Who Remembers Hat Pins?

There was a time when no self-respecting woman left her home to go grocery shopping, on a day trip, or ANYWHERE without putting on her hat and pinning it into her hair. Even in the 1960s, when I was growing up, my nan went through the ritual before going out.

You can see her in this picture, with me, on holiday, when I was about 7 or 8 (1962/1963) ... no coat ... but wearing her hat.

Hat pins varied from the plain to the glamorous. My nan's was quite plain, about 4" long and topped with a pearl, as was Aunt Maud's (an adopted aunt to our family from when my mum and her sister were young) who is seen here holding me when I was about 2.

This link goes to a page explaining some of the history of hat pins and the photos show how the heads could be quite plain, to suit an outfit/ensemble or very elaborate in design.

History of hat pins with photos

Memorial Day 2016

Remembering all who have given their lives

in the service of our country,

and the families that miss them

Memorial Day Poetry

Just some poetry I've written over the years to honour our veterans. Hope you enjoy! Poem for Memorial Day 2010 The crosses line up row on row, sombre, silent, in the morn - and in permanent sleep all those below listen to the piper's early tune. It matters not when they gave all, when blood was spilled, which war, or where, it matters just that they stood tall and served that flag proudly flying there. And so remember them, we must, Too young to die and sadly missed. Returned from flesh to richer dust, And by love's tears, and raindrops, kissed. I hope they hear the bugler's call and lie not lonely in that earth, cherished memories of those who that gave all, remind those left of freedom's worth. Bless them, bless them, bless them all, Young men grown old by long left horrors, who answered their country's desperate call and kept those days in all their tomorrows. So lay your wreaths and fly your flags from fence, and gate, and tree. Though remnants may be seeming rags remember those who kept us free. copyright Rose Dempsey May 30th 2010

Poem for Memorial Day 2011

Rows upon rows of crosses, 

each, a life once lived. 

A voice no more, a smile once seen, 

they gave all they had to give. 

A silence, now, their companion - 

the sounds of war long gone - 

no gas, no bombs, no bullets tear; 

We say a sad "so long". 

"So long," to all our heroes 

of ward fought, lost and won. 

For mother's sons, long gone and mourned, 

once loved. Each and every one. 

A fleeting day comes once a year, 

a time to stop and pray, 

not only for our fallen 

but those who fight today. 

So, spare a thought for those, today, 

who in the heavens roam, 

remember that they gave their lives 

and never made it home. 

copyright Rose Dempsey 28th May 2011 

Pearl Harbor

A poem to remember Pearl Harbour and those who were there

"A day that will live in infamy," Roosevelt did declare  speaking of the atrocity and the souls who perished there.  Young men forever silenced, their laughter heard no more  on the day the Arizona sunk down to the ocean floor.  On that day sixty years ago, terror came from up on high  as squadrons loosed their bombs in that early morning sky,  and came they on their targets in the harbour far below  and left not 'til ships were sinking in the watery shallows.  Black smoke billowed upwards and blocked out clear blue dawn  flaming oil fanned out on waves, burning men that morn.  For some who tried to swim away,the enemy did lack  any compassion whatsoe'er, and shot them in the back.  Eleven hundred lives were lost, that day so long ago -  what kind of men they might become, of that we'll never know.  For most were young, in Spring of life, and destined thus to stay,  sent into immortality that awful murderous day.  Their names are etched upon the wall, their sacrifice to see,  those who perished on the land, on ships, or in the sea.  And in the hearts of those who knew the face behind each name,  the sorrow vents its memories as each year comes again.  The survivors now are grey and bent, their eyes grow ever dim,  their memories are painful, a poignant human hymn.  And as with other heroes, these too must honoured be,  because they and countless others died that we might live life free.  copyright Rose Dempsey

