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By keef and annie hellinger, June 19 2022 8.36AM A KeefH Web Designs Travel Blog Not The Motorhome trip No 17 : May 27th 2022 – June 18th 2022 MENU Introduction Hazelgrove Barn, Laneshawbridge, Lancashire Photoshoot Gartocharn, West Dumbartonshire, Loch Lomond, Scotland A week back and around Sandiacre Covid finally negative after 19 days Audiobook Scottish Travel Blog Routes Retro Scottish Family Travels Videos Tags and Comments INTRODUCTION Welcome to Blog 182, a real family affair. Our family from Singapore were over for 3 weeks, the first time we have seen them in 3 years due to the pandemic. Just so lovely to spend time with them, unfortunately as we let our hair down i.e pubs, restaurants, and crowded places Keef (Grandpa) got covid. Anyhow it was still a fab time. Left at 3.30 am on Friday 27th May to pick them up from Heathrow, got there with plenty of time to spare, mask on I was the first person in Arrivals and therefore bagged the best viewing slot in the house armed with my welcome card I buckled down to greet them all. As space was limited for baggage in the Merc Annie had to stay behind. Due to some baggage handling issues at Heathrow (maybe staff shortages? who knows) they were quite a while before they came through, just how wonderful was that! Whilst waiting for them I reveled in what appeared to be a reenactment of "Love Actually" as the hugs and cheers as people's loved ones came through those arrival swing doors was truly lovely #emotional Interestingly there were lots of folks who came up to look at my sign, thinking I was a taxi service #teehee After pick up we travelled back up to Sandiacre, stopping at Newport Pagnell services for a slap up "full english" breakfast with black pudding, one of their fave things that is impossible to find in Singapore #class. Got back to all greet Annie and they chilled and tried to overcome jet lag. Not easy. They decided that they didnt need an extra day to recover and were happy to travel up to Lancashire on the Saturday to greet Craig & Leanne and family who were going up first. We all kept it a surprise. During the planning of the combined family holiday we had booked a large holiday home , Hazelgrove Barn, in Laneshawbridge on a farm, made possible to get us all together as it was half term in England and the Queens 70th jubilee affording 2 days public holiday, #goodstuff For the second week whilst Craig and co returned to work and school we were travelling onto a second holiday home, again on a farm, called Curlew Cottage very near to Loch Lomond , an area we love a lot but have never really stayed in. It was so nice we may well take the campervan back there sometime, Keef has already sussed out a campsite very near to Gartocharn. The 3rd week was spent doing family stuff back home in the Sandiacre area in Nottinghamshire. The whole 3 weeks went far too quickly, but it was ALL just magical. Thanks for visiting Singapore. #biglove The total mileage in the Kia when I returned it was 786 miles. This is a Geo Map produced by Google Maps telling me where we went in those 3 weeks, it makes interesting reading. #bigbrotheriswatchingyou #smile If you would like to see all our blogs on non-motorhome family trips use this TIMELINE page, thanks for looking Return to MENU THE WHOLE FAMILY IN LANCASHIRE So we travelled up to Lancashire in both the hire car and our own car. At one point, unbeknown to Keef having put the handbrake on on a hill, a green locking button came on on the Kia which meant as I tried to move off it wouldn't and smoked like crazy, a smell we spent ages trying to remove with windows open. Very kindly Annie who was driving behind me put on her hazards. Finally got it sorted and we arrived over hill and dale at the holiday home just a Craig was going off to do the shopping in Burnley, a lovely surprise and Edie was hugely excited to meet up with Charlie when she wasn't expecting it. As you arrived in the area Hazelgrove barn was just so visible on the horizon guiding you to it. What an incredible modern property owned by Cheryl & Steve and one we booked through Hoseasons. A very nice friendly couple and a well equipped establishment with cot and stair gates and 360 degree views to die for. Perfect for a big family of 10. DIARY Day 1 Saturday 28th May 2022 - Arrival, Surprise Hallo's all around and settle in, unpack, tea, catch up and off to bed reasonably early. One thing I remember was the lovely pix of Tate hugging and kissing Ned, a pleasure (mostly) that carried on for the rest of the week. Day 2 Sunday 29th May 2022 - BBQ Sunday, tried out their brand new kit and outside decking table and chairs, the kids loved hiding in the storage box, a real hoot. Watched Forest at Wembley returning to the premiership after 23 years, a whole stack of Hellinger noise, COYRs. What a tense game which we had to watch with copious amounts of alcohol. Day 3 Monday 30th May 2022 - Day out at Thornton Hall Country Park at Thornton in Craven about 15 minutes drive away from the holiday home. We all saw and fed the animals, the girls having ice cream, bit of a playpark outside, mostly wet sadly, but both saw Dino live spectacular about T-Rex and others (fake in Charlies words) and played in the indoor kids area, Phoenix even made it up the tricky slope. We ate inside. The girls had the opportunity to dig for dinosaur eggs which they did and found treasure. A fun day out. Charlie said "its cold Grandpa" tee-hee, now how surprising is that in comparison to Singapore, G&G will be complaining of the heat at Christmas. Day 4 Tuesday 31st May 2022 - Started after mass cooked brekkie done by Doug (Yummy) of scrambled egg and avocado on toast, with Craig and Tate's usual bike ride of discovery, Tate absolutely loves it, to see the joy in his face is a wonder to behold. The girls then put on their lovely yellow dresses and did some dancing along to music provided by the ever present Alexa, ha-ha. After brekkie it was time for a walk to wear off some of the grub so Grandpa put on his walking boots and took his camera off up the gravel driveway turning left up the hill to the woodland, over slugs and sheep poo (remember those Edie) to the Trig point on the Pennine Bridleway with fab views back over the surrounding countryside. There was even picnic benches and seats up there to take those views in. Pretty soon initially Doug and family joined me then Craig and family. It was quite magical up there over the dry stone wall. In the afternoon we all drove to Burnley in the pouring rain to the Airtime play indoor shed , which all bar G&G went on. It was a nightmare to park there and in fairness had the feel of a Covid petri dish but the kids and adults loved the workout, they were so tired on return to the cottage. #exhausted Day 5 Wednesday 1st June 2022 - weather today very mixed, so a morning in and around the house, after lunch Grandpa put on his walking boots and headed off up Warley Wise lane to the Black Lane Ends Tavern, so named after the brook nearby called the Black Lane Scar. I took a few pix on route, quite windy. Had a nice pint of Tim Taylors landlord and sat outside admiring the view. It started spitting so I decided to start back but bumped into the family walking towards the pub so joining them returned for a second pint, after all it is a holiday. poor craig had mostly had to carry Edie's bike. This is the pub that C&L had eaten at on the first day before we arrived. It has a really good garden with kids play apparatus so we sat outside. There was a sausage dog some local kids had bought along that the kids were fascinated by, frankly I would not have allowed it on the apparatus but hey ho I'm an old fogie, tee-hee. Keef got the menu so we could pre order for Friday lunch , it would be busy as the 2nd day of the bank holiday for the Queen's 70th jubilee celebrations and the pub needed our orders. All were given bar Phoenix and Annie who had stayed back at the cottage. Grandpa had a major emoji failure, no idea how, but shouldn't press the phone in your pocket I would suggest #teehee Grandpa cooked a "sunday dinner" of roast pork and all the trimmings on a wednesday and Edie and Craig made the Platinum Pudding recipe for afters, and yummy it all was. Day 6 Thursday 2nd June 2022 - up early, got ready for our professional family photo shoot. Suited and booted we headed off in the 3 cars to Wycoller country park where Leanne had arranged to meet the photographer. After one false start the Kia and Merc duly arrived at the Atom panopticon car park and introduced ourselves to Steve the photographer from Preston. After some frantic phone calls C&L who had visited many of the country park's car parks (teehee) arrived and we were ready. The shoot took about 45 minutes in total, a lovely view from here, twas a little nippy but one and all enjoyed it and picking the dandelion clocks was a big hit for the grand children. See photoshoot below, click here if you prefer. Having said our goodbyes to Steve and huge thanks to Leanne for arranging we all headed off into Colne, a place many of us had already visited to do our shopping in Sainsburys. We all managed to park in the sideroad near Sainsbo's. Walked back into town and enjoyed the wonderful Queen's jubilee celebrations that were going on, music at the church, fun fair rides, face painting, balloon animals, circus demonstrations, clog dancing and the girls getting a donkey ride and all free , or mostly. Candy floss was consumed and then dumped, just far too sugary. D&P liked the look of a table in a closed antiques store, indeed they tried for a few days to get but eventually gave up. Craig & I even answered a church survey on the reasons for their dwindling congregation, feeling full of the spirit of Jubilee times. #kind On the way back Keef called in at the pub to let them know Annie & Phoenix's order and the final decision for the kids, we were now fully booked up for our meal tomorrow. In the evening Craig & Leanne kindly added Charlie and Alfie to their