TASHY DID - A LIFE
1956
This year was a little like Henry IV, in two distinct parts, though not written by Shakespeare. Rather appropriately here, I shall tell you that some things
that happened in my life will not be explained. I have no wish to blacken others nor to offer what can only be my biased opinion. I will try to deal in facts and
say no more. Indeed, the better part of valour is discretion and I would like my life to go on for a while. Let’s play the play.
The first six months of the year were spent in London with, as I said yesterday, father coming home every other weekend. However, it would appear that, while
living up in Leeds, my father had not been faithful to my mother. Nothing was ever said to me until I was in my twenties but it happened. I do not judge right or
wrong in others; I never have and never will. I have opinions and my opinions will influence the way I behave toward others, but I cannot ever know the full facts
because I am not in their body and in their mind. I do not react as they do, I have not built my reactions on their experiences. To explain this more, if someone
told me that they had fallen from a car on a roundabout, I would not be that horrified. It happened to me; I survived, no harm. To someone who had never heard of
such a thing let alone experienced it, the reaction would be so different. Things happen, we all make bad decisions or even good decisions that are bad for others.
However, this happening so soon after mother had lost her mother and with the stress of bringing children up on her own seems extremely harsh. There is also no
doubt it affected her health.
For years I had become used to the family doctor arriving once a week to give mother a vitamin B12 injection. I had no idea why and to be honest I still don’t.
I did know that she used to say she had pernicious anaemia. She wasn’t a very robust figure at the best of times but now she began to decline noticeably, even to a
child.
At the start of the year I had gone back to school to discover I had a new teacher. Eventually I found out that the one I had had on the previous term had also
succumbed to cancer, although I didn’t even know she was ill. Death was beginning to invade my life. Reality was coming a step closer yet mother always tried to
shield us from it. At first she told me this teacher had gone away to work overseas and it was only when another pupil told me, that I questioned mother and she
admitted it. She said she thought I would be upset. To be honest, and a trifle callous, my upset was the teacher had gone not how.
In May, my sister was bought a tennis racquet for her birthday. It was almost her size, in total. In later years, once we had returned to London again, we would
set out a court in the garden and play many games each summer. She also would have professional coaching down at the local courts. She must have been quite good
as the coach told her that, if she continued in the same way, she would one day be at Wimbledon. I think the lessons only happened for a couple of years but, in
a way, her coach was right, as I believe she passed through there on a train in the early seventies. We did spend quite a lot of our holiday time in the garden
playing some kind of sport.
On 17 July, my birthday, 1956 we left London and caught a train to Leeds, where the England cricket team had just demolished Australia in an Ashes Test. It was a steam train. All I remember is that when we had lunch we drank Schweppes Lemonade and I had never had a fizzy drink before and I loved it. Even today, drinking it reminds me of the smell of steam. For our first week in Leeds we stayed at the Mount Hotel, probably long since gone. Then, until our own house was ready, we went to live at the Hartrigg Hotel in Headingley. It’s amazing how things stay with you. This picture shows the hotel in 1985 and I so remember the twin turrets, which seemed to make this like living in a castle.
I have no idea how mother kept two children amused each day in a hotel although I do remember long walks. I suppose it was lucky it was summer. I also
remember breakfast at the hotel. We had two rooms and I shared a twin bedded room with father, mother a similar one with my sister. Each morning I would go
down to breakfast with father before he went to work. I would start with mandarin oranges and then always have liver and bacon; every day for five weeks.
In late August we moved into our new house in Ancaster Road, West Park, Far Headingley. I was 7, my sister 3. Compared to what we had in London, this house was
enormous. It had four bedrooms so my sister and I had our own, and a living room about 16 ft square. Added to that was another room, which we used as a dining
room and playroom, which ran the whole length of the house. That table I mentioned at my grandfather’s house became ours and it easily fitted in with both leaves
in place. Furthermore, my father had bought some hardboard and placed this on two trestles and we had set out my Hornby train set on this. Sadly, once again,
father was involved in a near death experience for me but not till next year.