Thoughts on the Dedication of the World War II Memorial

Like many others, I watched the dedication on tv that day

Amid the sea of faces seated underneath the sun  were memories of others who to this day had not come.  Those who weren't invited not because they wouldn't care  but they gave their lives so long ago that they could not be there.  Their memories are hidden in the hearts of those who came -  the sounds of someones laughter that will ne'er be heard again;  a waft of sweet tobacco once smoked by comrade, young,  will cause a mind to wonder at who that lad might have become.  Yet buried are they in lonely graves across an ocean blue,  row upon row of crosses shows how many died for you.  For each there is a family, who no more got to see  the face of one they loved so much who died to keep us free.  And today a dedication to those who lived and all who died,  for these, the men and women who in that war fought side by side.  For some were in the trenches, some stayed behind the lines,  yet all gave of their very best in that the worst of times.  And so,  over half a century later, underneath a searing sun  to Washington these heroes and heroines had come,  to dedicate a memorial to all who fought and died,  to friends they once had fought with, a band of brothers, side by side.  And songs were sung that brought to each the mood that was back then,  And tears formed in the rheumy eyes of countless aged men,  And women also dabbed their eyes remembering times long gone  This memorial dedication, a World War 2 swansong.  Granite columns and copper wreaths, and open eagle wings;  engraved names of battles, of States and other things,  fountains spraying foam into the air above a lake  peacefully remember those who gave all for our sake.  So, as you look remember, and offer up a prayer  for all the men and women who weren't able to be there  and silently give a "thank you" that because of them we're free.  In World War 2, in foreign lands, they died for you and me.

I made a meme!

Well, for those who do not know me, personally, I am NOT very techy. So, I was approached by a local boy's team to advertise in their program for an upcoming event, the advertising costs going towards helping raise funds along with the sale of the programs. All I had to do was "send my ad" since I had paypaled the fee. But what to do to make it appealing? I have no experience with creating images so was at a loss.  

Then I thought about a meme ... but again had no idea how to go about making one. I said as much to hubby, and he said to google it. Why hadn't I done that before? I've wished so many times that I could do memes. It took me about 5 minutes! I am well chuffed with myself. This old lady is learning quite a few new tricks of late, LOL.

So, here is the meme I made, and although it'll be b/w in the booklet, I think it'll be pretty effective, don't you?

When the road took me to WV to devil Anse

Gosh, it's been many many moons ago now, but back in the early 1990s I took a trip to West Virginia, with friends of mine who came from there. It was to a small town nestled up in the mountains, a mining community where many of the roads weren't even paved, kids still played in the creeks and the homes ran up steep slopes, one after the other.

I loved it!

The old movie theater in the center of town, the High School where my friend's hubby had been one of the football team in his youth, and where not far from town, in a little place called Sarah Ann, they took me to the Hatfield cemetery.

http://www.mywvhome.com/1900s/hatfield.html

It was amazing, standing there, letting the history of the area, the family, and the feud, wash over me and thinking I was actually there.

The statue of Devil Anse is very imposing, and nobody has ever explained to me how a "hillbilly family" from "the mountains" knew where to order it from in Italy! I mean, in this computer age, I could search online, but to find a craftsman in a foreign country, back then ... I'm so very curious as to whose idea it was and how it came about ... but obviously, I will never know as anyone who did is now long gone as well.

Afterwards, we drove by their old house and I had a look around there too. There was a family member there and they spoke with us. It was really interesting. He seemed fascinated that someone from England had even heard of the Hatfields and McCoys.

My friend, Patty, also told me about the massacre at Matewan, a few miles away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Matewan

I love history though, and I love small towns and their stories.

A 3 Day Weekend

My poor hubby works hard, and most weekends recently, they've wanted him to work overtime, and he has done. The money comes in very handy, obviously, and our bills have been getting paid on time, where for many years we struggled with too much month at the end of the money. He's no spring chicken any more though, and it's like I've always said, some things are just worth more than money - so this week, when they asked, he said "no" and he has had 3 days of sleeping in and then us just getting up and doing what needs doing.

Friday we were out and about all day, delivering AVON and restocking my brochures in a couple of places; yesterday we met up with one lady, and then grocery shopped and bought a new router. Today, we have made a start on what will be my new AVON room.

