13th birthday
A teenager at last. Music went from strength to strength, and I won the Rudman Prize for the highest marks in a public music examination. Miss Kathleen Rudman was my piano/music teacher at St Margaret's, and an important influence in my life. My Father's cousin and my Godmother, Elsie Parkins, gave me her Bechstein boudoir grand piano, and I rushed home every day from school on the bike for lunch-break to play the piano, with hurried bites of lunch in between -- "Do come and finish your pudding, Caroline." An eye-test in September 1954 resulted in having to wear spectacles for short-sight. I danced before Madame Marie Rambert in a choreography competition. St Margaret's won the Percussion Band competition in the Music Festival, being the only entry because no other school could find an accompanist under 14 who could play the Bach Bourree in E from the French Suite. For me it was embarrassing because I forgot a repeat and closed the book ready to leave the stage. The band went on tinkling and thumping, and conductor hissed at me, and I had to finish it off by memory/improvisation, but it didn't stop us winning the cup.
My mother had a genuine Victorian bustle dress and jacket, and made a pillbox hat to go with it. I wore it at a fancy dress competition and won a prize.
The teeth before the transformation, a feat of engineering performed by my dentist.
Another fancy dress prize was won in 1955 with this Chinese outfit. Again the costume is genuine and the head-dress created by my Mother.
Act 1, Scene 2: The Senior School-girl
My Mother made a nice profit selling flowers from her various allotment gardens, and it took her, me, Daddy and Attie to the Costa Brava for a holiday. Dad and I posed behind badly painted cardboard cutouts for the above souvenir portrait.
Mummy and Attie in the porch at 'Cromdale', 60 Shorncliffe Road, Folkestone, the scene of a very, very happy upbringing, largely due to these two beloved, if old-fashioned, women.
In May 1955, I and others from Miss Kennedy's ballet class at School performed an exerpt from 'Les Sylphides'. I am the middle one kneeling down.
Still a bit leggy and gawky, but no longer a child, and steadily growing up
As a Hungarian dancer in the School pantomime, March 1958. Confidence is growing!
14th birthday
I felt too old for a birthday party, so instead the family drove to the zoo at Maidstone on the warmest day of the Summer. I won music and art prizes at School. Stephen had been away at Christmas for the first time, as an officer in the Gurkha Rifles in Malaya.
15th birthday
The birthday treat was a trip to Hampton Court in a heatwave, then front row of the dress circle for the musical 'Salad Days'. In January I went to my first ball, a party given for Nick Bloxam, whose mother had been at St Margaret's School. Daddy had given me the dress for Christmas -- white lace over ice-blue taffeta.
16th birthday
Again, it was a birthday trip rather than a party. I really didn't like parties at this age, being painfully shy. And I saw enough of my friends at school anyway. So the family went to the British Museum and 'My Fair Lady' starring Julie Rogers. I had been confirmed in March by the Bishop of Dover. The theology lessons leading up to this produced a temporary religious fervour, but I am glad to say it soon faded and never came back. In August 1957 I was taken to Buckland House in Devonshire to visit my maternal Grandmother's relations. The house and estate impressed me with its size and faded grandeur, but some of my cousins frightened me by constantly squabbling on the tennis courts. I wasn't used to family tension.
17th birthday
This had been the year working for GCE examinations in the summer of 1959, so there was not much time for picnics and theatre trips. I joined the WVS (now WRVS) in which my Mother had founded Folkestone's Meals-on-Wheels service, and it was my first brush with voluntary work. I helped take Christmas meals and presents to elderly people in reduced circumstances. At sweet 16 I was occasionally a temptation for the old men, including the one on the left, to grab a kiss, and Mum always put me in a bath with some disinfectant when we got home. I stayed with friends in northern France to brush up my oral French and fell not exactly in love, but a fluttering stirred in my heart for the first time.The big hit of the year was 'West Side Story'. I was given the full musical score for my birthday, and played it to my school friends when exams were partly finished and the pressure was off. We saw 'Hamlet' at Dover Castle, which was a most impressive setting.
There were many car trips into the country to paint scenery with water-colours, or to pick blackberries in the autumn. Biscuits, cake and thermos flasks of tea went too, and of course Attie with her knitting.
As a teenager I was given the 'master bedroom', the front room on the first floor, and I very much appreciated it. This was a large room, with a marble fireplace, an enormous Indian sequinned wall-embroidery behind glass, a beautiful round antique drum-head table, a winged arm chair, desk, multi-drawered dressing table, huge chest of drawers and all the furniture displayed in my painting. And of course a piano, the upright piano that had been in the sitting room before my Bechstein grand arrived. I hung my clothes in a built-in wardrobe on the landing. Every Tuesday evening I lay on the bed listening to Radio Luxembourg and the romantic singing voice of Mario Lanza.
18th birthday
GCE results in 1959 had been satisfactory: seven O-levels in English Language, Mathematics, French, English Literature, Religious Knowledge, Art and Music. Something happened in this last year that was to have a profound influence on my life. The Folkestone National Folk Dance Group asked my music teacher Miss Rudman to recommend a piano pupil to play for their evening classes, and I was picked. For the planned tour to Austria in April 1960 I taught myself to play a small piano accordion. While my parents were visiting Amber in South Africa -- a long trip by Union Castle steamer, I took driving lessons, involving hill starts on an ice-covered Dover Hill, and passed my test first time. I drove them home from the station, to their astonishment. After the week in Salzburg I bought my own accordion.
Caroline in Austrian costume, kneeling in the centre
19th birthday
The next batch of GCEs, in the summer of 1960, were O-level German and Spanish and A-level French. This year had been my last at School, and I was Deputy Head Girl. I gained Advanced German and Advanced + Scholarship level English. My first television performance was playing for Swedish dancing at the Dover studios. The four of us had a holiday in Paris in April 1961.
Bridesmaid at my brother's wedding to Jenny Hills
The Austrian connection
1961 saw the first of the biennial Folkestone International Folklore Festivals, and in the team from Salzburg was a young man, Hans Mayer, with whom I fell in love. It was without a future, but gorgeous while it lasted, sporadically, for several years, through letter-writing and on more trips to Austria either with the dancers or privately, and finally as part of my job. I remained an ardent Austro-Bavaro-phile for years.
Finally I left School and began work.
Act 2, scene 1 begins: The Career Woman.
The 'Gordon sisters' - Attie and my Mother