The only thing lacking at this house was a back garden. There was a small lawn area but not more than twenty feet I would guess. The front garden was a little
larger and laid to flower beds and lawn while there was a massive driveway leading all the way down the side of the house to the detached garage. Current prices
put this house at around £640,000. Personally, I loved it. I liked having my own room and I loved being able to have my train set, and a little later my
Scalextric one, out permanently. The house also had an Aga in the kitchen, about which a great fuss was made but it meant little to a seven-year-old.
I actually don’t remember any other form of heating in the house. As an aside, we didn’t have central heating in any house we lived in until 1966.
Until then, lounges usually had a coal fire, the dining room a gas fire and we had convector heaters in the bedrooms. Even when we came back to London and when
my surviving grandmother came to stay, I remember tightly rolling up old newspapers into "squiggles" to lay underneath the coals when lighting the fire in the
morning. It was tough but no one knew any difference. Maybe that is why I never feel the cold, although, being a Geordie I obviously don’t even possess a coat.
In September I went to Richmond House Preparatory School. It was at the bottom of the road and along a main road, next to the reservoir which continually
fascinated me. This school I preferred. It was co-educational. Now maybe I shouldn’t have put those two facts next to each other but I have a reputation to
uphold, even if it is a make-believe one, so there we go. It is however fair to say that, for company, I have always enjoyed that of woman more than of men.
I have no macho side. I don’t talk bikes with big handlebars nor of woman similarly built. I had several close friends at this school and most of them were
female. I went to at least ten birthday parties, I had refused those in London, and I would say that, until much later in my life, this was my favourite year
of school.
I won a poetry competition and was put into the national one, I started to learn music and was sent outside, this time for something I did do. What’s
wrong with a friendly ruler fight in Maths? The punishment did seem a little sexist as Rosemary did not even get told off. Sadly, my time in the hallway
coincided with a food delivery from the same company who delivered our groceries. The woman saw me and said “oh I’ll tell your mum”, and childishly, did.
I explained it pretty well and mother rather liked Rosemary as her father was a surgeon. Mother liked the upper class things in life and so this was a good
friendship.
The delivery of groceries was because mother was now almost totally house-bound. It was a real struggle for her to walk and even get upstairs. It must
have been quite frightening for her, yet again, to be away from her family and feeling so ill.
Which brings us, rather neatly, to the rest of the family. Today I’m going to tell you a little bit about other member’s of the immediate family some
of whom you may not have met. We’ll begin, as I have done throughout, with my mother’s side of the family.
As I told you, mother had two siblings; a brother, who was older than her and a younger sister. Her brother, born exactly two years earlier than she, was,
I was told, slightly damaged at birth. This meant that all through his life he walked with a pronounced limp and had a minor speech impediment. This
certainly never stopped him living a very full and active life but possibly because of this, he didn’t attend school until he was thirteen, when he went
to University College School in Hampstead, as I did some 35 years later. I imagine this photo was taken sometime in 1924 or 1925, which means the subjects
being about four, eight and ten, maybe a little older.
He was great traveller and would go off with friends for weekends around the UK and, as he grew older, across to Europe. He was also interested in photography
and I recently saw some of the pictures he took during the nineteen thirties. I haven’t scanned these but if you ever get the chance to see the world, or at
least parts of it, as it was 80 years ago, take it. After leaving school, in 1932, he started writing and continued in this vocation until his death in the late
nineteen nineties. Whilst much of his work was for magazines, he contributed regularly to The Lady even in his eighties, he also wrote a few books. This photo
shows the bookends of the three generations of published writers that have been in the family. The centre of the book shelf, i.e. me, is taking the photo.
My uncle married just before the Second World War. His wife was a writer too and her expertise was in the feline field. She wrote books about cats, OK.
