Editing Sue Townsend (section)

==Marriage and pre-writing career==
Townsend left school at the age of fourteen and worked in a variety of jobs including packer for [[Birds Eye]], a petrol station attendant and a receptionist.<ref>Iain Hollingshead [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9106881/Sue-Townsend-the-difficult-years.html "Sue Townsend: the difficult years"], ''Daily Telegraph'', 27 February 2012</ref> Working at a petrol station allowed her the chance to read between serving customers.<ref name="Ind1992">[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/interview--secret-passions-of-a-republican-mole-sue-townsend-explains-why-she-killed-off-the-queen-mother-in-a-council-house-1548632.html "Interview: Secret passions of a republican mole: Sue Townsend explains why she killed off the Queen Mother in a council house"], ''The Independent'', 1 September 1992</ref>

She married Keith Townsend, a [[sheet metal]] worker on 25 April 1964; the couple had three children under five by the time Townsend was 23 (Sean, Daniel, and Victoria). In 1971 the marriage ended and she became a single parent.<ref>Susan Mansfield [http://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-sue-townsend-author-1-3373846 "Obituary: Sue Townsend, author"], ''The Scotsman'', 12 April 2014</ref> In this position, Townsend and her children endured considerable hardship. In ''Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State'' (1989), a short book in the ''Counterblasts'' series, she recounts an experience from when her eldest child was five. Because the [[Department of Social Security]] was unable to give her even 50p to tide them over, she was obliged to feed herself and her children on a tin of peas and an Oxo cube as an evening meal. Townsend would collect used [[Corona (soft drink)|Corona]] bottles, to redeem the 4p return fee by which to feed her children.<ref>Sue Townsend [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/13/adrian-mole-sue-townsend-welfare "Sue Townsend: how the welfare state left me and my kids scouring the streets for pennies"], ''The Observer'', 13 April 2014. Extract from ''Mr Bevan's Dream'', first published in ''The Observer'' in 1989.</ref>

Aged thirteen, her son questioned one Sunday why they did not go to animal parks on weekends like other families. She later recounted that it was the start of her writing which became the Adrian Mole books, looking at life through the clinical eyes of a teenager but in a comedic manner. Townsend then chose to research the world of teenagers and started attending youth clubs as a volunteer organiser. This led to her training as a youth worker.

While employed as a supervisor at an adventure playground, she observed a man making [[canoe]]s nearby and, because he was married, put off talking to him; it was a year before he asked her for a date.<ref name="Ind1992"/> It was at a canoeing course she met her future second husband, Colin Broadway, who was the father of her fourth child, Elizabeth.<ref name="Kellaway14">Kate Kellaway [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/11/sue-townsend-1946-2014 Obituary: Sue Townsend], ''The Guardian'', 11 April 2014</ref>

Townsend and Broadway married on 13 June 1986.