child caring repertoire and Doug & Phoenix kindly took us oldies out to the White Swan at Fence, near Burnley for a lovely Michelin starred meal, now how lovely was that. There are many pix of the fine food and probably worth viewing then alongside the White Swan menu. We returned quite late after driving into empty petrol forecourts in Colne, closed we had forgotten because it was a 2 day bank holiday. Petrol & Diesel prices have risen sharply. Day 7 Friday 3rd June 2022 - weather changeable, we all walked down to the pub at the end of the road, takes about 30 minutes, ready for our prebooked meal at 12 noon. G&G set off first as a little slow these days, the others soon caught us up. Our reserved table in the corner was right next to a roaring fire with no windows open, just too hot really, maybe this is where I caught Covid BA5 but who knows, anyhow it was a very nice meal and time and the sticky toffee pudding with custard for after's was too die for. The girls did colouring at the table pre food. Edie had got her socks wet in puddles on the way up but they soon dried in front of the fire. Post dinner we went out into the garden and the kids played on the swings etc. for quite a while. Ned loved the numerous cars. On the walk back we spied a lovely red admiral butterfly on the dry stone wall in the sun. A very pleasant amble back. C&L had gone ahead to get Tate to sleep so Edie came with us as had wanted to play on the swings with Charlie, I love the way they get on so well. In the afternoon we started the packing , boo hiss, this week was going far too quickly. Phoenix had pre booked horse riding at Jerusalem farm just down the road for the girls. Steve the owner had suggested it as an option on the first day we arrived, inspired by their Colne donkey riding they were both looking forward to it, it was an hour session and the lady doing it was very good at instructing them, there was one girl there who had been doing it every Friday since the age of 3, unaccompanied she looked a dead cert for a future Olympic gold in Dressage. Day 8 Saturday 4th June 2022 - sadly very wet and windy this morning, glad we had done some of the car packing yesterday evening. Got the final packing done. Said our fond farewells to Craig, Leanne, Edie & Tate and set out on what was to become a mammoth journey to Scotland, click HERE to read on Local Map Here are the slideshows and talkies videos capturing our wonderful family time in Lancashire Highlights slideshow day by day The full slideshow of some 444 images taken at Hazelgrove barn and surrounding areas The Talkies Return to MENU PHOTOSHOOT AT WYCOLLER COUNTRY PARK We got up early to go off to the country park for a family photoshoot Leanne had kindly arranged with a professional photographer, Steve from Preston. We arrived after getting minorly lost at the Pendle Atom in the Wycoller Country Park , Laneshawbridge entrance but Craig & Leanne took a little longer as unbeknown to us there were quite a few car parks in the area. Eventually they arrived and we were able to get on with the shoot which was fun controlling the little ones, ha-ha. Steve was a nice chap, the Atom was a little graffitied sadly and surprisingly the skies on some of his pix were missing / very faded, maybe that was on purpose, who knows but I have manipulated some of them with photoshop / photo studio 12. Hopefully it has made an improvement. Here is the slideshow of that Photoshoot plus a little bit on the Pendle Atom, set in just fab countryside and an area we have never visited before. The Pendle Atom. Pendle’s Panopticon, Atom, rests on the hillside above Wycoller village in Wycoller Country Park. Constructed in ferro-cement with a surface coating of metal-based paint, it is both a striking contemporary viewing point and shelter from which to enjoy Pendle’s glorious scenery, and an intriguing and beautiful object which can be viewed from afar. From inside, its circular viewing spaces frame spectacular views of the surrounding countryside, and an initially hidden, polished steel ball reflects back those views to the visitor. Wycoller is a historic settlement dating back beyond 1000BC. It has close links with the Brontes, and Charlotte is thought to have been a frequent visitor. In 1973 the village was declared a conservation area and the surrounding 350 acres of farmland were designated a Country Park. Wycoller has several unusual architectural features, including seven small bridges that cross Wycoller Beck, and an 18th-century five-aisled barn, now converted into a visitor centre. Return to MENU US AND THE SINGAPORE HELLINGERS AT LOCH LOMOND, SCOTLAND Overall the weather was good for the first 4 days then it took a turn for the worse, eventually forcing us to leave on the Saturday in howling gales and strong rainstorms, which didnt stop until we got to the English Borders on the M74 heading towards Carlisle. We stayed in Curlew Cottage on East Cambusmoon Farm owned by Deborah & Steve who were very friendly and helpful. She was from Surrey he from Yorkshire and had been there since 2006 buying the farm as a derelict concern and doing it up, wonderfully well. They had a small holding we looked out onto with a few sheep, one brown sort a rare breed. The shed next to us when wet was the sheep's refuge, what wimpy sheep #haha They also had a vegetable garden with some lovely apple trees, fruits and flowers, including some lovely pink ornamental poppies which Keef discussed with Steve. In the orchard bit of it where the hens, which Charlie & Alfie loved going to and feeding them. We kept all our food scraps for them in a container provided, with 2 holiday cottages on site they must have been the best fed hens in the neighbourhood. The flap on the hen house we would lift in the morning to see what the girls had laid, indeed on one occasion we caught on of the black hens just laying. So nice to be on a farm in a great location for the grandkids. The trampoline in the shed and slides etc. on site were well used , it was fun watching Doug and Phoenix also bouncing from my self isolation in the bedroom, I got a good view of the trampoline. Charlie was very good at it. On the wall was a quote from the Scottish Bard, Rabbie Burns and a good one it was too. Also tribute to Charles Rennie Mackintosh and surprisingly Mick Jagger. DIARY DAY 1 (and 8 for Lancashire Diary) Saturday 4th June 2022 - Having left Lancashire it took us about 2 hours to get across to the M6 in the Lake District. We stopped at Skipton at the Tesco's fuel station to fill up both cars for the long journey. By now it had finally stopped raining. We then initially stopped at a café on route to the M6 for everyone to have a comfort break but despite the sign saying open it was closed at a bank holiday. We then got caught behind a tractor for miles cross country, well Annie who was driving the merc did, Keef drove slowly in front of the tractor so as not to lose her. Finally crossed into Scotland on the M6 near Gretna Green, the motorway then turning into the M74. Charlie was suffering immeasurable pain due to ear ache and infection. We stopped then at a service station called Annandale Waters on the M74 which had a lovely lake to walk around. We all lunched, us on Cornish Pasties, the others on other beverages and food although poor Charlie was in no state to eat she cried endlessly as Phoenix tried in vain to comfort her, poor Charlie. After spending quite a while at the services we decided to visit a pharmacist in nearby town of Moffat to get medical help. The guy examined Charlie as best he could and prescribed ibuprofen and kiddie paracetamol to alleviate in part her pain. It worked for a bit. He also told us to ring 111 if it got worse and / or there was discharge from the ear. We crossed the Erskine bridge and were in familiar territory, Dumbarton, then through Alexandria onto the village of Gartocharn and turning into Dunchryne Road with its playpark on the left hand side. Initially we missed the East Cambusmoon Farm sign as only in one direction and hidden in the hedge. Also a coach was coming down the very narrow road, weird. So we both pulled into the car park by our Curlew cottage, exhausted but pleased to arrive and get unpacked and settled in a nurse Charlie. The journey was listed as 3 hours 40 mins, it took us 3 times as long for obvious reasons. Keef and Annie popped out into Alexandria to get fish and chip suppers for everyone, it had been a massive journey and we were all too tired to cook. D&P eventually managed o settle the kids especially Charlie but she did not have a good night. DAY 2 Sunday 5th June 2022 - As there had been discharge from Charlies ear overnight Keef rang NHS 111 to get help. A nice lady Kimberly eventually helped but the phone reception was so poor on the farm that any slight movement of ones head wiped out the call. Anyhow after numerous failed attempts Keef talked to a doctor, strong Glaswegian accent a nd tricky to understand BUT we got Charlie into the Vale of Leven hospital in Alexandria for an emergency appointment at 11 am. Keef , Doug and Charlie drove there and saw a very nice lady doctor wo was very gentle, caring and informative. She gave us one jar of penicillin and a prescription to get a second the next day, they only having limited supplies at the hospital. It started to work its magic as anti-biotics often do fairly quickly and soon Charlie was eating again and looking much more like her normal self, thank heavens, poor girls, ear ache is awful. We all had a bit of a look around the area and whilst Charlie slept it off , looked after by Granny the rest of us went out in the hire car to the Loch Lomond shores area in Balloch and went to what in the end was a disappointing farmers market. Nice views and sunshine however. We bought some black pudding, pies and scones. Keef cooked an evening meal using pies etc. from the farmers market and left over veg from the previous cottage we had bought with us. DAY 3 Monday 6th June - Day out in Glasgow, Charlie now fine. Up early we drove into