Francis Wait
Francis Wait
I was born in 1939 and my father died fighting in Greece during World War Two and is buried there. During the war, I was evacuated to Manchester to my mother’s sister, and lived there for ten years because my mother couldn’t support me at home, as she was a war widow, and they received very little money during the war.
My mother married again to a very nice guy who had lost his transport firm because the Government compulsorily took all his lorries to help in the war effort. He was working as a bus driver when I knew him and died after about four years. I still miss him.
I lived in Seaford from 1950 on and when I left school I had several jobs until I started to work in the building industry. The work suited me and I learnt plastering from my employer Frank Simmons. After about nine years I left them and struck out on my own. Times were very hard then and it took some years for the business to flourish. I got married to my wife Angela in 1966 and we had two children.
Cuckmere Haven, Seaford
My favourite view - not far from where I was born in Seaford. It is difficult to get there but worth the effort.
We bought our first house in Sherwood Road, Seaford and moved to a lovely property in Fitzgerald Avenue after some years.
I employed at one time six men but they were more trouble than they were worth so I sacked the lot and took on my son. We worked together until I retired. I worked in Belgium for about ten years as I thought it would pay off, but was sadly mistaken. I lost my house because of their tax laws and have never fully recovered.
For about ten years my wife and I were foster carers and our last child, whom we had for seven years, has now left us to go to Private School.
I had tried writing books for a long time, but it was the advent of the computer which really opened the floodgates for my talent as it is so simple to write on them. I am now eighty-one and still writing every day.
I am membership secretary of the Anderida Writers Group and I also run a writing group in Eastbourne called ‘The Scribe Tribe’. Although to say I run it is probably too much, as we are all equal and help each other with our projects.
If you are local and would like to join; we meet every Tuesday at 2pm in Alice Croft House near the war memorial in Eastbourne. Contact me at franciswait29@gmail.com