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Dancing to the music of time
I was born in 1938, and have always been fascinated by what was happening in the world at that point in time when I was conceived and born, because the atmosphere and events of those times would have...
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Christmas in Antarctica
The lady in the cancer book shop where I regularly search the shelves for a good bargain as well as a good read, told me she was spending Christmas in the Antarctic. ‘Very expensive,’ she murmured....
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Bombs and a baby
A Life – Part two We are familie-e-e-e-ee I was staying with my grandmother when I was three. She must have had her hands full, looking after me, nursing her sister Jessie who was dying from kidney...
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The passing of an era
A life – part three My grandmother was my favourite person. Whereas I had always felt responsible for my baby brother and younger sister, when she came to look after us when my mother left, I felt I...
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Was I a snowflake?
A life – part four When we occasionally walked past what was known as the elementary school in those days, I used to shudder. The grim Victorian building, the concrete playground and iron railings,...
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Flowers, beauty, architecture and antiquity
The Old Parsonage A life – Part six After a few weeks in London we packed up again and travelled north. I remember the cooing of wood pigeons and the enchantment of high summer in unspoiled country...
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Footprints of the Nazis
Post-war Hanover A life – This is the seventh instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs) Postwar Europe was a unforgettable monument to Hitler’s destructive genius....
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Ducal splendour and daily deprivation
On my tenth birthday -wearing my pearls A life – This is the eighth instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs) There was a legend that there were no birds in Belsen,...
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Nuns, nice habits and strange foibles
A life – This is the ninth instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs I never had any trouble remembering the date of my baby brother’s birth, because when we arrived...
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My army life
A life – This is the tenth instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs I had left the convent and started the state high school at the same time that an army quarter...
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Glorious London
A life – This is the eleventh instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs When I was eleven I went to spend several weeks of the summer holidays with my...
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A beautiful woman
A life – This is the thirteenth instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs My step grandparents accepted me for better or worse, but not as a grandchild, so I called...
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Over the top
A life – this is another instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs. My step-grandfather had been a very successful business man, and a member of the Liberal Council,...
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Kingdom by the sea
A life – this is another instalment of an autobiographical series before I revert to my normal blogs. Three years, three schools. During the next three years I went to three different schools, as my...
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Sailing to the fabled East
A life – another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs Southampton 1953. The first night on board ship (shown above) my father took me for a walk around the deck while my...
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Coronation, luxury, opera and Latin
The Runnymede Hotel from the sea A life – another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs The Queen’s Coronation was big in Malaya and it was big for me too! On our drive...
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Guns and exams, ancient peoples and bandits
A life – an0ther instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs The first eclipse I ever watched was at school in the Cameron Highlands in Malaya. School was on a plateau surrounded...
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Tropical learning curves
A life – another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs We sometimes played hockey on the padang at Tanah Rata, the nearby township where I quickly learned to play on the...
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A heroine, an eccentric, a Muslim attack and a paradise
A life – another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs The last holidays were spent in Kota Bahru, where my father had been exiled after another stoush with another...
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A soldier’s life is terrible hard! (says Alice)
A life – another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs Gentle in manner, resolute in deed, was the motto of the lady-like group of women I now joined – no rifles,...
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