Balloch and parked for free near the station, interestingly all car parks in this beauty spot area are free, why can't England do the same I wonder? We bought return train tickets into Glasgow Queen Street station for everyone , except Ned of course, he is too young. Granny & Grandpa couldn't get concessions without a ScotRail seniors card, and our State bus passes only work in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, NOT Scotland, weird I would venture! Nice train, the kids enjoyed the journey which stopped at most stations on the way into Glasgow. Grandpa teased / amused Charlie with lots of strange Scottish anecdotes mostly centered around the town names... Singer / Drum-somewhere/ Bowling, Auch Eye The Noo-dle. Queen Street is very convenient for George Square. We all used the loo's first (50p what a rip-off!) The Hop On Hop Off bus had changed location around George Square since we last visited due to some road works and segregating the area right next to the station so we walked down to where stop 1 now is. The nice lady gave Annie & I concessions based on our Reykjavík tickets and the rest a discounted Family ticket so win-win. We hopped on the bus all of us bar Granny upstairs in the sheltered bit at the front, just in case but in fairness it was a very dry and hot day, even if Charlie felt cold #smile We then took the bus trip around through all the sights including Billy Connolly murals, Glickman's the oldest sweet shop in Glasgow, People's Park, That pub where women were only allowed from the late 70s (dreadful!) , the fabulous Kelvingrove museum and a whole lot more taking about 1 hour 20 minutes getting off at stop 19. Annie and I have now done the bus tour 3 times, but it was so nice to share what we both feel is our fave small city in the UK (well currently in the UK but who knows going forward!). Although we passed the Clyde side Distillery we didn't stop as Doug had other plans for later in the week whiskey wise. Stop 19, we walked up to the Willow Tea Rooms where Keef had booked us all in for a special tea, not the Mad Hatter's Tea party this time but a special service and creation for the Queen's 70th Jubilee including a little cake version of the Platinum Pudding Craig had made on Wednesday 1st June. It was all so nice, Doug had the Islay whiskey version, and we had our lovely French Earl Grey Tea. We couldn't manage all the somewhat sickly ice cakes so asked for a doggie box to take them away, G&G tried later on in the evening to eat them but just too sugary so chucked them away. The willow tea rooms are Charles Rennie Mackintosh inspired, we both love his work and the art work from his wife Margaret. Maybe take a look via the links, you won't be disappointed. Interestingly we started with sausage roll, gourmet ones, seemed to have been a theme of this holiday, we will never go into Greggs again to avoid disappointment. After the tea rooms we decided to walk back to Charing Cross and saw the lovely old preserved tenement block, after that we thought we would have time to make it up to the Kelvingrove but it was hot and the children (and oldies) were getting tired so we stopped at Kelvin park's kids playground to let them have some fun. We decided after that we were running out of time so started walking back along Royal Circus (such fab buildings, always reminds me of Bath). The very kind Hop On Hop Off bus driver we had had in the morning recognised us and stopped to let us on mid stops. We then got off at the Royal Opera house area and walked up to the Hard Rock Café for tea, Charlie kindly bought Grandpa a T-shirt. Granny noted I had already got one from a previous visit tee-hee. Charlie fell to sleep in her pasta poor girl, still partly recovering we suspected. Anyhow after the meal we hailed a passing Glaswegian couple with baby and asked them the way to Queen Street station. Amusingly they pointed, we tourists were right next to it. Caught the train back to Balloch got back in our cars and arrived tired and happy back at Curlew Cottage, a fun day out, I think everyone enjoyed their City break, we so love Glasgow. DAY 4 Tuesday 7th June 2022 Not Keef's best day sadly. Family fed the chickens in the morning. The decision was to go in the afternoon to Luss (a fab place Annie and I stopped at on our earlier trip to Scotland, Blog 177) on the edge of Loch Lomond. Doug had arranged to hire some bikes for them. Keef felt unwell and retired to bed for an hour before lunch. We then drove in both cars to Luss where Doug had booked us into the Village Rest for lunch, Keef paid to park them in the long stay car park, it was a short walk to the café, all had dinner except Keef who had a coffee, I felt awful, and it was very hot today. After lunch we walked down to the water's edge by the pier, what fab views over the loch. The bike hire lady kitted them all out, they only had a couple of hours I think. Anyhow off they went for a fab ride on the loch edge pathway, i think they all had a great time. G&G walked back to the cars. Keef just slept all day whilst waiting for their return, luckily the windows were open as at this stage I didn't know I had Covid. After this we went back to the cottage, Keef went straight to bed at 5pm and slept right thru basically being asleep for 24 hours. They had tea which was the BBQ (a lot to chose from in the shed) and played games etc. DAY 5 Wednesday 8th June 2022 Keef isolating all day. Not a great day weather wise either. Doug & Phoenix went shopping at the Aldi in Alexandria and had a bit of a look around, Keef had very high fever and therefore slept a lot of the day. Annie did some crochet and reading but it was hacking it down with rain outside, Singapore's cooked a nice meal in the evening. The kids watched some TV and played games, Granny played a lot of games with Charlie. What you might call sadly a bit of a washed out day DAY 6 Thursday 9th June 2022 All up and having breakfast, Keef still isolating in the back bedroom, Annie camped in the spare room with single beds downstairs as an obvious precaution. Doug & Phoenix and Ned in a cot in the bedroom to the left up the stairs, Charlie the bedroom to the right. We had fixed up one of the 2 transported stair gates at the top of the stairs, a good safety measure for Ned, although he just loves going up and down stairs , with a little supervision. Cot wise although the cottage provided one, it was very heavy and as Ned already used to the travel one we transported we put that up for him. After breakfast Doug and family took the Mercedes over to the Renton area for Charlie's private horse riding lesson, something she loves, and this lady was a very good one on one instructor, she even had Charlie doing some show jumping admittedly over very low fences. Charlie told us all about it when she returned. After that they went on for the Whiskey tour in Old Kilpatrick, the Auchentoshan Distillery in Dalmuir area of Clydesbank. The journey in total distance from the cottage is about 30 minutes and 15 miles so reasonably close. Even though they had paid for me and explained I had Covid they couldn't get the fee for me back, not good, so they took all the free samples which when I was a little better back in Sandiacre I shared with Doug whilst watching England footy on the telly. Overall whilst the found the tour informative, Doug was not impressed with their whiskeys. Since he ordered 2 bottles via Amazon, one the whiskey of the year 2022 to take back to Singapore. Whilst they were out, Annie being negative and Keef wearing his mask, we both went out for a lovely local walk up the hill by the roads, so nice to get out into the fresh air, some lovely views, saw the ploughed fields close up and lots of wild flowers and pollinators on the road edges. It was quite steep up to the top parallel with the woods. On the way down Keef went into the woodland path entrance mentioned in the cottage blurb, owned by locals, and a woodland path walk up to the top lined with, wait for it, flower pot men, hidden in bushes , up trees, ha-ha, made of course of old flower pots the locals have a good sense of humour and it would keep kids amused for hours trying to find them. All in all a nice walk. We had cheese and bikkies outside for lunch until it drizzled and we had to rush inside, which meant reapplying the mask, itchy or what? #safe After lunch Keef took the hire car out to explore further on from where we had walked up the hill. Windows open, lots of very small farm tracks to basically nowhere along initially Dunchryne Road then past Caldarvan Station (out in the middle of nowhere) past equestrian centers towards Croftamie but turning back along the old school road and back out onto the old Military Road (A811) at Buchanan, part of the Loch Lomond National Park, lovely, with both a riding stables , RSPV bird sanctuary and interestingly a campsite for motorhomes, which if Annie and I come back we would stay at, a lovely area, so a good reckie and it got me out of the house. Doug cooked in the evening, Annie always bought my meals into the back bedroom so I could keep apart from the rest of the family #boo DAY 7 Friday 10th June 2022 After breakfast took both cars into Balloch and parked in the central free car park by the play park. Walked down to the Sweeney cruise ships office where Keef got tickets for all bar himself, masked up it was still far to risky. The family went on the lovely cruise trip on Loch Lomond and took lots of pictures, Charlie as well, G&G had bought both girls a digital camera to use on the holiday. As the trip was for an hour Keef went off and filled up with fuel, Doug had done the Merc yesterday. I also called into Aldi to get some provisions and stopped on the way back to Balloch at that lovely old Victorian façade opposite the Vale of Leven hospital, where we had taken Charlie , in Alexandria to take some pix, now derelict but what an amazing building, must have a preservation order on it. At Balloch I strolled around a took at lot of pictures, eventually filming their boat coming back