It was about ten days after we got married in that hurried ceremony in Lewes. As we ate our breakfast looking out over the English Channel Sharon said, "I want us to go up into the loft today and see what's up there. We need space for our spare furniture so it wouldn't hurt to clear out the rubbish."

I had a day off so, after taking the dog for a walk, we got changed into some old clothes. Well, that's not strictly true, we got undressed, got distracted, had sex and then got dressed in old clothes.

The loft was filthy and there was no light, I found an extension lead and a lamp so that we could see what we were doing. I got the ladders in place and we climbed up into the loft. There looked to be around thirty boxes and cases so we started with the nearest one and opened it. It contained china, a rather nice gold rimmed tea set. One at a time, we worked through all the boxes. Most of them contained things which were obviously not wanted but were too good to throw out. We were a bit disappointed that we didn't find anything interesting.

Eventually we opened an old trunk with cane bandings, the old-fashioned sort that people used when they were going on a long journey. It was full of papers and note books. This looked more interesting. I shut the trunk and decided to get it down out of the loft. It was heavy but, with a bit of manoeuvring, I managed to lower it to Sharon who was standing at the foot of the ladder. It was now lying on the floor at the top of the stairs. I came down and shut the loft hatch for the time being.

Sharon spread an old blanket out on the floor of the spare room, I brought the trunk in and we started to investigate the contents. In the main it appeared to be Jeremiah's diaries, dating from 1937 right through to the 1990's, and one from 2006 covering his last few years.

We then found a thinner book, 'The life of Jeremiah Sommers'. We read it together and were captivated immediately. We completely forgot about our task of clearing the loft and spent the next few hours reading about the life of Sharon's great Uncle.

I am Jeremiah Sommers and this is my story. I suspect my niece, Sharon, will be the first to read it. This chronicle is a digest of my diaries and hopefully will allow you to understand me. Once you have read it you can decide what to do with it. I don't mind if you put it back in the attic to gather dust or publish it in some way. I don't know if people would want to read it, that my dear, is your problem.

I was born on 27th February 1926, obviously even though I was there I don't remember it. My parents, Joshua and Beatrice were still living in London at that point. They lived in a large house in Balham, South London, and father ran a number of garages catering for the rapid increase in motor vehicles, he must have been doing well even at this time. My first memories are of the house on Balham Hill, and we had a maid, a cook and two 'dailies'.

We used to visit Brighton most weekends. I can remember the journeys, sometimes by car, sometimes by train, to my grandparents house in Rottingdean, just outside Brighton.

I started school, and still think about my first teacher, Miss Craggs. At the time she was my hero, she ruled her class firmly, but fairly, unlike some of the more unsavoury characters I encountered in my secondary school. I now realise she was just another unmarried woman trying to make her way in a world where women still didn't count.

When I was seven I was considered old enough to sit with father and mother at the table in the big dining room. The maid would serve us and I would be expected to sit there and not speak unless spoken to. I now realise that I was a late surprise to my mother, they had been married for seventeen years when I was born, mother was thirty eight. This meant that they were both Victorian in outlook. They were never unkind at this time, just distant.

One day Father said, "We are moving to the Sussex coast at the end of the summer holidays. Mother and I are having a new house built overlooking the sea. I will travel to London each day on the new electric trains that the Southern Railway are running to Brighton and Eastbourne." I had been on them once and was immediately jealous. To me the Brighton Belle was the height of speed and luxury.

The month up to the move was chaos. Boxes kept appearing in rooms and there were strange men looking around the house. It was the middle of the school holidays and lots of places which were previously part of my games and fantasy world were suddenly 'out of bounds'. As an only child I spent a lot of time on my own.

The day of the move arrived and two bright yellow pantechnicons appeared outside the house. Father put us in the car and we left Balham. I knew the way to Rottingdean but when we got to Purley we turned off and travelled through East Grinstead.

We arrived at our new house and Mother and Father seemed to be as excited as I had ever seen them. I was scared, the house was nothing like our home in London. It was white and square with none of the little nooks and crannies that I was used to. I started to cry.

The maid and the cook moved with us as they lived in. Cook said to me, "Master Jerry, what's the matter?"

"Cookie, it doesn't look like home."

She hugged me and said, "Don't worry, 's new, 's what them posh people call 'art decor', I've read about it in me Woman's Own."

At the time cook seemed to be old but was probably in her early twenties.