However, a little google search seems to indicate she could have also written about the stage and acting, though this might be another lady of the same name.
They never had children, lived for all the time I knew them in the same house in Worcester Park in Surrey and proved that, even without fame (and fortune),
you can make a living from the written word. My aunt died a year or so after her husband, both living well into their eighties.
My mother’s sister was four years younger and, it seems, more extrovert and outgoing. She first went to school at the age of seven and, after leaving
school in 1938, the war shaped her future more than it did to my mother. Her sister started work as a teacher, met the guy who was driving the school
bus, got married and then he joined the army and was away for the next four or five years. This interesting snapshot from the early nineties shows my
mother apparently watering her sister. This was quite unnecessary as mother was at least six inches shorter than her sister.
My uncle reached the rank of Captain in the army and, when demobbed, started his civilian life working in a bank, where he remained for the next 30 years.
This photo, showing him with my father, was taken in around 1976. My father is in the grey jacket on the right and aged 70; his brother-in-law, on the
left, aged 55. Their sartorial style was similar but, maybe I’m biased, I don’t think my dad looks 15 years older. My uncle was a very clever man with his
hands and, over a period of years, built a scale steam engine in his garage. The engine still exists, somewhere within the family I believe.
My aunt and uncle had just the one child who, not unnaturally, was my cousin. As it happens, during our formative years, she was almost a second sister.
She was, and is, six months older and we spent quite a lot of our childhood together. I think these six months were quite significant as there is a story
that when I was eighteen months old, I spent a day with my aunt and cousin as my parents went to my paternal grandfather’s funeral. My aunt, used to a
child a few months older, gave me a drink in a glass and I just sat there laughing at her; I was still at the bottle stage, one I returned to quite a lot
during my time in Australia. Bring me another stubby, mate.
Even when we went to live in Leeds, my cousin came up to see us several times and we spent a glorious day on Ilkley Moor baht’at. Once we came back to London,
she would spend most of the school holidays with us each year, mainly because my aunt worked full-time. There was a brief period when mother and her sister
fell out and I didn’t see much of my cousin but that didn’t last long.
As you can see, your aunt, my sister, was the little one of the trio and when, during those long summer holidays, we would hold our “Olympic” Games, in order
to encourage your aunt to take part, despite the fact she would always finish last, we introduced the under 8 or under 9 world records, so she would feel
she had won something. I now realise what a big mistake this was because, while my cousin and I had to compete hard to win, my sister was guaranteed a win
whatever she did, unless the boy next door, who was her age, came over but he wasn’t very athletic.
My cousin was quite an arty person and, for several years, she encouraged us to help her write a Christmas panto that we would put on for the family. We also, once,
went down the straight play route but that was rather ruined by my mother who would always be shouting comments from the audience. At one point, in this
serious play, I, in the role of a detective, was investigating a burglary at a house. In the play, I asked my cousin, playing the lady of the house,
why she had not used the phone to contact the police earlier. My mother shouted out, “Richard, stop scratching your nose”, and, within the context of the
play, my cousin replied immediately, “because it’s been cut off”. Obviously end of serious acting for a while. I think this photo was taken about that
time, or maybe when we did a Beatles concert singing their songs and miming playing guitars to the With the Beatles album. My sisters rendering, and I
mean that in the tearing apart sense, of George Harrison’s “Don’t Bother Me” would have been exactly what any agent would have said to her had he heard
her singing ability.
From 1965, our cousin joined us on all family holidays and you will, of course, be able to read more about that later on in these episodic remembrances.
We spent five holidays on the windswept North Norfolk coast and one in Cornwall. It would appear that the attire for a Norfolk summer holiday is a thick
jumper of the matching variety. Anyone reading this of a certain vintage, will immediately know where the scriptwriters got the idea for Harold and Hilda in
‘Ever Decreasing Circles’. The slight breeze (hahaha) blowing in off the sea allows me to indulge in my love for coiffurants, a Norfolk derivative of the
French breakfast food.
