist Yugoslavia and other countries East Europe

1975 March - Eric was fired from his senior job and found a new life with new freedom and a lowly job and pottery. I was wingeing about the loss of job to the rest of the band during a gig at Butlins Skegness, our bass player Geoff (who was a potter) said "Take it out on clay, not on us, it's not our fault".
My habit of World travelling started when I realised that I could say "boo" to the university and do what I wanted, not what they wanted. First trip was Tanzania, Sudan, Egypt ... I totalled 25 work countries. [I've visited 42 countries, Joy has been to 27, not bad.]

And all that time Joy looked after the kids ... but Joy later picked up the travel bug too.

1975 Summer - All the kids showed an interest in musical instruments. Angus wanted to learn concertina (but then the bass). Rory learnt fiddle (taught by Sue , Rory is the only one to be taught professionally). Hamish accordion one hand at a time, but by now has added fiddle, trombone, mandolin, guitar, bass, Uillean pipes ...

Soon after this we started a kids band, and our borrowed daughter Jacqui started to play fiddle then flute with us.

Bringing up growing kids keeps you busy! You lose touch with some friends temporarily.

1985 was Joy's 50th birthday. She had become interested in Indian Classical dance through school connections since 1981, and had then studied at the excellent centre CICD at Leicester with Nilima Devi . [She gave a show later in the evening.] I said "Do something special for your 50th". So she did. She resigned from teaching and went off to India to study dance, accompanied by friend Catherine for the first month. Joy stayed for six and a half months and has been many times since. She's hooked on Indian dance & culture, and we've gained many wonderful friends through those connections.

1989 & 1995: Various weddings & not losing sons but gaining daughters-in-law. Kilts & ceilidhs & we played for two of the services.

DILs (Daughters-In-Law). We are lucky in all our DILs, we love them all. Unfortunately there is a dominant and corrupt genetic fault in the Foxley male line that I forgot to tell the boys about. The gene makes us all marry bossy women.

Later 1992-: Grand children - great fun, all the fun but not the responsibility.

Music:
All the kids have continued with music in one way or another.
Any DIL not already playing an instrument has learnt one! I'm very impressed! Friends/people: what would life be without friends?

• music / band
• morris
• clog
• church
• Indian dance
• BBT

Please raise your glasses for 3 toasts.

• One to absent family & friends. in particular Joy's sister Janet & brother Nicky, and my 2 brothers Owen & Arthur = Bunny & Janet.
• One to family & friends present.
• One to Joy!

La meilleure maniere d'atteindre le bonheur est de Le donner aux autres.
The best way to achieve happiness is to give it to others....

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