When my granddaughter lived with us, it was her room. She moved out a couple of months ago, and we decided to convert it back into an AVON room for me. It'll take ages, as with me being disabled, I have 2 speeds, real slow, and resting.

Hubby brought my first tall oak shelf down for me and it's all cleaned and polished except for the 2 sides at the bottom shelf level, and he's going to do those as I cannot bend to reach, from my chair. He'd already done the top ones for me.

This shelf is going to be the new home of my Mrs Albee statuettes and my "Oscars" from President's Club Award Galas over the years that I've been an AVON rep. This October it will be 10 years. It surprises me, it's one of those things that make you go "who'd a thunk it?"

It came at a good time. My walking was getting more difficult, I was "resting" more, my joints ached and creaked more, and even doing the sit-down job I was doing as a call center verifier was beginning to be harder for me. My body refused to work some mornings, and I could not get out of my bed because my back, or my hips or knees, just wouldn't do their job. 

As I lost the self esteem that came from being a reliable employee, and - in a different area of my life - a great C&W dancer - the AVON replaced it as I won awards at President's Club events and received recognition at monthly meet ups.

It's been a good 10 years, and I have the Mrs Albees and "Oscars" to prove it.

My "Oscars"

I remember my upline, Glori, showing me her lovingly displayed Mrs Albees, and me thinking that they were pretty but not my cup of tea. Until I earned one. Then, I realised that getting a Mrs Albee was an accomplishment, a recognition of hard work, of perseverence, and thus began my annual challenge to "make PC" for that next year, to bring home the next Mrs Albee for my collection.

2007 - 2009 Mrs Albees

2010 - 2012 Mrs Albees

2013 - 2015 Mrs Albees

The bottom shelf with the Mrs Albee edition Barbie doll and 3 mini-Mrs Albees

Memories

They come, unbidden, in the night 
and like a magical journey 
take me back to times long past, 
where I can look with backward glance, 
and wish those times return once more, 
to echo in this brain of mine, 
this harried vault of Father Time. 

In wonderment, I start each trek 
into the depths of times forgotten, 
woven as a piece of cloth, 
the patchwork of times well, or mis-spent; 
yet looking back, one sees no other way 
to live the life of yesterday. 

And so, unbidden, still they come, 
and I, in pleasant warm cocoon 
of peaceful sleep, 
do wallow in them, once again, 
delicious bites of long passed time. 

The voices blur, the faces fade, 
and yet these memories were made 
with so much love, 
and will remain 
within my heart, forever. 
And I will relish each return, 
to that far-off place wherein they hide, 
to delve once more into history, 
into the patchwork of my life. 

Rummaging

Rummaging through old papers, photographs and things, one often picks up something that tugs at heart's old strings; A memory comes unbidden, to block all else from view, refusing to go quietly - the decent thing to do; and so, it pervades the soul until acknowledge it we must. We sit among those memories, amid the fluff of dust. We find a scrap of paper, illegible to some, but we remember what it was, and what it did become; We see the person who we were those days so long ago, thinking that we owned the world, not yet knowing it wasn't so. Though tears may prick as thoughts replay the theatre of our minds, yet deeper still we let them seep, of days long left behind. It seem time has passed so quickly, so many years, so many woes, amid the toils and troubles of the pathways that we chose. Regrets of wrongs not righted, of opportunities passed by, accolades for achievements satisfying to the eye. So, here we sit and rummage, with teary cheek and aching soul, wondering how it came to this. How did we get so old? Momentarily back in youthful mind, we reminisce of times long past, yet knowing to this present time we must return, at last. So, pictures, back in boxes, photographs - we'll close the book. We tuck the scraps of paper into the safety of a nook. For who knows when our hunger for the comfort of those years, will once more bring upon us the joy of shedding tears.

A memory, stepping back in time

I LOVE my memories. I love being able to take myself back to an event, or just part of an ordinary day, that made me happy at the time and makes me go "aaaah" when I think about it now.

During the war, my nan was a young mother with 2 little girls, and a husband who was away in India with the British Army. She lived in Granville Buildings on Luke Street in Shoreditch. Her neighbour was an older lady named Maud Burdock, who my mum and Aunt Irene grew up calling "Aunt Maud" in the way that children referred to adults in those days. 

