TRIBUTE: Pat Ashberry, in her own words

My first memory of Boston, in the spring of 1955, was of my dad driving me past The Standard offices at the top of Wide Bargate. I remember that big double-frontage, with the black and white tiled steps up to the front doors, the huge curved windows full of photos from numerous editions. Believe me, I was impressed.

I’d come from the Midlands, aged 18, for my first job away from home - as a reporter on The Standard - and I was more than a little scared. I need not have been. Boston and The Standard have provided me with a lifetime of amazing memories, not to mention a husband and family, and a lot of good friends.

It was May, and I remember that first week being sent to Irby Street to interview an old couple for their Diamond Wedding. It might even have been their 65th. Mr and Mrs Cook, they were. They were lovely, gave me some sweet sherry and cake, and on my way back along the river bank it poured with rain and blew a gale. It blew such a gale it blew my umbrella inside out and pinched my fingers, and I stood and cried a few 
I-want-my-mum tears. I soon got over my home-sickness, though. Everyone seemed to be so friendly, not only my colleagues at The Standard but complete strangers I met in town and on the bus, too.

In those early days we had to use the little side passage to get behind the counter of the front office and up the narrow curving stairs to the reporters’ room, where a chaotic little space housed four or five keen young chaps and me. George Wheatman was one of my first colleagues. We were the same age, but George was very shy. I think he was a bit scared of me, this unknown female quantity from Birmingham. Norman Bainbridge was there, too, and ‘young’ Gerard, as he was known, following in the footsteps of his father, Gerard Periam snr, the news editor.

Supervising us all, sometimes with difficulty, were two lovely people now gone, Charles Hall, the chief reporter, and Allan Eves, the senior reporter and municipal correspondent, who took me to my first court and council meeting. And down the hall was the big boss-man himself, Lionel Robinson.I have so many fond memories of that building - of Ted Hazelwood, the front office manager I think he was, who I’m sure could have made a good living as a stand-up comedian, and Sheila, one of the office girls who introduced me to the Assembly Rooms, the White Hart and Baby Cham.

One of my favourite moments, in those early days, was on Thursdays when we felt the judder of the big press as it started up below us, and as the most junior staff member I was instructed to run down the back stairs and get a pile of Lindseys (the Lindsey edition was the first out in those days) for the editor and reporters to look at. I’d scoot down there, appear round the corner of the huge throbbing machine, which seemed to be surrounded by overalled men covered in black oil, wait to catch someone’s attention in the din, and hold up five or six fingers (it was so noisy there was no point in speaking) and the chap sitting at the end where the papers were shooting out and being stacked would grab my allocation and hand them over - hot from the press indeed.

By this time people had begun to queue outside the big doors to the press room which opened into the wide passage at the side of the building to buy their Town edition, although depending on whether printing was on time or a bit late they might have to make do with a Holland, which was the second edition to 
be printed.

So many things have happened and times have changed such a lot in the 57 years since I got my first glimpse of Boston and the Standard in 1955. The first couple of years I remember being taken out on reporting jobs in the country by the late Sidney Phillipson, from Addy’s, the photographers across the road, and occasionally by a young Derek Addy, who sadly died quite recently. I’d bring out my pencil and notebook first, and then they’d take their photo. But after maybe 18 months or a little more a staff photographer arrived who would become Boston’s much-loved favourite, and my good friend - Gary Atkinson.

Now we’ve just got memories. But I reckon that’s the great thing about good times - we know we can’t keep them with us, but we can certainly hang on to our memories, and that’s the next best thing.