Sandra Hibbert Oral History Recording

Title

Sandra Hibbert Oral History Recording

Subject

Sandra Hibbert

Description

An oral history interview with Sandra Hibbert

Creator

Michael Romyn

Publisher

Kent's Sporting Memories

Date

Interview recorded on 13 August, 2019

Contributor

Sandra Hibbert, Michael Romyn

Rights

Kent's Sporting Memories

Format

MP3 (1:17;37). Also available in WAV

Language

English

Type

Audio Recording

Identifier

Sandra Hibbert

Duration

1:17:37

Transcription

Kent’s Sporting Memories Oral History Summary
Interviewee: Sandra Hibbert
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 13 August, 2019
Location: Sandra’s home in Hawkinge, Kent

0:00 Name, place and date of birth (Margaret Sandra Hibbert; Ancoats, Manchester; June 1943); the circumstances of Sandra’s parents’ meeting; her early life in Folkestone; her grandmother’s butcher’s shop in Sandgate; as a four-year-old, taking her baby brother into Sandgate alone in a pram, scaring her mother; parents got a three-bedroom council house in Cheriton; she attended Stella Maris primary school (Catholic), until age 11; remembering her ninth birthday, and the picture of the Sacred Heart she received from a nun at school as a present, which she still has today; after leaving Stella Maris, Sandra attended Harcourt School for Girls.
12:40 Sandra recalls enjoying school despite her and her friends being relatively poor – ‘people didn’t have money’; her father made her a gym slip; the various activities she took part in school, such as baking and sewing; playing rounders and hockey at school; the ‘beautiful’ gym at Stella Maris; the entertainers of her youth.
20:36 Life post-school – finding jobs in the local paper, and her first position as a sales person at Bata shoe shop: ‘I left school on a Friday and got a job on the Monday’; leaving Bata to work at True-Form shoes, where she stayed for three years, despite being unhappy there; moving once again to work at Tesco, where she met her husband Glyn on a company outing.
30:36 Going dancing with her friends in Folkestone as a teenager – ‘I was always very lucky, boys would ask me to dance’; getting married to Glyn in October 1964; going to work at Dorothy Perkins, before having her first child, Simon; Sandra describes her first home with Glyn, a spacious flat near the Folkestone coast; moving again once the baby was born to be on one level; having a second son, Danny, and going back to work at Dorothy Perkins
43:40 Sandra describes putting her name down and getting a council house in fortuitous succession – ‘It was beautiful, modern, open-plan…the rooms were a good size’; buying the house under Right to Buy, and selling it several years later to move to a house on Dover Road; later, moving to a bungalow in Hythe, before eventually moving to Hawkinge.
47:25 Being introduced to badminton by a colleague while working at Mademoiselle’s boutique in the 1970s; playing badminton at Folkestone Sports Centre, where the badminton club was quite elitist and hierarchical, but where she continues to play together; working at Portex, a manufacturer of single use medical equipment, where she was promoted to the position of quality assurance inspector; the gifts, cards and well wishes Sandra received when she left Portex after ten years; taking on yet another job at a shop selling ornaments in Folkestone.
56:30 Playing badminton only intermittently while working at Portex; becoming more serious about the sport when she turned 50; Sandra describes playing badminton with her colleagues at Debenhams, before she started at Portex; her success playing badminton for the sports centre club; her preference for doubles, rather than singles.
1:01:57 Sandra describes the coloured peg scheme used by the badminton club to denote ability; the social life at the sports centre facilitated by the lack of drink and drive laws; Sandra describes the sports centre in the early years as ‘middle class’, but that now it is ‘for everybody’
1:07:50 Sandra’s first impressions of the sports centre – ‘It was very, very good. Because it was the only one around. Nowhere else had a sports centre’; becoming life members at the centre; how the social side of things have diminished at the centre; Sandra describes the cafeteria – ‘that was a fantastic place, massive…it was a good laugh’ – and the nights they spent there drinking and socializing; various social activities that were held at the centre such as bonfire nights, dances and craft fairs.
1:13:00 Playing away games with the badminton club across Shepway and surrounding areas, and the various opponents she came up against.