Very Early Days

Apologies I just updated a label here and it has jumped back to the end instead of at the beginning!!!

I was born during the latter part of the Second World War, in Poole, which is a coastal town in the English county of Dorset.

Apparently I was two weeks late arriving and my mother Dulcie told the story many times, of how, during this period, she had been put in baths of hot water, and then wrapped in hot towels to induce the birth. One of her favourite anecdotes about this treatment was the occasion when the doctor said she may as well go home for the weekend and come back on Monday. She was leaving the hospital with her suitcase when the senior matron asked her where she was going. My mother told her what the doctor had suggested and the response from the matron was “What do you think this is - a bloody hotel?” My mother duly went home and returned to the ‘hotel’ on Monday! If all this had happened nowadays, I guess that my Mum would have had a caesarean, or been given some drug to induce the birth and I would now be a few days older than I am at present! Nevertheless, it was a normal birth, and apart from the fact that I apparently looked two weeks old when born, all went well.

Another of my mother’s favourite stories was that she had prayed that I would have red hair, to take after my father Don, who was in the Merchant Navy at the time. When I was born one of the first questions she asked was “has she got red hair?” and the answer was "yes". In horror, my Mum said “Oh I forgot to pray that it would be curly”; she did not have to worry, as a teenager I spent my time trying to iron my hair straight!