toddler

1st birthday, 9 July 1943
Presents included a chair and table (see left), dolls, balls, bib, handkerchiefs, toy dog, toy rabbit, toy hammer, basket of fruit and 100 rupees. What a lucky Baby. But Caroline had lost the pink cheeks from Darjeeling in May and was not feeling very well. She would practise walking by holding someone's hand, pushing her tummy out and taking huge strides. If she wanted something she pointed imperiously at it, and made a great deal of noise until she got her own way. She loved splashing in the pool at the Saturday Club (later she called it the Slappety Cup), and loved sitting in her playing pen, or better still letting Mummy or Attie sit in it while she played with scissors and matches outside.

2nd birthday
A love of music had developed by listening to the club orchestra on Sunday mornings and commenting "Lovely toot-toot, lovely dub-a-dub." And art --- Caroline drew all over every scrap of paper.

Then the war came to an end, and the family returned to England. But sailing via the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean was still treacherous because of submerged mines, so they pinned to my vest a little cloth label, still preserved, labelled 'Caroline Thomas, cabin 371, boat 4', so that I could be identified if the ship went down.

But the ship stayed afloat, and brought us safely to England's shores. We took a furnished house at Ambleside on Lake Windermere for four months, to make a home for my sister Amber who was having her first baby at Bowness. The house was called 'Keldwith', and my earliest memories are of Stephen showing me how to use a fork for eating, and warning me not to push it too far back. I visited it decades later, finding it by asking the elderly post mistress who remembered its name and told me which house number to look for.

In September, at the age of 3, I became an Aunt. Amber's daughter Diana was born. My emotions were a mixture of pride and jealousy. I insisted on being allowed to have a baby too. My Mother was a wonderful child psychologist, and quietly made a small rag doll with several sets of clothes. She was brought out from under the blue eiderdown one morning, and her name was Ellie. I have her still. It was some years before I realised that making babies was a little more complicated than that, but at the time I felt I had got what I wanted. Once I lost my temper and damaged Ellie's face with a
coat-hanger, but Mummy mended
her and Ellie forgave me.

3rd birthday, 1945
Attie's birthday present was a large picture book 'Orlando's Silver Wedding', which I still have. Orlando was a marmelade cat, who married a tabby called Grace. Later we had a tabby cat whom we called Grace because he looked vaguely like the one in the book, although he fought every other cat in the area and had pieces missing from his ears.

To Folkestone
Granny Gordon owned a large house in Folkestone which was being repaired after some minor war damage. By October 1945 it was ready to be moved into. 'Cromdale', 60 Shorncliffe Road, was to be my home for the next twenty years.
That first winter was bitterly cold, and the pipes burst when the thaw came. I remember standing at the foot of the stairs in wellington boots helping to mop up the water that cascaded down.

4th birthday
The most exciting birthday present was the Dolls' House, which my parents had been making secretly from wooden tea-chests, rags and odds and ends. It had a tiny light-bulb under a shade in each room, controlled by switches at the side. It was the home of Mr and Mrs Bunting and their children Basil and Lucy. It was somewhat smaller than the standard 1:12 scale, so it has never been easy to buy new furniture, and their telephone for years was the size of a television. But I continue to make things to add to it, and some bought items are not size-critical. So it is now getting rather cluttered while in 1946 it was fairly basic, but a great joy to me. My Mother's annual birthday report notes that I was keen on drawing, dancing, acting, singing and dressing up, so clearly future tastes were beginning to evolve.

5th birthday
The winter of 1946/7 was bitterly cold, and I spent six weeks in bed with whooping cough, then contracted bronchitis in May. A week at Tudor Grange with Attie put me on the mend. Tudor Grange was an ancient rambling farmhouse nine miles from Ipswich, belonging to my paternal Grandmother. I stayed there every summer holidays until Granny died, and learned to love it dearly, in spite of the enormous house-spiders.

I had begun school at St Margaret's in September 1946 and loved it: "Her appetite improved and she came home with shining eyes as happy as a bird."
By now I had made my stage debut at the Leas Cliff Hall, dancing in the Babies' Class. I am the little scowler at no.6 from the left, with the Peter Pan collar.

There were frequent trips to the beach, either learning to swim at Sandgate, or watching over baby niece Diana, or channelling the rock-pool water through canals and dams in the East Cliff Sands.

Mummy made me a heavenly party dress in pale blue with puffed sleeves. The bodice was row upon row of frills, with a corsage of pink rose buds from which two blue satin ribbons flowed down. I felt glamorous, but best of all was the fact that the frills made a whiffling sort of noise if you rubbed your chest up and down, which was more than the other little girls could do.

Click in the white triangle on the right for a black-and-white film of the family in Ambleside. Caroline's niece Diana has just been born. There will be a few seconds delay before the show starts. Please do not adjust your set.