Pictures from the past

I don't have many pictures of my Family but the few that I have I treasure.

this one shows Me (standing) aged about 5, my sister Julie, about 4 and my sister Debra at about 12 months. My sisters are sitting on a water tank which was on the roof the the tentament block we lived in at the time. The roof was our playground, the ground was 13 floors below. In was about this time, I watched a playmate fall from our playground to ground. Mum was never too keen on us playing on the roof after that and if she had the time, would walk us all to our other back garden, St James Park (the one with Buckingham Palace as a backdrop).

This is me with my cousin Gillian, probably on the stoop of my Grandparents's flat. The contraption I am sitting on is actually a high chair. I still have the chair part, parked in my bedroom with my "baby Anne" doll which was bought for my 4th birthday. Poor Baby Anne, has been kicked, drawn on and generally abused by Me, my 3 sisters and all my kids in the past nearly 45 years. Apart from needing a good scrub and a couple of broken eyes, she still looks good. The chair has done well considering as well. It no longer has any of the table parts or extending legs but it has been well used by my kids in the past and gone through several paint jobs.

This is a picture of my Dad when he was about 19/20 yrs old (about the same age as Alan is now). He joined the navy when he was 16 and for the 5-6 yrs he was in the service, apparently had riotious time, learned to embroider and developed his taste for alcohol (at least one episode of the DTs). :cry

He hated being in the navy apparently but joined up to spite his parents. He wanted to be a gardener or a cook but they wanted him to train as an electrician. In the end he became a stoker which is how we ended up in the tied flat in Westminster,as his job on leaving the navy was working as a stoker for the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria. I remember vividly going to see Dad at work as you could go the loading bays and look down at the engine room of the store. It was so noisy we could never hear what he was saying but it was cool to see Dad working. The noise unfortunately ruined his hearing.