After we left school we saw less of each other but in 1971 her tragedy had a profound effect on my life. It was August of that year and I had just
started going out with the woman who was to become my first wife or, for two of you, your mother. On our third “date”, after meeting my parents in the
afternoon, we went out for a drink with my cousin and her fiancé. Four days later he was dead, having been accidentally electrocuted on the building site on
which he was working. I think that the sudden realisation for me that nothing can be guaranteed in this life may have been one reason why I moved quickly
into marriage, although, to be fair, we had talked about it the night before the tragedy.
Two years later my cousin married and subsequently had two children. Frighteningly, I now realise they are both in their thirties and I am feeling even older.
I haven’t seen them for over 15 years. This picture comes from 1980, with my two eldest, ginger and blonde, sharing the front row with their two second cousins
or whatever relationship they have. One of these young ladies is now married. My mother is the little lady on the left as you look; her sister, the taller lady,
even sitting down, on the right. To all who know me, I may well be standing up in this picture but, if I am, I am taking on a serious ‘leaning tower of Pisa’
pose. Just a quick aside, if those good citizens of Pisa would only admit the leaning tower was straight they would have so many other attractions to bring
in the tourists.
Now to father’s side. He also had two surviving siblings, both younger, both sisters. One was palindromically born on 31/1/13. She followed her brother
to London University, studying geography at Bedford College. She married a meteorologist just before the war and they had two children, yet more of my cousins,
a girl born in 1942 and a boy two years later. To be honest we didn’t see much of them at all and, sadly, my aunt died of a brain tumour on 3 August 1960, just
47 years old. Her husband was a very sporting person. I think I am correct in saying he got a blue for both rugby and cricket while at Cambridge. Both my two
cousins went on to university. Somewhere along the way, they both had two children, both girls, and some of these now have children too although I see them
rarely and really have lost count who belongs to whom.
His other sister you all know because I have mentioned her as my source for much information about this side of the family. Until her death in 2015, just
failing by 24 days to reach 97, her mind was as sharp as ever, she lived alone with very little help and only gave up driving a few years before her death.
In 2005 she moved out of the home she had bought and lived in for over 55 years as she found the stairs a little too much. My daughter, or should this be your sister,
or mother, I have no idea, went to see her very recently and there were four generations of our family all together. Well, luckily for you, one generation is behind the camera.
Wrong. And that takes care of the rest of your family. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone but, of course, I have; my half-sister. I knew nothing about
her till I was 20 but, after mother’s death, I checked with my aunt as to whether making contact would be acceptable and she advised me that would be
fine. Although my sister strongly opposed the idea, I wrote a long letter and eventually, on my aunt’s 80th birthday we all met up. She has two sons and the
eldest was the spitting image of my father. In fact, when I saw a picture of my nephew at his graduation, I had thought it was my father.
And now, as we move on through the years, some of these people may appear again so look out for them.
In May, my sister was bought a tennis racquet for her birthday. It was almost her size, in total. In later years, once we had returned to London again, we would
set out a court in the garden and play many games each summer. She also would have professional coaching down at the local courts. She must have been quite good
as the coach told her that, if she continued in the same way, she would one day be at Wimbledon. I think the lessons only happened for a couple of years but, in
a way, her coach was right, as I believe she passed through there on a train in the early seventies. We did spend quite a lot of our holiday time in the garden
playing some kind of sport.
On 17 July, my birthday, 1956 we left London and caught a train to Leeds, where the England cricket team had just demolished Australia in an Ashes Test. It was a steam train. All I remember is that when we had lunch we drank Schweppes Lemonade and I had never had a fizzy drink before and I loved it. Even today, drinking it reminds me of the smell of steam. For our first week in Leeds we stayed at the Mount Hotel, probably long since gone. Then, until our own house was ready, we went to live at the Hartrigg Hotel in Headingley. It’s amazing how things stay with you. This picture shows the hotel in 1985 and I so remember the twin turrets, which seemed to make this like living in a castle.