When my mum and aunt married and had families of their own, we children inherited "Aunt Maud" and I remember frequent visits, the subway from Leytonstone to Liverpool Street, and then the walk up Eldon Street, past the old horse trough and the goods yard entrance where the orangey-yellow 3 wheeled trucks whirred around inside; up Wilson Street and crossing Sun Street, past The Flying Horse pub, where often there would be a horse drawn dray delivering barrels of beer. The horse would have his mouth buried in a nose bag of food, and the draymen would be rolling the barrels off the dray and down into the cellar through the wooden trapdoors. We'd stroke the horse, sometimes we'd watch them delivering, other's we'd step around the dray and just carry on walking, crossing Worship Street, Wilson would change its name to Paul, and we'd walk to Mark Street, where Aunt Maud was living in Langbourne Buildings.

For "us kids" Mark Street and Langbourne Buildings were great. At the corner were a couple of black bollards, and we'd leapfrog (or try, when we were even younger) over them. There were a couple of old gaslights still standing, although no longer in use. St Mark's Church was active then, and the quad was behind a wall, and you'd hear children laughing and chatting as they played in there.

Langbourne Buildings were Victorian flats, and we thought they were magical. They were 4 stories high, each with an outside landing and central circular stone stairway. The acoustics were awesome. Everything resonated. I feel badly now for the people living there, as we'd stomp up those stone steps, to hear them echo.

The landings were also stone floored, and the doors were huge, about 3" thick, with a huge brass knocker that (even at 11 or 12) I could not reach. When someone knocked, it resonated with 3 or 4 echoes. We loved it.

Aunt Maud's flat was a simple one bedroom, which was to the left as you came through the front door. Her living room was to the left, and through that a scullery with a deep square sink at the end, under a grimy window, and next to that (to the left) a simple toilet. I do not remember a time in my childhood, that the toilet flushed. Aunt Maud kept a bucket in that big sink, and one of the adults would fill it to "flush" the loo after any of us kids used it.

Her bedroom was sparsely furnished - just an old high iron bed frame, a tall boy and a chest of drawers. Feather quilts covered the top of her bed, and when we'd crawl under it, feathers and dust bunnies had their domain there.

Her living room was more cramped. 2 armchairs close to the fireplace, table against the wall opposite, sideboard down the other wall (the back of which was her bedroom, and a small black and white tv in the corner. 

She had a sage green chenille tablecloth on the table, that hung low. We kids would set up a "camp" underneath, sitting on the bar across the bottom. So simple, and yet it kept us happy and engrossed while the adults chatted.

In ways, Aunt Maud was a bit of a "wild one". From the time I was about 7 or 8, any time we went over, she'd give me a Babycham (a "champagne perry")making me feel very grown up. She'd admonish me, "don't tell your nan and granpop". Although my parents didn't drink or go out, she'd pour them a Harvey's Bristol Cream, a sherry, about an inch in a shot glass. 

Funnily enough, when I was with my grandparents, they'd let me have cider and warn me not to tell Aunt Maud!

She had a twinkle in her eyes and a tinkly laugh, that even now, almost 50 years later, I can hear when I think of her.

What's sad is how - when you look back with adult eyes - you realise how hard it was for an 80 year old woman to live on the second floor in a building that had no lift, and how, for so many years she had a toilet that did not flush.

They razed them about 40 years ago now, as part of slum clearance. When my dad told me that, a few years ago, I was disappointed. "Oh how could they do that to those beautiful buildings" and he responded "c'mon, Rosemary, they were slums, they were bloody awful". It was only then I looked at it with adult eyes and saw what childhood innocence had overlooked.

Aunt Maud's was the first building with the long landings, half way down the street

These pics sadden me, they were taken in the 1970s just before the buildings were demolished. I've been unable to find any from my youth. A park is now where they stood. It's a nice space, a  green spot in an ever-more-built-up area.

St Mark's Church still stands but is a church no more. It houses an antiques business. To be fair, the owners have done their best not to destroy the structure at all, and seem to hold a reverence for it.