in. I then strolled along passed Balloch house to meet them. We then went back to the playpark by the cars for the kids to have some fun times, dinosaur eggs, aerial runways and lots of rustic apparatus to play on #fun After that we returned to the cottage, lunch, feeding the chickens one last time, trampolining, Keef isolating in the back bedroom watching , then sadly packing, time had flown by. We got quite a lot of the boots packed, thank heavens and tomorrow morning for last minute stuff it was hacking it down with rain. DAY 8 Saturday 11th June 2022 Packed up the rest of the remaining stuff , Phoenix was kindly taking the risk of travelling back with me in the hire car, we both wore masks to lessen the risk of transmission. The kids , Doug & Annie in the Merc. Doug driving the first part. We set off in pouring rain across the Erskine Bridge in convoy, passed Bowling (tee-hee) and all the other train stops on route we had discovered on our way into Glasgow. Joining the M74 thru Glasgow outskirts and on to initially Cairn Lodge services just off M74 near Douglas, a farmers market services, we had been to before , for coffee, comfort break and breakfast snacks, I had a yummy homemade cheese and onion version of a scotch pie. Stopped for about 50 minutes then it was on in the still rain to the TeBay Farmshop and Kitchen services for lunch, not actually the one I was thinking of which was Killington Lake , but equally as good. Keef ate separately, all very nice food, quite crowded. After lunch Annie and I went for a walk around its small lake and looked in at the family eating. I pretended to Charlie that the loch ness monster was in the lake but sharp girl, she was not fooled #ohgrandpa We stayed outside and waited for them to finish and go to the farm shop where Doug bought Scottish Strawberries, and some black pudding slices to take back to Singapore. After that we headed back down the M6 , a very long journey, but much quicker than on the way up for obvious reasons #poorcharlie Doug drove as far as the services before junction 15 , the Stoke turn off where Annie took over. As P & I were so much in front by then (and had no house keys) we went on through Stoke and back to Asda in Long Eaton to get fuel and some food shopping and gifts for their friends back home, some trad English stuff. By the time we got back to Sandiacre they had arrived and unpacked. I unpacked the KIA ready to return the next day. Exhausted we had a simple tea (pizza if memory serves me right) and all off to bed, so glad we went to Scotland, despite my limiting Covid it was family fun. I was still testing positive every day. The journey back was about 350 miles. Local Map Here are the slideshows and talkies videos capturing our wonderful family time in Scotland Firstly a highlights slideshow with music and images with text, allowing 5 seconds for each image so you can fully take it in. Next the full image slideshow showing all 455 images And finally the Talkies video with us in full voice. PANORAMAS Return to MENU A WEEK BACK AND AROUND SANDIACRE, NOTTINGHAM Having done the long days travelling back in the 2 cars (ours and the hired Kia Sportage - what a Yuk car, certainly would not recommend) from Loch Lomond, was pouring in Scotland as we did our final loading up, so glad we had packed the boots mostly in the dry the night before. We arrived home to spent a further week here with Doug, Phoenix, Charlie & Ned as well as meeting up with the Swannington Hellingers. Early Sunday morning we returned the hire car back to Europcar, not surprisingly after the multi event fiasco on picking it up (3 journeys - they didn't recognise my old style UK driving license and I needed passport rather than photo id) the lady was late... should have been there at 9am didn't arrive until 10 am, Grrr The main highlights were lunch at the Priory Loughborough on Sunday (minus Keef & Phoenix) plus a very warm and sunny day out at East Leake's Manor Farm plus Strawberry picking at Wymeswold and a last supper for the Singapore Hellingers on Friday evening of pulled pork, jackets and salad followed by those lovely strawberries and ice cream , prior to Saturday's trip back down to Heathrow, which took quite a while but we all had to leave early as Keef needed to be back in Nottingham for the multi rescheduled Yes "Close to the Edge" concert with pal Neil S at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. Luckily their plane left on time, a long journey home but oh so glad we were all able to spent time together after 3 years of pandemic and create some lovely memories to share. Here are some summary slideshows of that final shared week, both images with music and the talkies. #enjoy Firstly highlights with text and Bryan Adams Secondly all the images from week 3's fun Finally for week 3 all the talkie videos merged into one, ace stuff. #talkies #noisy So that covers both the images and talkies taken during week 3 of the fab Singapore Hellinger's visit #lovelytimes Return to MENU OMICRON, BA5 - NOT NICE 😷 This wrecked my 3 weeks, who knows where I got it from but if you trace back 5 days from when I first tested positive, it was either the Queens Jubilee day at Colne (unlikely as outside), the posh 1 star Michelin meal Doug & Phoenix kindly treated us to at Fence, near Burnley , or the Black Lane Ends pub (with roaring fire in summer, no windows open) or most likely in my humble opinion, the COVID petri dish that was the kids indoor air play area in Burnley , but with all these things who knows and does it really matter, the one thing I do know is that from the Tuesday of the 2nd week when I slept for 24 hours , had a very red raw sore throat, hacking uncontrollable cough, and huge fever that then returned for a further 2 other days with huge high fever that it was COVID and I would not recommend it for even my worst enemy. It meant I self isolated for nearly all the week in Scotland in the back bedroom and have become an expert in full time mask wearing, those NHS cotton ones are so itchy but I desperately did not want any of the rest of my family to get it, luckily they didn't. Even Annie who sat with me in the car on that Tuesday at the wonderful Luss whilst they all went bike riding around Loch Lomond shores. I have included a video diary I took to record these sad events , the real cons being that after waiting 3 years because of the ghastly pandemic to see my lovely Singapore Hellinger family that was pretty limited in terms of emotional cuddles of my grand kids #boo This is my sad COVID video diary Yippee Day 19 - Finally free of this ghastly virus, would truly like not to get it again but as a silent infector that is difficult to ensure Return to MENU AUDIOBOOK Return to MENU SCOTTISH TRAVEL BLOG ROUTES Return to Menu RETRO SCOTTISH FAMILY TRAVELS utubeo videos recreated in a more modern way in 2023 Return to Menu THAT'S ALL FOLKS

Created by KeefH Web Designs, December 3rd, 2022, 17.04 PM A KeefH Web Designs Travel Blog Genealogy Info No 4, 1925 to 1930 INTRODUCTION This is a very retrospective blog, during the winter months of November and December 2022 I decided to translate most of the handwritten diaries we hold in our Family Tree data to supplement our Genealogy info featured here under the Family tab, good website design, backing up audiobooks, videos and slideshow with text. Enjoy! MENU Diary Audiobook of Indian times Audiobook, Gertie's full diary Video with audiobook overlay showing relevant and irrelevant images of life in the Army and India created via Clipchamp by KeefH Web Designs Trailer DIARY Introduction, real accounts of life in India in a posted British Army family 1925 to 1930 captured by KeefH Web Designs from a diary all handwritten by Annie’s Aunt Gertrude, just invaluable records, captured and turned into an audiobook by KeefH Web Designs in 2022 for prosperity, it would be awful to lose this history. An earlier audio book version of her full diary had been made in 2011 but the quality of text to speech voices has improved dramatically since then, hence the recreation, just so much clearer and less computerised speech on the spoken word. A full updated audiobook of her diary is also now available but it is over 9 and a half hours long, so probably not to be listened to in one go. ARRIVING IN INDIA 1925-1926, Birkenhead to Bombay We set of in March 1925. At that time, I was nine. Ralph was five. Bob was 2½, and Jean seven months. The land was covered in deep snow on the morning we left. All the neighbour's turned out to wish us well. We were all very happy. We sailed from Birkenhead on the "City of Lahore." It was a small ship with only 1st. and 2nd passenger accommodation. Officers and their wives and families travelled 1st. class and 2nd class was for Warrant Officers, wives and families. We had a small, four berthed cabin, so there was very little room and we had to get dressed and undressed one at a time. Meals were taken all together except that the children had high tea while the adults took dinner at night. I was left in charge while mother and father had their evening meal. One evening I was in great difficulties trying to change the baby's nappy when a black steward, a Goanese, looked in. He took the baby from me deftly dealt with her and restored order, and after that he always came to see if we were all right. The white stewardess’s did nothing for us. They only attended to those who had tipped them at the beginning of the voyage. Mother and father had thought that tips were given at the end. A stewardess was supposed to bring mother a glass of milk every night because she was feeding the baby, but it only arrived twice. Mother was constantly anxious in case the baby should suffer, but by drinking father’s coffee at dinner and being supplied with lemonade from the bar she got by. The stewards who cleaned the cabins were black-skinned, mostly Goanese, and they were very pleasant. The dining-room stewards were olive skinned and extremely handsome and smart, Portuguese from Goa. Every morning the baby's cot was