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Roger Leonard Biddle
Roger was Born in 1940 in Castle Bromwich, Warwickshire, near Birmingham. The Germans were bombing the nearby factories at the time and most people were in their Anderton air raid shelters except his mother who was giving birth to him and Doctor Savage who was helping her. His dad was also nearby but he was firing an anti aircraft gun at the Germans and with all that noise the doctor predicted he would be stone deaf but he was wrong.
They lived at 74 Heathway and after the war ended he went to school at Stetchford Road primary and joined the cubs before falling off our garage roof and landed on his head. Rushed into Birmingham Children's Hospital with concussion they discovered he had a burst appendix so removed it. He then caught dysentery and was transferred to an isolation hospital in an ambulance with the bell ringing. The photo on the left must have been taken around that time. Note the sticky out ears which his mum used to stick down with elastoplast to try and improve his appearance!
After recovering he spent several weeks convalescence with his Aunty Hilda in Barmouth, Wales before returning to school by which time he was old enough to join the Scouts. On his first bob-a-job week his maternal Grandmother Fox offered him a shilling for a bucket of horse manure. His mum woke him at sparrow fart to beat the neighbour to the milkman's horse which he followed up the road until he had a bucket of horse shit. he then carried it several miles to his grandmother but by then the hot shit had reduced in volume as it cooled and moisture had leaked out by which time he only had half a bucket so his Grandmother only gave him sixpence! His Mum gave him the other sixpence and gave her mother a talking to!
His dad fell off his bike a few times and was diagnosed with menieres disease which affects your balance. He was advised to move to a cleaner atmosphere so the family moved to North Petherton in Somerset which now included his sister Susan. He went to the village school where he learnt to speak Somerset but failed the 11 plus exam due to all the disruptions to his education so went to Weston Zoyland Secondary Modern. Kids from all over the area were bussed in to the school housed in the buildings of an old RAF airfield. His youngest brother Stephen Valentine William was born in 1952 and they all moved to Keenthorne, near Nether Stowey when his parents bought a guest house.
He passed the 13 plus exam and chose an engineering education at Bridgwater Technical School. After a three year course there he obtained an Engineer Cadetship with Ellerman Lines in London and completed a 2 year National Diploma of technology at Poplar Technical College in London before going away to sea and completing a year in Swan Hunters Shipyard in Newcastle on Tyne. I was now a qualified engineer exempt from the written examination of the first class certificate of competency apart from a further two years at sea and an oral examination.
He decided that a life at sea was not for him and after leaving Ellerman's returned home to find the country full of ex marine engineers. He worked for a time at Clarkes as a work study engineer, Somerset River Board as a diesel fitter and degenerated finally to operating a centre lathe at Cryptons before finally obtaining a position with Lister Blackstone Marine as a trainee Sales Engineer. At this time he was a senior scout leader with Quantock Seniors and had begun caving, becoming a member of the Somerset Scout Caving Group as an instructor and a member of the Shepton Mallet Caving Club of which more can be found here. The photo above shows the Quantock Seniors scout group in Burrington Combe about to go underground in 1963. Martin Mills is on the right foreground and Roger is stood behind him. He was best man at Martin's wedding in Scotland some years later.
After a couple of years learning about the different engines in the various factories, working as a service engineer and in the estimating office, In 1966 Roger was offered a position as the companies sales engineer in Scotland, and Northern England, living in Edinburgh, a position he held for four years before they banished him to Australia. Here he was the marine sales engineer for Hawker Siddely Brush who were part of the group of companies to which they belonged and agent for all the group engine companies. Prior to leaving Scotland he had married Judith Nichols and their son Steven was born the following year. Judith was then expecting their daughter Rebecca who was born in Australia. After three years in Australia, Judith and Roger split up and she returned to England with the kids. He returned with me a year later.
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In 2015 Roger and I have been married 40 years. We have been several times to New Zealand where my mother and most of my family live and to Australia where we both have many friends and relations. The most recent trips are described on the other pages of this web site but above right is a photograph of us in 1978 at the Taj Mahal on the way out to New Zealand for the first time after we were married for Roger to be introduced to the "rellies"! He has had his hair cut and I looks a bit like Princess Di!!Here on the right is a more recent photo of the two of us on the coastal path in North Cornwall taken around 1995.
Roger founded a new company in Scotland on his return from Australia called Ulstein UK Ltd, an associate company of the Norwegian Ulstein group of companies and was the managing director for 16 years. The company first was just sales and service but quickly moved to a purpose built factory in Fife manufacturing the Ulstein Controllable Pitch Propellers, gearboxes and thrusters. With others he later attempted a management buy-out which failed so had to resign. The Ulstein Group was later sold to Vickers who were taken over by Rolls Royce and the factory is still there manufacturing marine gearboxes but employing several hundred more. Had they succeeded in the buy-out we would probably be richer today!
On the left is a photograph of Roger holding newly arrived grandson Henry on the occasion of his 64th birthday lunch in 2004 L to R: Rebecca William (No 1 grandson), Me with Henry, Eliza (No 1 Grandaughter) and son-in-law Tom.
After leaving Ulstein in 1990, Roger and I moved from Edinburgh down to South Petherton in Somerset and purchased a general store in South Petherton. Together we turned the shop into a specialist Delicatessen which we called Provender and became one of the first UK shops to sell our products on-line from a web site designed and coded by Roger. Our internet activity generated over a third of our turnover by 2005 when we sold the business, which is still trading but the new owners stopped the internet side which would probably be huge by now with the subsequent growth of on-line sales. We retired in 2005 and bought the barge Harmonie II which we lived aboard and cruised. We sold Harmonie in 2015. We moved to live in Tauranga, New Zealand in 2018 where Sue died from cancer on May 10th 2020. Back to Sue's Family Tree
Created on August 5, 2015