junior

6th Birthday
The early-morning birthday present was a pink ballet dress, coronet and wand. Caroline was speechless with delight and wore it for breakfast, at intervals during the day, and draped on her bed that night. The birthday party included a performance of Cinderella on the toy theatre. She loves anything to do with the theatre, designs costumes for the ballet and is always dancing.

She has been at school for a year now (St Margaret's: www.smogs.org.uk), and reads fluently. It sounds so grown up to hear her ask "Has anyone seen my library book?"

7th birthday
I was mastering the two-wheeler bicycle, composing piano pieces and could play the Blue Danube by ear with both hands and acceptable harmony. I had passed my first dance exam with Honours. It included my own choreography, for which I had chosen the music "Lavender's Blue", and the examiner told me it was well-planned. In fact I had been sickening with measles and not felt like creating and practising a dance, so in the exam I had improvised and it seemed to do the trick. Next day I had a temperature of nearly 105F.

8th birthday
The longed-for Bo-Peep dress was presented on the birthday morning, and worn all day. Boarders from St Margaret's School were invited to the party, which included a Doll's Teaparty, each of the twelve children bringing their favourite doll, and prizes were awarded in twelve classes so that each won a prize. The most hideous dolls probably got top marks for 'shortest dress' or something -- another example of my Mother's socio-psychological skills.

The South Africans
In April 1951 my sister Amber and her two children from South Africa came to stay. We decorated the house with flags to welcome them, but the mumps I had developed caused some worry, until we learned that both my 6-year-old niece Diana and 3-year-old nephew David had a dose of it on board the ship, so all was well, though we had to keep away from other children. The day after school prize-giving D & D went down with measles, and Caroline was immune. Perhaps this was why I was not taken to the Festival of Britain, but it did not stop me being furious.

Diana attended St Margaret's School while she was here, to keep her education going. She was the third generation to attend. Being three years older than my niece gave me the idea of supplementing her studies. An upturned crate made a Teacher's desk, and she sat on the floor being given exercises in reading and writing and simple sums.

Our house, the twin next door to the one on the left of this bicycle picture, faced an open space with a bomb crater and allotments behind the hedge, where my parents grew flowers and vegetables. They were skilled and keen gardeners, and in fact worked several allotments in various places. Mum sold flowers to hoteliers and people in flats, and Dad sold vegetables and also worked on other people's gardens - a sweetly simple thing for a retired Brigadier.
My speciality was dropping 'Growmore' fertiliser into the holes for the potatoes to be planted. The site now has houses on it, as also does the site where the tall connifers grew behind the little gardening girl in the photograph. Little did we know then that one day they would build St Margaret's Court on that site, and my mother would live at flat no.10.

9th birthday
This had been the year I began an old-fashioned sampler embroidery. I soon got bored with it, but finished it some years later. In addition to playing the piano a lot and drawing occasionally, it seems I also worked out endless mathematical problems on bits of paper. I cannot think why -- this was uncharacteristic, but I suppose one experiments when young.

10th birthday
By September 1951 I had a larger bicycle and cycled the few hundred yards to school. I called it Starlight and it was a horse. The marks across the roads where holes had been dug were jumps, and to jump my horse over them I muttered encouraging words and then raised myself in the saddle. I came home for lunch each day and parked Starlight in the front path leaning against the raised flowerbed we called the 'Grave'. I never used a padlock and it never got stolen. We even left our front door unlocked until late evening.

I could swim 25 yards, a skill that did not come easily and for years I hated putting my head under water. I still played the piano all day when possible, and composing. Daddy became ill with pneumonia and pleurisy and was put in a bedroom at the top of our enormous house, presumably for some peace and quiet. His illness terrified me, and whenever I heard Steve clattering down the upper stairs after taking his lunch tray up I feared it was to bring terrible news, but he survived.

11th birthday
I was given a pogo stick for my birthday -- a beautiful red one. You grasped the handle, stood on the little pedals, balanced and started jumping, and the spring inside the metal column shot you high into the air. If you lent forwards you could travel along like a frog. Sheer magic. Even higher was my first flight in an aeroplane: a ten-minute trip from little Lympne Airport..

I had my first music lesson with Miss Rudman at school. She took the piano to pieces to show me its construction, which was fascinating. Then she began to show me how to place my hands on the keys, but I soon had enough of that and asked if I might play her my latest composition, so she soon changed tactics.

The sampler was finally finished and framed.

12th birthday
In the autumn of 1953 my last year in Junior School began, and I was appointed Joint Junior House Captain. Brownies had to be given up because the meetings clashed with Drama classes. My teeth were crowding out of my mouth, so four were removed and I endured a plate and wire band to push the front line back in. The ordeal was worth it, as I discovered years later when a respectable smile had been created out of a jumble of crooked tomb-stones. I think I had the teeth from one set of genes, and the jaws from another, not designed to fit together. In April of 1954 Grannie Bloor, my Father's mother, was ill, and Attie went to stay at Tudor Grange near Ipswich to nurse her. I went too, and it lasted three weeks. As her end grew near I was sent to my Uncle Ted's friends the Fullers at Nettlestead Chace so as to be out of the house in case it upset me. It was Easter, and I helped Nell Fuller arrange flowers in the little chapel, and played Beethoven and Strauss on the harmonium.

I earned 'Distrinction' in Grade One piano examination, 'Merit' in Speech and Drama, and passed the Common Entrance to join the Senior School.

When the weather was fine we often had tea in the back garden. We put a notice by the front door-bell inviting callers to come down the long side passage, and there would always be a cup of tea for them. Here are Mummy, Attie, Daddy and Thai the Siamese cat.

Above: Tudor Grange, and Uncle Ted at the front porch. Below, Mr Crick the farm-hand. I would get up early to watch him milk the cow, then separate the cream from the milk in the dairy. I carried the jug in for breakfast. I always developed boils and styes from the rich food, and my Mother fed me on Minadex "to clean the blood" when I got home.

Although I was only there a few days each year, Tudor Grange felt like a second home. I loved it dearly --- the rambling old farm-house, the outbuildings, the animals and corn-fields, the cosy low-ceilinged kitchen with Aga cooker and caged canary, my Grannie's four-poster bed, the winding staircase outside the guest bedroom, with tiny steps up to the loft (which I never saw), and the dark, spooky and seldom used main staircase in the other half of the house. I loved the way Grannie would say "Please pass the condiments, dear" and I would handle the exquisite, probably Georgian silver and crystal cruet. I loved the three Meissen figurines, which were later inherited by my sister, brother and me. I loved the smell of freshly cut straw and the whirring noise of the combine harvester. There were only two things I did not like. One was the family of very, very large spiders who watched me having my bath. The other was having to go home at the end of the visit.