lashed to the railings on deck. The lascars who swabbed the deck used to take a great interest in the baby and talked to her and she seemed to like their dark faces and did not mind their moving her to another· part of the deck so that they could do their scrubbing. I was always left in charge of the baby in the early morning like Miriam watching over Baby Moses. The lascar boson used to talk to me pleasantly. I liked and trusted them all. For the first few days it was very cold and we had to be well wrapped up when we were on deck. Beef tea was brought round for our mid-morning drink and it seemed very good. It was rough in the Bay of Biscay and most people were seasick but none of our family were ill. To my great disappointment we passed Gibraltar and Malta in the night and so there was nothing to be seen for several days but the sea. Deck games were started and I learned to play quoits, a big canvas swimming pool was erected and filled with sea water; there were concerts and competitions of all sorts and a fancy dress party for the children. The usual pattern for the day was to take up our positions on deck with the deckchairs which we had brought from home, keeping the same position throughout the voyage. It was a lazy life. People walked round and round the decks for exercise. One day we lost Ralph. We searched everywhere for him and were beginning to get desperate when a beaming stoker led him up from the engine room. "I wanted to see how the ship works,” said Ralph. Every evening we used to watch passengers dancing on the 1st. class deck. I loved watching the ladies’ beautiful evening dresses. This was a new end very luxurious world for me. I had never seen people dressed like that before. Mother was not so keen on 1st. class passengers because the laundry room was always full of nannies washing and ironing their mistresses’ finery when she needed to wash the baby's clothes. Officers could have a free passage for their nannies and many of the young women were not children's nurses at all. They were often friends of their so-called employers having a free trip to India where there was a very good chance of finding husbands. Marriageable girls were scarce in India. At Port Said little boats came alongside and the bumboat men tried to sell their wares to the passengers. And boys dived for pennies thrown from the ship. We went ashore. I was entranced with my first sight of "the mysterious East" but the rest of the family were not at all impressed. Mother thought it was very hot and dirty and was troubled by the crowds of beggar ch1ldren who kept following us begging for alms. Wh1le we were having cold dr1nks at an outside cafe a guli-guli man came along and did his conjuring tricks w1th chicks and cups. The main point of our expedition ashore was to buy topees. In those days it was thought that anyone who went out 1n the tropical sun bareheaded was certain to die of sunstroke. We did not l1ke wearing the heavy topees because they made us very hot. For five years it was one of mother’s many worries to ensure that the family went out suitably hatted. In India there were better topees for children, lighter in weight, shaped like hats and covered in patterned cotton. Mother always had a sunshade and refused to wear a topee. I think that she was very sensible. When we were going through the Suez Canal, I never tired of watching the Arabs with their camels along the banks. They seemed so near and sometimes they waved and called to us. The canal was to narrow for ships to pass unless one of them was right into the shore. It was exciting seeing a ship going back to England when we were manoeuvring to pass. It was very hot in the Red Sea. We saw sharks and flying fish and one day a shoal of dolphins came alongside and followed the ship for some time, enjoying the food that was thrown out to them. Aden was just as I had expected, a hot, barren rock. The ship coaled there. Three weeks after leaving Birkenhead we landed in Bombay. From the ship Bombay looked very grand with its large, white buildings. Bombay to Lahore But when we got ashore, we felt overwhelmed with crowds of people, noise, smells, and the tremendous heat. We went straight to the railway station, how we got there I do not remember and father left us in the ladies' waiting room while he went off to find out where we were to go. He had not been given his posting before we left England. The woman in charge" of the waiting room was a Eurasian. Her three daughters came in end I thought they were the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. After what seemed to us a long time father came back with a car to take us to a transit hostel for service families. There we were given a meal, had a wash, got cooled off and waited until it was time to go for our train to Lahore. I always had my atlas with me so I was able to find out where Lahore was. It had been suggested that we went to a transit camp at Deolali, a British Army transit camp in Maharashtra, India and then decided that we should go straight to Lahore. Later we discovered that we had had a very lucky escape as there had been an outbreak of cholera at Deolali and several people had died. At any time it was notoriously hot and unhealthy. Father had to bribe a railway official to get a compartment to ourselves. The porters who carried the luggage asked for a great many rupees and father meekly paid up. He never learned how to "beat them down" even when he suspected he was being cheated. It was against his principles. Meals on the train had to be ordered in advance and for five people for three days the cost was exorbitant. But nothing could be done. After that we all took our own food on journeys and a primus stove so that we could have tea end plenty of boiled water to drink. But at this stage we were novices with much to learn. The compartment was much bigger than we had expected. There were four long settee which served also as beds and two bunks which let down for the night. Adjoining the compartment was the self contained toilet compartment. There was no corridor. Our meals therefore would be brought to us at stops and the dishes collected at the next station. By this time it was getting dark so we all got ready for bed. I had one of the top bunks. It had a little window so I could look out at all the strange sights outside. To our surprise an Indian gentleman got in just as the train was due to go. He said not a word but made up his bed, put on pyjamas and went to bed. When we woke in the morning he had gone. Nobody had seen him get out a1though I thought I had been awake all night. The train seemed to have frequent stops. Every station was crowded with Indians. They settled to be camping out there. Some slept on the platform, others sat round their fires, cooking and eating their food. The noise and smells were very strange to me. I wondered whether all these peop1e lived permanently in the railway stations. But as soon as the rain started to steam out hordes of them leaped at the handles of the doors and hung on and some climbed on the roof, careless of their lives. Presumably they were having e free ride. There were 1st, 2nd and 3rd class carriages. Father's free warrant was always for 2nd class. There was no racial discrimination in travel by rail. Rich Indians travelled 1st. class but most Indians endured the rigours of the 3rd. class. Here compartments had only narrow wooden seats and the passengers were tightly crowded together. It must have been terrible for them in the heat on long journeys. Our expensive meals were far from satisfactory but we were not at all hungry. But we could not get enough to drink and were extremely thirsty. Father asked the refreshment car for more tea or soft drinks or boiled water. This was refused because it had not been ordered ahead. Even palm-greasing brought no results. Obviously we could not drink the water supplied for washing. There were taps on every station platform and Indians drinking from them. Mother wanted to get out for water but father said it would be full of typhoid and cholera germs and we must never drink unboiled water. She was also tempted to buy tea from the char wallahs on the platform but again father stopped her. Mother was feeding the baby, who was becoming very listless through lack of fluid. We did not understand at the time but, much later, mother said that she had thought that the baby would die on the journey. However the baby soon recovered after we had left the train, and all was well. There were fruit vendors at every station and it was decided that we would risk eating fruit. The oranges were loose-skinned, rather like large tangerines but less juicy and tasty. There were three kinds of bananas, little yellow ones, large greenish ones and red skinned. The two latter were rather tasteless. Then there were sweet lychee with their husky skins, cape gooseberries and, best of all juicy mangoes. There is no neat way of eating a mango. One must have a wash afterwards. I used to clean the stones and brush the hairs so that they looked like little furry animals. The journey to Lahore took three days and nights. It was a long time for children to be cooppd up and Ralph and Bob needed a lot of entertaining. I think I was the only one really to enjoy it. There was a great deal to see. When we were going through the Thar Desert and I tired of looking at nothing but sand I had books to read. The Punjab was much more densely populated and interesting. At last we reached Lahore. We travelled from the station to the Cantonment in tongae which were two-wheeled horse-drawn carriages with seats back to back. Father found out where we were to live and we went on to our bungalow. It was at one end of a block of army quarters. There were four enormous rooms, a smaller one, a big veranda and a bathroom. The bathroom contained a wash-stand, a wooden commode and a zinc bath standing in an area with a little brick wall round it and had a hole in the wall, an essential part of the plumbing. The bath was emptied by tipping it up so that