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.