I have no idea how mother kept two children amused each day in a hotel although I do remember long walks. I suppose it was lucky it was summer. I also
remember breakfast at the hotel. We had two rooms and I shared a twin bedded room with father, mother a similar one with my sister. Each morning I would go
down to breakfast with father before he went to work. I would start with mandarin oranges and then always have liver and bacon; every day for five weeks.
In late August we moved into our new house in Ancaster Road, West Park, Far Headingley. I was 7, my sister 3. Compared to what we had in London, this house was
enormous. It had four bedrooms so my sister and I had our own, and a living room about 16 ft square. Added to that was another room, which we used as a dining
room and playroom, which ran the whole length of the house. That table I mentioned at my grandfather’s house became ours and it easily fitted in with both leaves
in place. Furthermore, my father had bought some hardboard and placed this on two trestles and we had set out my Hornby train set on this. Sadly, once again,
father was involved in a near death experience for me but not till next year.
The only thing lacking at this house was a back garden. There was a small lawn area but not more than twenty feet I would guess. The front garden was a little
larger and laid to flower beds and lawn while there was a massive driveway leading all the way down the side of the house to the detached garage. Current prices
put this house at around £640,000. Personally, I loved it. I liked having my own room and I loved being able to have my train set, and a little later my
Scalextric one, out permanently. The house also had an Aga in the kitchen, about which a great fuss was made but it meant little to a seven-year-old.
I actually don’t remember any other form of heating in the house. As an aside, we didn’t have central heating in any house we lived in until 1966.
Until then, lounges usually had a coal fire, the dining room a gas fire and we had convector heaters in the bedrooms. Even when we came back to London and when
my surviving grandmother came to stay, I remember tightly rolling up old newspapers into "squiggles" to lay underneath the coals when lighting the fire in the
morning. It was tough but no one knew any difference. Maybe that is why I never feel the cold, although, being a Geordie I obviously don’t even possess a coat.
In September I went to Richmond House Preparatory School. It was at the bottom of the road and along a main road, next to the reservoir which continually
fascinated me. This school I preferred. It was co-educational. Now maybe I shouldn’t have put those two facts next to each other but I have a reputation to
uphold, even if it is a make-believe one, so there we go. It is however fair to say that, for company, I have always enjoyed that of woman more than of men.
I have no macho side. I don’t talk bikes with big handlebars nor of woman similarly built. I had several close friends at this school and most of them were
female. I went to at least ten birthday parties, I had refused those in London, and I would say that, until much later in my life, this was my favourite year
of school.
I won a poetry competition and was put into the national one, I started to learn music and was sent outside, this time for something I did do. What’s
wrong with a friendly ruler fight in Maths? The punishment did seem a little sexist as Rosemary did not even get told off. Sadly, my time in the hallway
coincided with a food delivery from the same company who delivered our groceries. The woman saw me and said “oh I’ll tell your mum”, and childishly, did.
I explained it pretty well and mother rather liked Rosemary as her father was a surgeon. Mother liked the upper class things in life and so this was a good
friendship.
The delivery of groceries was because mother was now almost totally house-bound. It was a real struggle for her to walk and even get upstairs. It must
have been quite frightening for her, yet again, to be away from her family and feeling so ill.
Which brings us, rather neatly, to the rest of the family. Today I’m going to tell you a little bit about other member’s of the immediate family some
of whom you may not have met. We’ll begin, as I have done throughout, with my mother’s side of the family.
As I told you, mother had two siblings; a brother, who was older than her and a younger sister. Her brother, born exactly two years earlier than she, was,
I was told, slightly damaged at birth. This meant that all through his life he walked with a pronounced limp and had a minor speech impediment. This
certainly never stopped him living a very full and active life but possibly because of this, he didn’t attend school until he was thirteen, when he went
to University College School in Hampstead, as I did some 35 years later. I imagine this photo was taken sometime in 1924 or 1925, which means the subjects
being about four, eight and ten, maybe a little older.