the water ran through the hole into an open drain outside. We learned later to put a brick over the hole because several times we found a snake in the bathroom which had crawled through the hole. Father killed them with a stick. There was no water supply, halfway along the block of houses there was an outside tap and the water had to be carried from there. Water for baths was heated in kerosene tins in the cookhouse about a hundred yards away and carried to the bathroom by a sweeper, an untouchable. He also emptied the commode and swept the bungalow floor carrying bath water twice a day for six people was a tremendous job in itself. I think his few rupees pay was well earned. Sweepers never spoke to us and always kept their eyes down. Probably they know no English except the call of "Sweeper” so we could not communicate with them. I used to feel very sorry for them. The only modern convenience was electricity. There were big electric fans in every room. This was standard equipment in all army quarters on the plains so we never had to employ a punkah wallah. The army supplied the basic furniture, beds, tables and chairs. Soon after we arrived, a furniture wallah came to ask what furniture we wanted to hire. It was the usual practice to hire furniture by the month. So we had wardrobes, cal1ed almirahs, chests of drawers, a desk, bookshelves, small tables and basketwork armchairs all delivered that day. The chairs were designed for army living, with footrests and broad arms to hold a sahib’s chhota peg or burra peg.(2011: from british empire: chhota or chota means miniature jug for holding small alcoholic drink, i.e single scotch & soda or burra peg means double-whiskey) A man came to see if we wanted straw matting for the stone floors. He cleverly carpeted the whole bungalow, wall-to-wall, weaving the matting to fit. It looked very good and was clean and springy. It was only meant to last for a few months and was inexpensive. Each time we moved house we had new matting. We also bought dhurris, cotton carpets, and numnahs, felt rugs embroidered in bright colours. The beds had frames for mosquito nets. The nets were essential but we did not like them because they seemed to make us hotter. When we went to bed mother put down the nets and tucked them in, first making sure that there were no mosquitoes inside. During the night she always did a tour of all the beds, listening for a buzz. If there was, there had to be a thorough search until the intruder was caught and killed. On the way to the bungalow we had discovered a marvellous shop in the cantonment, owned by a Parsee family called Jamset Jee. It was as good a grocer’s shop as any in England. They also sold hardware. Adjoining the shop was a little bazaar, extremely clean because the stalls were let by the Jamset Jees, where one could, buy meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables. So we bought plenty of food, some china and cutlery and a primus stove and had an enjoyable meal in our big empty bungalow. Later on mother and father became very friendly with the Jamset Jee brothers and went to a wedding reception in their garden. Mother enjoyed it tremendously. We were told in detail of the luxurious food, Indian and English, which was offered and the elegance of its presentation. She was charmed with the good manners of the Indian guests. Long afterwards she used to repeat part of the first sermon she had heard in India. The minister had said that British army families should not judge India by camp followers. They were not likely to know Indians who were uncorrupted. They were certainly not likely to understand Indian culture. Mother always said that this was true. She regretted that there was never again an encounter such as that with the Jamset Jees. Our big oak boxes arrived some days later. When they were unpacked it was discovered that the contents of one had been stolen and it was packed with the bulky red petticoats of an Indian mill woman. Almost all of mother’s linen had gone. The box had been full of crocheted and embroidered tablecloths, sheets, pillowcases and towels, work which had taken her more than ten happy years to create. Her lovely wedding presents from her relations and lifelong friends in Blyth had also gone. Mother wept. The day after we arrived we had a cook, or khansama, a bearer, an ayah, a sweeper and a dog. Nanak, an engaging young man with a cheerful grin, turned up first and assured us that he was the best cook in Lahore and had chits to prove it. Most of his testimonials were obvious forgeries. It was common practice to pay babus in the bazaar to write them. We discovered later that Nanak had only worked, as a bobajee for privates’ families before coming to us. However, we had to have a cook. It was physically impossible for a memsahib to do her own cooking in the cookhouse for this was one of a row of cookhouses some distance from the house where Indian men servants worked over open fires, stirring their dokshis and gossiping together. Nanak would do for a while. But as time passed he was still with us. Nanak was engaged at 25 rupees a month and food.(2011: 1 rupee = 1s 4d in 1925 which is £1 13s 3d and at todays rate is £50 for a months pay) He said we must have a bearer, an ayah and a sweeper and could supply them. He went away and came back with all three. The bearer was a tall, thin, young man. His only dut1es seemed to be to wait on us at table and do a little light dusting. He thought he was going to be a gentleman's valet but father would have none of this. So when we moved up to the hills his services were dispensed with. The ayah turned out to be Nanak's aunt. She was a large fat woman who could speak no English. It soon became evident that she had never been an ayah before and knew nothing about babies, English or otherwise. Mother continued to look after the baby and the ayah's only contribution was to watch over her tenderly. So she was soon given her notice. Another ayah was engaged. This one was more efficient, but she nursed the baby constantly and never let her move about. Mother was afraid that the baby would never learn to crawl or walk. Somebody told her tales of ayahs drugging babies to keep them still and quiet, and so after a time this ayah too was dismissed, and thereafter mother looked after the children by herself. Nanak was a terrible cook. He produced his masterpieces with triumph and never knew that they were often thrown out to the kite hawks. Every day he made a cake for afternoon tea and came dashing across from the cookhouse with it steaming hot from the oven. Birthday cakes were his Speciality. These were entirely his own idea. Whenever there was a birthday in the family he would make a cake iced in brilliant red, green, blue and yellow, the bigger and brighter the better. It was horribly sickly, but a kind thought. For my birthday I was given a little gramophone. Nanak proudly presented me with some second hand records he had bought in the bazaar. The favourites were "Light Cavalry", "In a Monastery Garden" and "The Laughing policeman". They were played over and over again and nobody tired of turning the handle. In those days there were no were no record players or television or radio. We entertained ourselves and were never bored. Mother did not dare venture into the cookhouse for some time and when she did pluck up courage to do an inspection she was horrified at the lack of hygiene. So Nanak was given lessons on keeping the cookhouse clean scouring the dekahis (cooking pans) and washing the towels regularly. Sometime later we had a Valor stove sent out from England. It could be kept in the bungalow for mother to do some of the cooking and she gave lessons to the cook. We all thought that everything she made was superb. The cooks had to go every morning to collect the army rations which were bread, meat, vegetables and other basic foods. Every evening before the cook went home he came to say "Take account, memsahib." Then all his expenditure for the day was added up and more money given him for the next day’s purchases together with the orders for the meals. We used to have a cooked meal at midday and again in the evening because meat was much cheaper than in England, only a few annas(pennies) a pound. Apart from that, our food was as nearly as possible what we would have eaten in England, except for more curries and fewer salads. New dishes were stuffed “brinjals” (aubergines) and "humph" which was a cow's hump. It was good, solid, salted beef which we enjoyed very much. When buying a leg of lamb we always chose one with its foot left on because goat was often passed off as lamb or mutton. After the cook had gone and the children had been put to bed mother and father made tea with the Primus and had tea and biscuits on the verandah in the dark. It was cooler by then. After a while I was promoted to stay up for tea with them. It was a great honour! All drinking water had to be boiled ad cooled in a chatti, an earthenware pitcher standing in another pot of cold water. There were no refrigerators then. Butter and milk were similarly kept cool. The butter and milk were similarly kept cool. The butter and milk were bought twice a day from the government dairy and bread was obtained from the government bakery. Our dog Nutty had joined us on our first day in Lahore. He was given to father by a soldier who was going back to England. It was a common practice for soldiers to keep dogs as pets and guard dogs. They were allowed to sleep in the barrack rooms and food was no problem as they could be fed on beef. Nutty was a mongrel, but he was a beautiful dog, much bigger than a retriever, with a smooth, silky, nut-brown coat. He had a furrowed forehead, and so we thought there must be some bloodhound in his ancestry. The first night he was kept tied up on the veranda because he howled mournfully and incessantly, in the morning he was gone leaving a broken rope behind. A little later his previous owner bought him back, and this time Nutty agreed to stay. He gradually settled down and