I settled into Cliff House and went to the local school. I settled in fairly quickly but I was still an only child and spent a lot of time on my own. Father used to travel to London each day and we used to eat at the big table every night.

My next major milestone was when I turned eleven. That summer I left the single room village school for the last time. I was going to the Grammar school in Eastbourne in September. Waiting for the bus at the end of the lane on a drizzly September morning I was confused. I got on the bus and when we got to the school I followed the other children but had no idea where to go, it was huge with long corridors and rooms off each side.

Eventually a small man in a black gown called me, "You, boy, what are you doing wandering around?"

"I am new here. I do not know where to go."

He showed me to my classroom and a fierce looking man shouted, "Sommers, where have you been? You are late, thirty minutes detention on Friday."

After dinner I told my father about my first day at Grammar school and that I had 'detention' on Friday. He said he would have a word with Mr Thompson. Father was now a rich man and well known, I don't know what passed between him and Mr Thompson, the headmaster, but Friday came and the fierce man, who I now knew was Mr Young, said, "Sommers, I am letting you off this time, but if you are late again you will get the cane."

It was now August 1939 and everyone was talking about war. Hitler was in power in Germany and I overheard mother and father talking about what they would do if there was a war. Father said, "I may have to stay in town during the week if the trains are disrupted."

Mother said, "And no doubt you will not be alone. You will have some little trollop in your bed." I had no idea what a trollop was but something about the way it was said told me it would be best not ask.

"If my wife undertook her marital duties I would not have to seek release elsewhere."

"Joshua, we have been through this time and time again. If I was to be with child again the doctor said it may kill me. Until I have the change I cannot be a proper wife."

I know Mother and Father argued a lot, but this seemed like a whole new thing.

Two weeks later, on a Sunday, we all gathered around the radio receiver in the drawing room. We heard Neville Chamberlain announce that we were at war with Germany.

I went back to school the following week. Not a lot changed, apart from the fact that some of the younger teachers left during the term, they had 'gone to fight Hitler'. By Christmas it was mainly the older teachers who were left and, to a man, they seemed to be a cruel and evil bunch. They would cane you, on your bare buttocks, for the slightest infraction. The first time I was caned I cried out, and received two extra strokes. I was sore and alone when I got home. Mother now seemed to be in world of her own and Father would rarely be in for dinner. He stayed in London most of the week. Most evenings I now ate dinner in the kitchen with cook.

It was around this time that I got interested in what you would now call electronics, back then it was called 'amateur radio'. I would beg and buy old radios, and repair them. With the war on there were hardly any new radios, I found that I could sell them and make what to me seemed like a handsome profit. I was completely self taught. I was a voracious reader and very soon I had read all the books on the subject in the school library. I then went to the local lending library and found some more books. I soon had a good understanding of thermionic valves, transformers, capacitors, volts, amps, and all the other aspects of things electrical.

I used one of the cellars under the house as a makeshift workshop and no one seemed to mind. I now realise mother was wedded to a gin bottle and father would rarely get away from London, 'there is a war on'. So really I was unsupervised.

It was now 1940, and the height of the blitz. I was 14. I was a big lad and, at school, I was mainly left alone. I had a reputation as a loner and kept myself to myself most of the time. However, one of the notorious bullies pushed me too far on one occasion and I went wild. He was two years older than me but I didn't care. He had cut me above the eye with a vicious punch and I went into a sort of red mist. I flew at him, not fighting 'fair' now, and soon had him on the ground. In those days if there was a fight at school the other boys would gather around in a ring and chant, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" and the teachers would usually let it run its course.

I started kicking him, all the time shouting, "You hurt me, I'll hurt you."

I didn't really know where I was kicking him, but he seemed to go quiet. Then two much older boys, prefects, dragged me off him. They took me to the assistant head's office.

The assistant head left me sitting outside his office for what seemed like hours while there were various comings and goings.

He then called me in.

"Sommers, you lost your temper today and you did not fight fair. I know you were provoked but the victim was concussed. You will have to be punished. Take your trousers down and bend over the chair."

I knew I was in for a caning but I didn't care, William Hogarth would never bother me again, he had made my life a misery for six months.

This is where things started to go wrong. As I later learned, our assistant head was 'queer' and instead of caning me he sodomised me. It hurt, not as bad as a caning, but it still hurt. I also knew it was wrong. I had no understanding of sex at this time but I knew it was degrading and I felt dirty.