He was great traveller and would go off with friends for weekends around the UK and, as he grew older, across to Europe. He was also interested in photography
and I recently saw some of the pictures he took during the nineteen thirties. I haven’t scanned these but if you ever get the chance to see the world, or at
least parts of it, as it was 80 years ago, take it. After leaving school, in 1932, he started writing and continued in this vocation until his death in the late
nineteen nineties. Whilst much of his work was for magazines, he contributed regularly to The Lady even in his eighties, he also wrote a few books. This photo
shows the bookends of the three generations of published writers that have been in the family. The centre of the book shelf, i.e. me, is taking the photo.
My uncle married just before the Second World War. His wife was a writer too and her expertise was in the feline field. She wrote books about cats, OK.
However, a little google search seems to indicate she could have also written about the stage and acting, though this might be another lady of the same name.
They never had children, lived for all the time I knew them in the same house in Worcester Park in Surrey and proved that, even without fame (and fortune),
you can make a living from the written word. My aunt died a year or so after her husband, both living well into their eighties.
My mother’s sister was four years younger and, it seems, more extrovert and outgoing. She first went to school at the age of seven and, after leaving
school in 1938, the war shaped her future more than it did to my mother. Her sister started work as a teacher, met the guy who was driving the school
bus, got married and then he joined the army and was away for the next four or five years. This interesting snapshot from the early nineties shows my
mother apparently watering her sister. This was quite unnecessary as mother was at least six inches shorter than her sister.
My uncle reached the rank of Captain in the army and, when demobbed, started his civilian life working in a bank, where he remained for the next 30 years.
This photo, showing him with my father, was taken in around 1976. My father is in the grey jacket on the right and aged 70; his brother-in-law, on the
left, aged 55. Their sartorial style was similar but, maybe I’m biased, I don’t think my dad looks 15 years older. My uncle was a very clever man with his
hands and, over a period of years, built a scale steam engine in his garage. The engine still exists, somewhere within the family I believe.
My aunt and uncle had just the one child who, not unnaturally, was my cousin. As it happens, during our formative years, she was almost a second sister.
She was, and is, six months older and we spent quite a lot of our childhood together. I think these six months were quite significant as there is a story
that when I was eighteen months old, I spent a day with my aunt and cousin as my parents went to my paternal grandfather’s funeral. My aunt, used to a
child a few months older, gave me a drink in a glass and I just sat there laughing at her; I was still at the bottle stage, one I returned to quite a lot
during my time in Australia. Bring me another stubby, mate.
Even when we went to live in Leeds, my cousin came up to see us several times and we spent a glorious day on Ilkley Moor baht’at. Once we came back to London,
she would spend most of the school holidays with us each year, mainly because my aunt worked full-time. There was a brief period when mother and her sister
fell out and I didn’t see much of my cousin but that didn’t last long.
As you can see, your aunt, my sister, was the little one of the trio and when, during those long summer holidays, we would hold our “Olympic” Games, in order
to encourage your aunt to take part, despite the fact she would always finish last, we introduced the under 8 or under 9 world records, so she would feel
she had won something. I now realise what a big mistake this was because, while my cousin and I had to compete hard to win, my sister was guaranteed a win
whatever she did, unless the boy next door, who was her age, came over but he wasn’t very athletic.