Aunt Maud played a huge part in my childhood. This pic is of her holding me at Broadstairs when I was about 18 months or so, old. She died of cancer in 1969 at the old Bethnal Green Hospital. Her only surviving relative was her great-niece Angela (Green/Greene, I can't remember the spelling) who was her nephew's daughter, and was about 6 months older than me.

What a lovely day for Mother's Day

Today as been an absolutely gorgeous day. Sun was shining, beautiful blue skies, white marshmallow clouds. It couldn't have been more perfect for Mother's Day.

Sadly my children are all far away. My son called from New York. We chatted. One of my daughters wished me a Happy Mother's Day online ... but English Mother's Day was around Easter so I'd already been wished it back then too.

Hubby and I had a lie in, this morning, and then set out to do our running around. 

We delivered AVON to one of my customers out off Haywood Road (giving us the perfect excuse to grab lunch from Panera Bread at Haywood Mall), dropped off brochures on some businesses, stopped off at the European Market for even more goodies (my English and German favourites) and then came home and relaxed watching a couple of interesting documentaries on the telly.

Hubby vacuumed the rug cleaner out of the carpet in what had been my granddaughter's bedroom and is now going to become my new AVON business room. My first task will be to dust and polish one of my oak shelving units and then to begin dusting and moving my Mrs Albee figurines from the other room, and into my new AVON room and onto the new shelf.  

It's all a part of my de-cluttering and attempting to simplify our life.

My being disabled has made life so hard on my hubby, he works, and then comes home ... and works some more. It's a really good day, when I can make it to the other end of the house, to the laundry room. So most times, he does laundry. I do make it to the kitchen, and I sit to cook and wash my dishes, or wipe down my countertops. But sweeping and mopping are difficult, as is vacuuming,so usually, they fall on him too. Last week, I managed to sweep my living room and hallway, it took me 4 stints to complete, each with a lying-down-on-my-side rest between them. It took me all day.

I try to do "little things" to show him how much I appreciate him. To give him some nice relaxation.

This week he has a massage appointment, his poor body is exhausted some days. It gives it some pampering and respite from his gruelling life.

As my AVON Leadership checks have grown, I've been paying off some of our bills more quickly. I've also begun to do things to make hubby's life easier. Last Friday, I had a lovely guy named Eric who came and bush hogged our back field. Hubby had been down twice to mow, and barely made a dent in it, and was continually stressing over trying to get down to do more. Eric took care of it in a couple of hours, and that was well worth $120!  Money well spent. I told him, I may just have him come every 6 months to keep it under control.

I had a young lad come by to see about doing yard work and helping hubby with odd jobs outside, so that we can get the front yard sorted out, my "cabin" building repainted, fencing painted, and that went well. He will prob come 3-4 hours a week to do whatever needs doing, and I'm hoping that, by the end of Summer, so much of the chores we have fallen behind on these past few years due to me no longer being able to do my share, will be caught up on and my yard won't look like redneck heaven any more, LOL .

Inside our home, I have a friend going to come in for 3-4 hours a week to clean for me. That will take the responsibility for doing it, off my hubby, and appease my guilt for being unable to do it myself. 

They say pride comes before a fall, but my pride isn't in a smug sense, more of a gratefulness that I am making enough money to be able to allocate the money to do these things, and make our lives easier despite my disability having made it so much harder, before now.

I'm so excited for my new AVON room. Oh I know it'll take me months to get it all done, but that's ok. Every day, every little thing, a new shelf filled, a box unpacked, a bag of trash filled as I sort through stuff, each will be a step towards the successful decluttering and simplifying that I've been needing to do for a long time.

I am very thankful for all the blessings in my life. My hubby deserves a medal for all the help and support he gives me. He helps me so much with the hands on things involved in running my business, as well as everything else. I'm glad to have been married to him for 30 years.

Hope you have all enjoyed your Mother's Day, wherever you are. Have a lovely evening!