I went home and cried. My mother was now in a perpetual drunken state and both live in staff had left because of mother's drinking. We had a replacement cook from the village but she was an older woman and she regarded me with contempt. So I was on my own. In those situations you either wallow in self pity, or you do something about it.

That night I made up my mind that I would not go to school again. I didn't really think it through beyond that. The following morning I took some slices of bread from the kitchen, went to my workshop in the cellar and worked on my various radio projects. Cook never went near the cellars, in fact she hardly left the kitchen. Mother never appeared before eleven o'clock and then spent the day in the drawing room, getting steadily drunk. I felt as if no one knew I was there.

It was at this point that Mr Adolf Hitler did me a big service. One of his bombers got lost and, instead of bombing Newhaven Harbour, it bombed my grammar school. I didn't find out until two days later, on the Saturday, when I went shopping with my mother.

Shopping to her now meant finding out which shops would give her the best discount on London Gin. We went past my school and I was amazed to see a pile of rubble where the grim, red-brick building had once stood. Mother didn't seem to notice and I kept quiet, all the time expecting her to say something.

We got home and nothing was said. Monday, I went down the cellar and continued to work on my radios. I had become known and people would leave radios to be repaired on the door step. The school leaving age was fourteen so there was no legal requirement for me to be at school and Mother was so addicted to drink that she seemed to have forgotten about me. Father would now appear every couple of weeks for a few hours, and say, "How are you, son? How are you doing in school?"

I would reply, "I am very well thank you, Father. School is fine." He would then go and find mother and berate her for being a 'useless drunk'.

So really, at fourteen, I was on my own. My jar in the basement had around £30 in it, the profits from my radio repairs. It was January 1941.

I carried on like this for about a year. I found a shop in Eastbourne who would sell me some of the valves and other components I needed but I knew that the holy grail of all radio amateurs was the Tottenham Court Road area in London. I now took 'Wireless World' and found most of the businesses in that area advertised in it. I would take a trip to London.

I took £10 out my jar which, after another year's repairs, stood at over £100, a king's ransom in those days. I wanted to buy a battery charger and some test instruments. The war had stopped new stuff appearing on the market but second hand equipment was still available.

So, one bright morning in March 1942, I got the bus to Eastbourne station. I bought a return ticket to Victoria. The train, when it arrived, was dirty and slow. We made our way up to London. It was a far cry from my memories of 1934 when we first moved. As we made our way through the outskirts of London I saw many landmarks were now piles of rubble. We went through Balham, and I saw the area where I was born for the first time in eight years. Everywhere looked grubby and worn down. I reached Victoria, caught the District railway to Charing Cross and, with my map and a copy of 'Wireless World', I went around the shops who advertised. Everyone was very helpful and my knowledge obviously impressed more than a few of the business that I called on. I was even offered a job. The whole thing took a lot longer than I expected and, at five o'clock, I made my last purchase and arranged for it to be delivered. I had spent over £7.

I then realised I was hungry and walked into a cafe in Lisle Street. I ordered a meal and was told I needed 'coupons' from my ration book. I knew about rationing but hadn't thought to bring any with me. I didn't realise that I needed coupons to eat out. I left feeling foolish and resigned to a hungry trip back to Eastbourne.

A young woman, she looked to be in her late teens tugged my sleeve as I left and said, "I can take you somewhere where you won't need coupons to eat."

I followed her down some alleys and into a small tenement building. She knocked at a door and shouted, "Maisie, have you any of that stew left? I've a young man here who'd pay good money for a square meal. He's left his coupons at home."

A slightly older woman opened the door. Maisie said, "Young man, I can give you a bowl of beef stew and some bread for half a crown." This was a bit more than the two and a penny the cafe charged, but didn't seem too bad, so I said that I would pay for the meal.

Maisie and the woman who had approached me, Beth, sat down at a wooden kitchen table. I took a half crown out of my pocket and gave it to Maisie. She served me up a bowl of stew and some slices of bread. It was actually good, better than the offerings our current cook served up. I ate hungrily and soon the bowl was empty. Maisie got up and said, "Beth, I need to go out now. Will you be wanting to have a tumble with Jerry? If so could you leave your sixpence on the table please."

Beth said, "I hope so. Jerry, can you give Maisie a sixpence please."

I didn't know what they were talking about but Maisie's stew had made me feel full and comfortable so I handed over the sixpence without asking any more questions.

Looking back, Beth was smelly, dirty and scruffy but that evening she was the only eighteen year old woman I had ever had a conversation with and I didn't notice this.

