After serving his country in the RAF, equipment branch, George Meredith Webley was demobbed and invested his first gratuity on the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Chinese calligraphy, amongst other things. In 1953 he learned to drive and also learned to worry about what would happen if he was driving along the M1 at 70mph and the steering wheel came off.

He first met his future wife, Rosemary Simpson, in 1956 on the steps of Leeds Central Public Library - he literally bumped in to her, nearly knocking her music case out of her hand. He had visited the library many times to indulge his interests in Grand Opera and had also hoped to meet someone who he could discuss Plato's "Republic" with. He was not interested in the typists and filing clerks at Meanside and Beestley Savings Bank where he worked, as a bank clerk - he wanted someone who could talk to him on his level. He was to find out six months later that she had only gone in to the library to shelter from the rain and she has never told him that the music case belonged to her sister and only contained sandwiches and a knitting pattern.

After a 3 year courtship George proposed and wanted them to marry either clasping hands over the anvil at Gretna or by mixing blood in Romany style - but her parents intervened and they were married at St Stephen's church in traditional style. The reception at the Mahatma Gandhi Estate Liberal Club went well and they were to spend their honeymoon at a tasteful hotel on the sea front in Morecambe - but George forgot the name of the hotel and, instead, they spent it at Mrs Dugdale's boarding house near the station.

They soon got to know each other in their 'new' home at 23 Clement Attlee Drive and George resigned himself to the fact that his new wife did not like to wear a black nightdress or understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity. He has plans to knock a hole in the roof of his council house and install a long-range telescope to view the majesty of the universe, but he also likes to go down the pub or the pictures as well.