became as fond of us as we were of him. His favourite trick was to pull the ribbons off my plaits and run off with them, with me in hot pursuit. He chose to sleep in my bedroom. One night I was awakened by Nutty’s growling. H1s teeth were bared and the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end. This was a very different beast from the normally gentle Nutty. Then I saw a stick poking through the latch of the door, trying to lift the heavy bar which was the only means of fastening the door. I shouted for father and he ran out at once, but could see nothing. The loose waliahs(2011 wallah) (burglars) had probably reached the cover of nearby trees. These great times were full of wild life. There were tree rats, like squirrels, brilliant parakeets, minah birds, cross end kite hawks. Kite hawks swooped down on any food they could see. Cooks used to run across with the food to avoid them and the children never ate outside for fear of attack. Bob’s hand was badly gashed one day while he was holding some fruit. At night we used to hear the jackals howling, a most eerie sound. They came close in to raid the dustbins. We seldom saw them in the daytime. Animals were no trouble to us but insects certainly were.The bungalow had no ceiling and enormous spiders used to drop down on us. As far as I know, they were harmless but they were most unpleasant. Scorpions had to be given a very wide birth. One day the cook came running to mother with a scorpion hanging on to his hand. He had been wiping the cookhouse table and had not seen the scorpion until it was too late. Mother took him by the arm and rushed him to the hospital at top speed and he was dealt with immediately. He might have died if he had not had medical attention at once. There were black ants, white ants, beetles, flies, mosquitoes and other pests which had to be kept in subjection with insect sprays. When the locusts came it was an incredible sight. The sky suddenly turned black with swarms of them. Then they landed and in a few minutes there was not a trace of vegetation left, not a blade of grass. The attack was over and the ground was covered with dead locusts. After the scorpion episode Nanak brought his wife and two little boys to see us. His wife was a pretty young girl who shyly hung her head and the children were plump and jolly. Poor, incompetent Nanek was very fond of all of us. Especially Bob. "Bobbie is a teak chotah waliah”,(2011 chota wallah, another spelling, is a “little guy") he would say, carrying him about on his shoulder. The children in the family returned his affection. All the Indian servants that we had were affectionate to chl1dren. I think it must be an Indian characteristic. It was marvellous for the children but for parents there could be emotional blackmail if they were soft hearted, as ours were, and incompetent servants quickly became unsackable. Another form of blackmail was that Nanak said that he was a Christian and that Christians were persecuted in the bazaar. We felt sorry for him at first but we later gathered that he had no religion and therefore was free to eat any food, Hindu, Moslem, or ours, especially ours. We learned to accept the minor pilfering of food as a way of life. When we first arrived father had said that we must be polite to the servants, and we all were. But many people were not. They shouted and swore at their servants. I heard them as I passed their quarters. Some even kicked. I saw that too. Some of the privateers, proud of having servants for the first and only time in their lives, were the worst offenders. The cantonment where we lived was an army camp, clean and whitewashed, but unromantic. For a change we sometimes went to the city of Lahore. We travelled by tonga along the Mell, which I remember as a beautiful road with grass, shrubs and roses on either side. The gardens were well maintained by melis, Indian gardeners. We first came to the European part of the city where there were wide streets, good shops of all kinds, hotels, cafes and beautiful bungalows. We continued on to the Anarkali Bazaar, the largest bazaar we saw in India. This we all found very exciting. It was a mass of stalls and was densely populated, it was smelly and noisy and incredibly crowded, but very interesting. What we did not like were the beggars who surrounded us with calls of “Baksheesh, sahib”. Many of them were terribly diseased and mutilated. It was said that some of them, the professional beggars, injured themselves to gain more pity. At first mother and father gave some baksheesh but that was fatal because more and more of them crowded round and followed us, and, although sympathetic, theye had very little money to spare. The poverty and squalor were unbelievable to our English eyes. But there was plenty to see, stalls of all kinds, selling fruit, silks, sticky sweets, brass, carpets, clothes, everything imaginable. It was usual for the stallholder to ask for more for his goods than he expected to get. Then the customer would offer a great deal less. The seller then came down a bit and the customer up a bit, and so it went on until a satisfactory price was agreed. Mother and father could never get accustomed to this system and were never very good at haggling. Beyond the Anarkali Bazaar was the walled city. We always had to turn back when we reached the gate because the city was out of bounds British troops. It looked like a continuation of the bazaar but was even more crowded and exotic. Not very far from where we lived was the Suddah Bazaar. This was the most beautiful of all bazaars. Every stall was stacked and hung with the loveliest of materials for all purposes to suit both British and Indians of all classes. Some stalls specialised in readymade saris of rich colours and patterns in the finest of cottons and silks and gauzes, others specialised in silks alone. Striped silks were favoured at this time by English ladies and were thought to be as cool as cotton. It was a very clean bazaar and mother used to enjoy going there to buy materials. Our clothes were made by dhurzis, native tailors or dressmakers of amazing skill. They had English pattern books but no paper patterns. We looked through the books, chose the style we wanted and it was made up exactly like the pictures. Some dhurzis specialised in children’s clothes. I remember an old man with a beard dyed red who used to come round regularly with a large bundle of dresses, shirts, shorts and underclothes that he had made. These were spread out on the verandah. He sold some and took orders. He always had a tape measure round his neck and needles and pins in his turban. Then there was a very high class dressmaker who made the most exquisite dresses. When I was going off to boarding school he made me several white silk dresses w1th smocking, gauging and picot edges done by hand. Box wallahs came regularly and spread out their wares on the verandah. "You look, memsahib. If you no like, you no buy.” We bought as many Treasures as we could afford. There were brass ornaments, carved wooden Tables, trays and book rests, a carpet and rugs. Many of these were sent home to England as presents. We still have some Indian brass and three carved tables in our house. The carpet was from Baluchistan. It was full of desert and when we got it and it had to be hung on the line and beaten with sticks to get it clean. There were no vacuum cleaners then. It was immensely heavy and it took several people to carry it. It was red and blue, in a traditional pattern, and in one place the blue was slightly different, evidence, if it was needed, that it had been made by hand by skilled tribal workmen. We had our carpet for over forty years. When it was given away to a neighbour it was not worn out, just slightly shabby in the part near the doorway. The carpet wallah was different in appearance from all other box wallahs. He was very fair skinned, wore a tight fitting black coat in the style of superior merchants, but unlike any other we had seen, he wore a fez. We thought that he was a Persian. In the usual fashion, he spread his carpets on the verandah and showed them off, one by one. Mother admired them all but especially the rugs from Bokhara. The carpet from Baluchistan, however, was cheaper and seemed to be very hardwearing, and so it was bought. All his wares had been so beautiful that she wished she could have, there and then, purchased carpets and rugs to furnish her own house and to send home to all her relations, but that was out of the question. The merchant called several times and on each occasion mother said that, of course, a11 his carpets were beautiful but she had spent all she could afford. Still he spread out his wares and always she looked and admired. Then having tried her out, he came to the point; he wanted her to take his carpets to England and sell them for him; they would be partners and share the profits. Mother said that she was no business woma she knew nothing about selling; but she could steal his rugs very easily under this system. He said that he knew that he could trust her. She said that he should try the officers up the hill, who must be better customers. No, he said, he wanted no dealings with them for their children mocked him. They were "budmash".