Beth said, "I know you're a virgin, if you have five shillings I can make you into a man. For ten shillings you can stay the night and I can teach you how to make a woman happy as well."

By now I had found out a little bit about sex. I knew it was why father only came home every couple of weeks. I also knew it was linked to that painful and degrading experience in the assistant head's office.

Beth looked at me and opened her blouse, showing me two large white globes with big nipples. These days she would have been called plump or chubby, in those days she was called 'healthy', she had wide hips and a narrower waist. There was now a tent in my pants. Beth saw this and said, "Looks like someone's already made up his mind. Eight shillings and I'll make your first time a night to remember. My last offer."

I still wasn't sure what I was getting into but I knew I wanted to see more of those breasts so I got a ten shilling note out of my pocket and said, "Have you any change?" She rummaged around in her purse and produced the change, a shilling, a sixpence, and six pennies. That seemed to be most of her money.

She took my hand and pulled me through into a small bedroom. She then took her dress off and removed her undergarments. She stood in front of me naked. It was the first time I had seen a naked woman. I noticed the triangle of hair between her legs. She lifted her arms to thrust her breasts out and I saw the patches of hair under her arms. I also caught the sharp odour of BO and another smell that I couldn't place.

She then pointed to my penis, which was now rock hard, and said, "Get undressed, let's get the first one out of the way, lay on the bed." I did as she asked.

She then squatted over me and dropped on to my dick. She then proceeded to raise and lower herself on my dick. She thrust her breasts into my face and purred, "Suck my nipples." The feelings in my groin were so intense that I just did as she asked.

Before long I felt that feeling in my balls and I spurted but my dick was buried deep in the body of Beth. Remembering my encounter at school I asked, "Is it in your poo hole?"

Beth looked at me and said, "No silly, it's in my fanny! You can put it in my poo hole if you want."

"No I don't want to, it will hurt you."

"Sometimes it does, but sometimes it's a nice hurt, and sometimes it doesn't hurt at all and feels good."

She got off me, got a wash cloth off the night stand and laid on her back with her legs wide open. "Time for a lesson, get down on the bed, and wipe your spend from me."

I got down and she held her pussy lips open. I wiped her gently and inadvertently touched a little bud above her fanny hole. She shuddered and said, "That's my nubbin, that's where a woman gets her pleasure."

She then thrust a finger into herself and said, "That's my pussy hole and just above it is a little hole where my wee comes out." All the time that smell was getting much stronger.

She then told me to lay on my back again. She moved down the bed and took my penis in her mouth. Yuck!

That 'yuck' thought soon gave way to that feeling again. She stopped for a minute and said "You like that?"

"Yes," I replied, "but doesn't it taste nasty."

"No. When two people have sex they often use their mouths on each other, you can suck my nubbin." She swung round and lowered her fanny to my face in what I later learnt was called a sixty-nine.

I was in a trance now and just did as she asked. If you had told me that morning that I would be licking a woman there, and enjoying it, I would have said you were mad. But lust is a funny thing and before long Beth was arching her back and screaming. I thought I had hurt her. I said, "Are you alright?"

Beth looked at me and said, "Yes, better than you can imagine. You are a natural, that was my climax, like when you squirted in me."

Beth then showed me how to have sex on top of her. "The way married couples do it," she said. Then she got on her hands and knees and got me to enter her from behind, "The way dogs do it."

It was now about ten at night and eventually we were both worn out. I had licked her out again and she had shown me all her woman's bits and described them in detail.

As we laid in bed, her smell was quite strong now, I wondered why I didn't mind it, previously I would be really funny about body smells. She said, "What time do you want to go in the morning?"

I knew the first train was at six-thirty so I said, "About six o'clock."

I didn't know if the District Railway ran at this time but Beth said, "I'll get you a taxicab if you give me a penny to give to the lad downstairs. What do you do? You haven't told me."

"I make and repair radios."

"We cant afford one."

"If I can see you again I will bring a second-hand one with me."

"I'd lay with you all night and all the following day if you do." Then she kissed me, full on the lips.

I went to sleep quickly and Beth held me. As I went to sleep Beth said, "If you were a few years older I'd try to keep you. But you're a real gent and some girl will appreciate what I've shown you."

I left the following morning and Beth thrust a piece of paper into my hand, with an address on it. She said, "When you come next time if I'm not in Maisie will be in. Get her to find me or give the boy downstairs a penny and he will." I told her I thought I would now visit London regularly.