Beginning Our Menagerie

When we moved into our house in 2003, I had such plans for self-sufficiency. Back-to-the-land and all that fun. We were bringing our cats and a feral mama and babies, from the apartment we'd been in, and had found 2 acres and a brick house for $116,000 when a cheap wood and siding one with no yard hardly, in a  subdivision was running around $150,000. We were so excited.

The back field is about an acre, and had a pole barn in one corner. The neighbours at the end of the road, owned the field next to us, and there was a beautiful young black stallion in there, and he and I soon became friends. I'd stand at the fence and click my tongue, and he'd come galloping from way down the other end. The neighbour the other way was on the other side of his field, and his was full of goats. I was so happy.

That Summer, we got our first goat. He was a couple of months old, and I named him Rammy.

I bottle fed him and he slept in a dog crate in the laundry room, among the kittens we fostered for a local rescue. He was just like a puppy, hopping and skipping around us outside as we did our chores. 

I was still working back then, and my workmates loved when I would bring Rammy up to my job, on a leash. They thought I was crazy. Yes, that label has always fitted me well!

We set about finding him a companion, and bought a second Nubian, and named her Cleo.

At that time, hubby built 2 stalls inside the pole barn, and we moved them into it for overnights, and with the back field to munch through at leisure, n top of their grain mix.

I also set up a dog crate on the table in the laundry room, with a heat lamp, and we got 25 heavy-layer day old chicks. When they feathered up, we added a perch, and by 3 weeks, we had moved them outside into a chicken run that Mark had fenced off and built a shed area in.

I had the beginnings of my backyard barnyard.

Our menagerie grew when a friend offered me a couple of male guinea fowl, they were an odd pair. They'd waddle around the field chattering away like 2 old women, which always made us smile. We got 3 female babies, and raised them for a few weeks in a dog crate with a heat lamp, then had them outside in the cage so that the older 2 could see them and get to know them before they all got to hang out together.

That Christmas, our gift was that we'd save a life ... and we went to the local pound and brought home Angel. 2 weeks later, we went back and adopted her a "sissy" and Princess aka Boo and Boo Bear, came home with us.

We used to take them out on weekends and walk around the old runways out at the Donaldson Center, where hubby works. 

They grew to be 2 brats, our 4-legged daughters.

Angel 

Boo

They are now 12 going on 13. 2 spoiled old ladies who just do "their own thing" when they don't want to come indoors, and just ignore me calling them. 

2003 began our menagerie, "my backyard barnyard" as I used to say, but it didn't finish it!

I used to love to dance

I really did! Didn't matter what style, I loved the way dancing made me feel. 

My dad used to dance with us girls when we were little. I remember him teaching me to jive, to Buddy Holly. Our house was full of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, or Cliff Richard and the Shadows, from an early age. I think the reason why the double A-side "Peggy Sue" and "Everyday" are my favourite Holly songs are because of that.

We played them on a radiogram, and the turntable had 3 speeds, 78 rpm,45 rpm and 33 rpm. We had quite a few that still played on 78 and my favourites were Paul Anka's "Diana" and "Little Darlin" by the Diamonds.

By the time I was 7, I wanted to be a ballerina. My Aunt Irene had a pair of Beryl Grey's ballet shoes, a famous ballerina back then, wh danced for Sadler's Wells. Unfortunately, in those days, it was a given that - to be a ballerina, you had to start dance classes by the age of 4. The thought being that, after that age, the bones were no longer soft and pliable enough to manouvre into the positions required. My  dream ended before it had even begun.

I loved music though, I still do. All kinds except the hard rap with the nasty expletives.

By 11, I was into Tamla Motown, and loved the lunchtime "discos" in the gym at Leyton County High School for Girls. We paid 2 shillings to go in, and they played Four Tops, Isley Brothers, Temptations and the girl groups, and we'd dance that hour away. Looking back, I guess it gave us more exercise ... and we paid for the privilege.

I was an odd child in High School. My nickname was Queer. At 11, I'd lost my friends from Junior School, even my best friend for years. We'd been placed on different sides of the room, and she's made new friends where I became somewhat of a loner. Funnily enough though, in the discos I must have danced pretty good, as the 4th year girls would come and hang out with me, which was an oddity to say the least!

