Baptism

Me with Mum. Top picture shows Ma Ward and bottom one Freda Curtis.I have just been bathed in a tin bath on the stoep.
I was baptised at All Saints Huntington on 22 December 1946. This was the church where Mum and Dad had married in 1941. p.38. I still have the copy of "Nimrod" played on that occasion and suitably inscribed. It has remained a favourite piece! Auntie Nellie was my godmother and I think my grandfather was my godfather.  This was a Britain in the grip of rationing and a bitter winter. Dad describes keeping me quiet at the Gloucester digs by throwing a ball of wool in the air. page. 39 describes the epic journey by flying boat to Lourenco Marques. They took off from a small Heathrow airport in the Dakota with me balanced precariously on top of a carrycot full of nappies. The flying boat was boarded on the Nile. Dad had very little money at this stage. At 3 months I was the youngest ever passenger on the flying boats. page 42 describes the train journey to Joburg where they returned to the coupe to find me gone and being comforted by the conductor (a Portuguese engineer). This links to a childhood memory of waking at night and finding nobody there. I do not think this ever actually happened!

Typically having arrived at Ma Ward's in Orange Grove Dad was off to St Mary's cathedral organ! This was the great lure which led him back to a better life in South Africa! Here I am aged 3 months - lots of hair and quite chubby! I already have quite distinctive eyebrows and wide nose. The photo was taken at 46 Stonegate York. Curiously I have visited All Saints Huntingdon on a number of occasions but always found it locked. Ma Ward was quite formidable but she had been very kind to Dad in the war. Freda her daughter was married to Roy Curtis. They had two boys and unfortuantely Brian was bitten by Mrs Curtis's Alsatian (I was never keen on dogs). Later they all moved to Chingola and eventually Gillingham. I went to Freda's funeral in Wallington.

Birth

Inevitably the first mention of me is on page 38. Before that Dad gives a fascinating account of his education and family in York , meeting and marrying Mum, evacuation to Johannesburg in the War and the return to Gloucester. I was born in Cheltenham on the 30th September 1946. Mum had a "bad time of it" going in on Saturday and I was born on the Monday. Dad does not mention that Mum did not see me for 24 hours - how agonising that must have been. Dad would often remark that the umbilical cord is never cut and I was certainly a much loved son. Instruments were used for the delivery and  ever afterwards my problems were described as "congenital". What that meant was hard to find out. It could mean during birth or before birth. I am inclined to think the former although my right leg and foot are shorter than the left and I have no reflexes in the right leg at all, I also have a raised muscle int eh right of my neck and poorer hearing on the right hand side.The spectre of polio was often mentioned but I still do not think that I contracted it. I have often wanted to contact the Cheltenham nursing home to find my records but as we do not know which one it was.... 

Introduction

Where to start? I feel a bit like the famous picture of Charles Dickens surrounded by all his characters all waiting to be immortalised! Today is Jan 31 2017 and I now I am 70 I am determined to write my life story just as Dad did. At the same time a lot of material can be digitalised. While we were in Sydney I worked through Dad's book Striking a balance looking for references to our part of the family and there were a great deal. Strangely Ann's copy is incomplete but the complete 7 volumes are here with me now. When I left South Africa I promised to write every week and this I faithfully did. Dad often recorded in detail my doings. After Mum and Dad died 10 years ago I started the blog The organist librarian happily still continuing. The danger here is that the story becomes a diary. Unlike Dad I do not have total recall but I do have  many boxes of papers and photographs and two of Dad's scrapbooks are in the post! For convenience I will simply put  a page number when referring to Dad's book. He uses Twelfth night as his motto. I choose my favourite Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice Act 5 "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank" set by Vaughan Williams in the Serenade to music.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.