I got home at about half past nine and no-one had noticed that I had been out all night. Cook didn't arrive until ten-thirty, Mother was still in bed and Mrs Frank, the daily, only came three days a week.

I started to visit London once a week, on a Tuesday, and Beth and I got close I suppose. I took her a secondhand radio the next week and I can still remember her 'Thank-you' which we did to the sound of the BBC Orchestra. I found I could buy my spares wholesale in London far cheaper than in Eastbourne, the savings covered my rail ticket and most of my night with Beth. I now started to look at other women and girls in a different way and I tried to imagine what they would look like naked. I knew Beth was scruffy, she smelt, she admitted she only went to the public bath once a week, and she was dirty. But when she undressed and started to have sex with me I forgot about all these faults and just revelled in her lustiness.

She got me to try sticking my dick up her poo hole, but she wasn't too clean down there and it brought back memories of that afternoon in school so I couldn't stay hard, which was very unlike me. Beth asked me what the problem was, "Most men can't wait to poke me there." I told her about that incident in school and she just said, "I'm sorry. I've heard about these things from other men, I won't ever mention it again." She then wiped me and used her mouth to get me hard again. I poked her in her proper hole and was back to my old self.

It was at this time that I built a coil winder, to wind transformers, and when I showed my work to one of the radio wholesalers he said, "They are very well made, I would like to offer you the contract for all our special order coils," and outlined the terms. It was very generous, I don't think that he appreciated how my coil winder had speeded up the process from the old fashioned way of doing them by hand.

I had now been visiting London every Tuesday for about eight weeks. Beth knew to expect me around five o'clock. She would always have a simple meal for me to eat and I would give her ten shillings and half a crown for the food. I assume she bought the food on the black market. That week I went to her tenement building and Beth was waiting in the road, the building was destroyed, bombed. She told me she was out when the bomb fell but that her friend Maisie was hurt and in hospital. She had found another lodging nearby. She didn't complain and, that night, she loved me like she always did. However, I noticed her clothes were in an even worse state than usual and she admitted that she had lost everything in the bombing. I delayed my departure the next morning and withdrew £5 from my Post Office Savings Bank account, fortunately I always carried the book with me. When I gave it to her she said, "Thank you, Jerry, you're always kind and thoughtful."

With the transformer manufacturing business taking off I realised that I needed somewhere else to work, and the next time father visited I decided to take the bull by the horns. He asked how I was doing and I said, "I have left school and have set up in business repairing radios and supplying transformers to radio wholesalers."

I expected him to be angry and start shouting but he said, "Good lad, there will be good opportunities for a young lad with ambition."

His reaction had given me confidence and I asked him if he wanted to see my workshop in cellar. No one else had seen it. He came down and I explained what all the various pieces of equipment were. I don't think he understood a quarter of it but it was his reaction that surprised me, "Well you are a chip off the old block. How much money have you made?" I showed him my jars, I had £187 10s 2d. He said, "All that just from repairing radios?"

"Yes, and making transformers. I have just delivered my first few batches."

He then said, "You need to open a bank account. You said you visit London regularly, come and see me," he gave me a card with an address in Clapham. "You are sixteen now, you need to understand that I will never return to Cliff House. I will remain married to your Mother but I lead a separate life in London. I have my own friends including some lady friends who I am very close to."

I wondered about telling him about Beth but I didn't think it would be a good idea. It was as if starting my own business and being reasonably successful had now made our relationship less like that of a Victorian father and son.

Father then shook my hand and said, "You have done well. I know of a small workshop near one of my garages in Brighton that you could buy and still have money left in your jars to open a bank account. You would have to find somewhere to live nearby but I would buy you a small house and you could repay me as a mortgage."

And so Sommers Wound Components Ltd was formed about four months later. Father introduced me to the bank manager at the Midland bank in Brighton and, after being a little taken aback by my youth, he was impressed with the fact that I had nearly £100 to deposit, as well as the deeds to the workshop to be deposited in a safe box.

Father had kept to his word and bought a small terraced house near to my workshop in Brighton.

It was time to try having a talk with Mother. I walked into the living room at Cliff House on that March morning in 1943 and sat down opposite Mother who was already on her second G&T. Well, there may have been some tonic in it, I am not sure.

"Mother, I am moving to Brighton. Father has set me up in a workshop repairing radios, and making transformers."

"Yes dear. Can you get me another drink please."