April 1945

 

So we are up to 1945, I’m not quite 4 & a half in this one. I can only vaguely remember living, playing outside & sleeping before I went to school so there’s not much to tell before then except perhaps that I was looking forward to starting school, who knows. The above photo was taken the same day as this one with Grumps, she’s not smiling, doesn’t feel obliged to do what Mum is telling her and there’s me the proper little angel:-

This one is taken on Browns Bay Beach, also with Grumps along with Grandpa Courtney Parks & Dad in their Sunday best. Note she gets the bucket & spade and I get an old tin & stick!

Boy was she spoilt, I was invisible after she was born! I was just so jealous I guess, I remember trying very hard to please my mother so she would know I existed. She didn’t believe in filling us up with bread at meals like a lot of families did in those days but sometimes she just had to and would ask if we wanted white or brown bread, she was always drumming into us how much better brown bread was for us so I’d say brown bread thinking she would give us brown anyway and Karin said white and she got it! I was most put out because I wanted white too.

Taking the opportunity here to add a photo of each of my parents when they were babies:-

Gwendoline Eleanor Parks 1912-1983

Ronald Charles Whitney 1910-1966

Not sure of the date of this one but looks to be around about the same year, I had to clean this photo up as it had a very thick crayon mark right across it, I wonder who that was? Not me surely…