To quote C Dickens "Chapter 1. I am Born".I always remember wondering as a small child what it would be like in 2000....and it seemed impossibly far away. And here we are 12 years after that event.
Well as we know from the last week, 60 years ago the King died and some four months later I was born (no logical connection)...but it does mean that I have known only one monarch both as a citizen of the UK and Australia. She has been a good Queen. I hope that she may be the last monarch Australia has ....but this is not the week to say that.
Strangely, I realised some years ago that what I have always taken to be my earliest memory is associated with the Coronation. I have a quite clear memory of a children's party at which local children gathered in a local tennis or bowls club. I had always thought I was about 3 or 4. When trying to think what this might have been I came to the conclusion it was Coronation party. That means it was 1953...and I must have been 1! That was quite mind-blowing.
The 50-s had about them the greyness and dampness of post-war England. Though equally well, I also remember lovely summer holidays at St Bees, enjoying school, joining Cubs, and singing in the Church Choir.
I also loved Sunday school, and am deeply thankful to St Charles Moncrieff who taught Sunday school and gave me the gift of the bible story...parables and the Old Testament heroes....a quiet man who fought at the Somme...and you would never have known he knew such pain. But he and Mary, his devoted wife, had deep faith ....mine pales into insignificance.
In politics there was the Suez crisis, which I knew nothing about...but which is perhaps the first time I recognised that sometimes all is not well in the world.
We listened to the radio...comedy, serials and music and for some bizarre reason my favourite song was "The Yellow Rose of Texas!!!" which I guess was the Mitch Miller version of 1955
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