First off, my father's father turned out to have been born no more than three miles away from where I currently live in Leicester. This was quite a discovery as he died whilst my father was still a small boy and I knew nothing about him save his surname, Horobin, which my father didn't keep after his mother remarried.

Harold was born at 34 Upper Conduit Street in Leicester in 1908 to Horace and Eliza Horobin. The street still exists, but has been renamed Maidstone Road and the old terraces have been replaced. Their house would have overlooked the Leicester Workhouse site, later to become Hillcrest Hospital until its closure in 1974. The site is now Moat Community College following the demolition of the buildings in 1977. The house was also close to the Midland Railway Station - probably where Harold's father worked.

Harold had moved to Ripon by the time he married Nellie Dowell (from Cleckheaton) on 2nd April 1938 at the Christadelphian Meeting Room in Leeds, and was the manager of a newsagents. They had one son, my father, in 1945. Only four years later, Harold died of a coronary thrombosis at home. His occupation was recorded as Railway Bookstall Manager - keeping up the family involvement in the railways.