My cousin was quite an arty person and, for several years, she encouraged us to help her write a Christmas panto that we would put on for the family. We also, once,
went down the straight play route but that was rather ruined by my mother who would always be shouting comments from the audience. At one point, in this
serious play, I, in the role of a detective, was investigating a burglary at a house. In the play, I asked my cousin, playing the lady of the house,
why she had not used the phone to contact the police earlier. My mother shouted out, “Richard, stop scratching your nose”, and, within the context of the
play, my cousin replied immediately, “because it’s been cut off”. Obviously end of serious acting for a while. I think this photo was taken about that
time, or maybe when we did a Beatles concert singing their songs and miming playing guitars to the With the Beatles album. My sisters rendering, and I
mean that in the tearing apart sense, of George Harrison’s “Don’t Bother Me” would have been exactly what any agent would have said to her had he heard
her singing ability.
From 1965, our cousin joined us on all family holidays and you will, of course, be able to read more about that later on in these episodic remembrances.
We spent five holidays on the windswept North Norfolk coast and one in Cornwall. It would appear that the attire for a Norfolk summer holiday is a thick
jumper of the matching variety. Anyone reading this of a certain vintage, will immediately know where the scriptwriters got the idea for Harold and Hilda in
‘Ever Decreasing Circles’. The slight breeze (hahaha) blowing in off the sea allows me to indulge in my love for coiffurants, a Norfolk derivative of the
French breakfast food.
After we left school we saw less of each other but in 1971 her tragedy had a profound effect on my life. It was August of that year and I had just
started going out with the woman who was to become my first wife or, for two of you, your mother. On our third “date”, after meeting my parents in the
afternoon, we went out for a drink with my cousin and her fiancé. Four days later he was dead, having been accidentally electrocuted on the building site on
which he was working. I think that the sudden realisation for me that nothing can be guaranteed in this life may have been one reason why I moved quickly
into marriage, although, to be fair, we had talked about it the night before the tragedy.
Two years later my cousin married and subsequently had two children. Frighteningly, I now realise they are both in their thirties and I am feeling even older.
I haven’t seen them for over 15 years. This picture comes from 1980, with my two eldest, ginger and blonde, sharing the front row with their two second cousins
or whatever relationship they have. One of these young ladies is now married. My mother is the little lady on the left as you look; her sister, the taller lady,
even sitting down, on the right. To all who know me, I may well be standing up in this picture but, if I am, I am taking on a serious ‘leaning tower of Pisa’
pose. Just a quick aside, if those good citizens of Pisa would only admit the leaning tower was straight they would have so many other attractions to bring
in the tourists.
Now to father’s side. He also had two surviving siblings, both younger, both sisters. One was palindromically born on 31/1/13. She followed her brother
to London University, studying geography at Bedford College. She married a meteorologist just before the war and they had two children, yet more of my cousins,
a girl born in 1942 and a boy two years later. To be honest we didn’t see much of them at all and, sadly, my aunt died of a brain tumour on 3 August 1960, just
47 years old. Her husband was a very sporting person. I think I am correct in saying he got a blue for both rugby and cricket while at Cambridge. Both my two
cousins went on to university. Somewhere along the way, they both had two children, both girls, and some of these now have children too although I see them
rarely and really have lost count who belongs to whom.
His other sister you all know because I have mentioned her as my source for much information about this side of the family. Until her death in 2015, just
failing by 24 days to reach 97, her mind was as sharp as ever, she lived alone with very little help and only gave up driving a few years before her death.
In 2005 she moved out of the home she had bought and lived in for over 55 years as she found the stairs a little too much. My daughter, or should this be your sister,
or mother, I have no idea, went to see her very recently and there were four generations of our family all together. Well, luckily for you, one generation is behind the camera.
Wrong. And that takes care of the rest of your family. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone but, of course, I have; my half-sister. I knew nothing about
her till I was 20 but, after mother’s death, I checked with my aunt as to whether making contact would be acceptable and she advised me that would be
fine. Although my sister strongly opposed the idea, I wrote a long letter and eventually, on my aunt’s 80th birthday we all met up. She has two sons and the
eldest was the spitting image of my father. In fact, when I saw a picture of my nephew at his graduation, I had thought it was my father.
And now, as we move on through the years, some of these people may appear again so look out for them.
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