My mum fostered kids from all over the world, so I was introduced to all types of music by their families, at various events. Not just music either, but the cultures of their different homelands too. I may not have appreciated everything at the time, but as I grew older, I saw the richness and realized how blessed I had been by the experiences and the knowledge I gleaned.

We moved away from London for a year, and when we came back, I hung out with Stephanie Cole, Della Gibson, Susan Dudley and Tina Clayton. They introduced me to Leyton Youth Club, and the music there was mainly reggae. I learned new dances!

I was 15 or 16 when I danced my first 2 line dances, one was a biker stomp basically to ZZ Top's "La Grange" and the other just a smooth flowing grapevine and turn to the Supremes "Stoned Love", the latter during my time at NORCAT in Kings Lynn.

I was married and divorced very quickly, within 5 years. At 22, I was single again with 3 children under 6. The next 5 years were pretty rough. My ex didn't pay child support, I worked part-time as an office cleaner, at first, and then did secretarial duties for a furniture store/antique dealer. I tried to be a good mother, I know I made a lot of mistakes. I look back now and see how young I was. Then, I just struggled, and felt like a failure.

I was born Empire Day 1955

I was born on Queen Victoria's birthday, but she had already been gone half a century when I entered the land of the living. Despite that, in those years, her birthday was still celebrated as Empire Day.

Yes, when I was born, Great Britain still had an Empire. India had gained Independence only 7 years before, the "Jewel in the Crown" written about by Paul Scott in his Raj Quartet, and by M.M. Kaye in "The Far Pavilions, the land where both my biological father, Alec Leggett, and my granpop, Edward Lewis, had both served, had shook off the bonds and become her own entity.

My granpop outside the Quartermaster's Stores, Pune, India WWII

Pictured inside their workshop in Pune, India WWII

In Africa, Independence was coming but at a slower pace. The whole continent being controlled by foreigners - the British, the Dutch, the Germans, the French and the Belgians. Rightly or wrongly (and hindsight is 20/20, as they say) the conquerors of the previous century controlled the natives.

In Great Britain itself, and in England (I class myself as English first and British as a consequence of that) the war had been over for 10 years, and yet food rationing had only ceased to be a part of British daily life the year before I made my entrance. The mindset was still in place, and my early years were full of "wartime" memories.

My first solid food was mashed potatoes with OXO gravy. I STILL love mash and gravy, but now my OXO is thickened with Bisto, as well. I grew up with bread and dripping, and fried bread cooked in the grease from bacon, neither sounds appealing to me now yet at the time they were something I loved. Another childhood "special" for me was on the Sunday roast chicken. How my mum made a 3lb chicken go around all of us still boggles me. I always got "the parson's nose". It was only years later that I realised what that part really was, but in those days nothing went to waste.

I have a few memories of being really young.

My grandparents basically raised me while my mum worked, and until she and the man she married (Bill Bland, who became my dad, and has been for 58 years now) bought their first home together in Loughton, Essex. They married when I was 2, but my grandparents had no room to put up another adult, and my dad's mum didn't want a small child living in the house.

This was the house at 47 Southern Drive, Loughton

One of my first memories is of going to work with my granpop one day, when he worked for King and Scarborough. Their timber yard was on the canal on Kingsland Rd, and he backed the lorry up towards the canal, and I was scared we were going to go in the water.

His King and Scarborough lorry parked across the road, after my grandparents moved to 9a Marlborough Avenue in Hackney. The bombed out area opposite became a block of flats.

Before then they'd lived at Cherbury Street in Shoreditch. When they were there they had a dog named Fluff, who was my best friend when I was little.

Seems I was showing Fluff something interesting in my book!

Anther toddler pic of me taken in the same spot.

In the garden, in my dungarees.

Holding my skirt out like a little princess.

I loved my grandparents, and was well blessed in being able to be with them so much when I was little. I had an awesome childhood with them, and even after going to live with my mum and dad, I spent most Easter and Summer holidays with them, and lots of weekends.