(2011: Indian word meaning a bad character : a worthless person ) Mother did not go into business, but many years later we saw in a connoisseurs' carpet shop our Baluchistan carpet in the window. We went inside and were allowed to see their eastern treasures. Like mother we coveted them all. But the prices made them coverings for the houses of near millionaires. How had they reached such prices? Who made the profit? Certainly not the makers, nor the merchant, travelling afar to buy from the vil1ages and then to sell from door to door. Other box wallahs had sad times for mother. Many memsahib’s stole their wares and the English children too were thieves and very cheeky. Ralph and Bob heard such tales with indignation. "They are stealing thieves” one of them said. Snake charmers came to the bungalows. It was said that the poison fangs of the cobras had been removed. We took no chances and kept well back. Sometimes the snake charmer had a huge python coiled round his body. In the hills there were dancing brown bears. I felt sorry for the the poor , chained animals being made to stand on their hind legs and jog about. Occasionally, we went to the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore. They were really beautiful with flowers and lawns. Elegant young men used to wander about carrying books and chanting. We thought they were students from the university, reciting poetry. Our first stay in Lahore was brief because the hot weather was coming on when wives and families a11 went to the hills. It was too hot for them to stay on the plains, although most. of the soldiers had to remain in the terrific heat. I can remember that father was sometimes with us and sometimes not, but I do not know how his time was divided. He was attached to the Royal Berkshire Regiment at this time. With the help of some non-A.E.C. instructors he educated the men and prepared them for their third, second, first, and special class certificates. Some were barely illiterate and others were preparing to take external degree. He was also in charge of the education of an Indian regiment. He used to visit them periodically but as he did not know their language, he could not teach them. That was left to a ‘havilder' (an Indian sergeant) who often used to come to see father at home to report on his progress and afterwards take tea. He spoke perfect English and was a very pleasant visitor. Father was also in charge of the school for the children of the British regiments and he sometimes taught us. Our first hill station was Dagshai in the foothills of the Himalayas. We travelled overnight by an ordinary train to Kalka, where we changed to the small-gauge railway. It wound round and round the mountain, climbing higher and higher. Often there was a sheer drop on one side but the little train hung on. The vegetation grew more and lusher as we climbed higher. It became cooler and was a great relief from the heat of Lahore. We got off the train at Darempore Station where we had to take tongas for the rest of the journey. The horses went at top speed and we hung on, thinking that we would be over the khud ( steep hillside) at any moment. But we arrive safely with all our "small luggage". The heavy stuff, boxes and trunks, was carried up from Daremore by coolies. They had. bands round their heads to support the load on their backs. They did not look very strong with their thin legs but they could carry tremendously heavy burdens. The, furniture hirer had his godown ( store ) at Darampore and the furniture was all carried up by Coolies. It was a terrible sight. We were told that sometimes they fell down a precipice to their deaths. Our house seemed more English and homely than the bungalow in Lahore. There were wooden floors instead of stone. The rooms were smaller but there were more of them. We used to have wood fires in the cool evenings. There was no electricity but we had oil lamps. Nanek, had come with us, bringing his wife and children. He had been given extra money for the journey but before we had gone far he came to us in great distress saying his family was starving. So mother handed out provisions from her food box. She had learned to take plenty of food and drink on journeys. Dagshai When we arrived at Dagshai. Nanak had to get his family housed in the bazaar and we did not see him again for a week. However, mother did the cooking, to our great satisfaction. It was possible because the cookhouse adjoined the house. It was good to see so many growing things after the dust and glare of the plains. Growing wild everywhere on the hill slopes were great deoder cedars, walnut trees and great sweeps of purple rhododendrons in massive, high clumps. Single, brilliantly coloured and sharply patterned dahlias were universal. How they survived the heavy snows of winter, even here in the foothills of the Himalayas, I have never understood, I often think of it when I am carefully lifting my own English dahlias, drying them, storing them at the right temperature, and dusting them against mould. The boys were always on the lookout for a walnut tree close to the road. The walnuts, however, were never ripe when we were in the hills and all they got for their efforts was darkly stained hands. The whole family longed to leave the roads, quiet though they were. The khud could be dangerous, as all of us knew. The undergrowth was certainly full of snakes, and every child knew about them, not only from hearing about them but from seeing them in their own bathroom or crossing a path. I had once encountered a cobra on the way to school, hissing and with its hood raised. I had immediately gone home and returned with an adult. No-one at all suggested that I was cowardly; it was the correct drill known to all of us. Another snake which was common was the krait, which was a dull blue in colour and very venomous. On the khud theee were also likely to be jackals. These would not attack a human being unless they had rabies and this was a constant fear. They might, however, very well attack a dog. Even on the road it was was always an interesting walk. We saw long-tailed monkeys, although they kept their distance, and twice we saw a leopard. So every evening the whole family walked round the mountain and it could all be seen , including the little bazaar, in an hour or so. After a while father found a wild place for us. It was a very beautiful pool surrounded by rocks, but it was a long walk and so only Ralph, Bob and I went with him. We frolicked in the pool while he stood guard with a stout stick. One evening, as we were going home, an old man on a donkey offered Ralph a ride. He lifted him on the donkey's back and at once the donkey plunged and kicked and threw Ralph off. It lashed out at his hea1d. We were greatly alarmed, but apart from a huge bump he was none the worse. In India there are three seasons, "Cold weather," "Hot Weather," and "Monsoons." It was very hot before the rains came end everybody was longing for the weather to break. Then suddenly it would start to rain, not like rain in England, but pouring down in torrents which continued for several days at a time. Steam rose from the hot earth and it was very humid. Then it became cooler and we were much more comfortable. Father said that in Lahore the whole area suddenly became green in two or three days. The heavy rainfall went on for about two months. Then there was some pleasant weather before we moved down to Lahore again. Winter in Lahore was best of all. It was just like an English summer but without rain. In the evening it turned cool and we had wood fires. They were not always necessary but seemed cheerful. There was hardly any twilight in India. It changed quite suddenly from bright sunshine to darkness. I think it was at this time that we nearly lost Jean. She had been playing on the verandeh and somebody suddenly called out. "Jean as amongst the buffaloes." There she was, a tiny figure in a white dress in the midst of herd of huge, black buffaloes. They were grazing peacefully, and she was going amongst them , patting their legs. We were all aghast. Poor Nanek threw his tea towel over his head and wailed "Chotah Jean Baba will be dead." We did not know what to do. If we went near the buffaloes they might have stampeded and trodden Jean underfoot. Father said 'Keep still and quiet." So we did and hoped. After what seemed like years, Jean decided that buffaloes were not much fun to play with and came wandering back. She must have been about eighteen months at the time. Father and mother were unusual in their now established pattern of walking, and seeing the sights, always in the company or their children. Some couples, confident that there were servants to attend to their Household were always ready for social life. This usually began in the regimental tennis club and in dances in the mess. Neither father nor mother played tennis but we all watched regularly. Father attended mess dances; he liked conversation, he considered it a social duty, and he had taken on the supervision of the bar where he took pleasure in straightening out mess funds and thereafter keeping them immaculately. There had been a suppressed scandal about his predecessor and some misappropriation of funds. Father was confident that he would be more alert than some because he was virtually a teetotaller. So these occasions for father were quite interesting and enjoyable. Mother, however though quite as convivial as father, refused to attend any evening functions. She would trust no-one to guard her brood, espec1ally at night. Then came news of a high spot in the social round. This was the annual Regimental Shoot for Ladies. Officers' wives were particularly enthusiastic. They practised regularly on the regimental rifle range which was periodically cleared for their use. Father, who was a good shot himself, persuaded mother to enter. She agreed. Although she had never in her life held a rifle or any other sort of firearm. As she went into the rifle range she was not worrying about the shooting itself; her secret anxiety was that she might look undignified when lying down to shoot. But all was well, she discovered, for the legs of each competitor were carefully shrouded in a blanket. Mother’s turn came, and father went with her to tell her how to hold the rifle, take aim and fire it, was time someone told her. She turned and saw that the worst had happened: she had scratched her smartest English shoes. At the end it was announced that mother had won the competition end that she was the best Ladles' Shot in the regiment, and she had won two silver gilt serving spoons. We were all bursting with pride. Mother could do anything, if only she put her mind, to it. Nowshera Then father was posted to the Seaforth Highlanders in Nowshera. Nowshera was on the North West Frontier near Peshawar. Consequently we had to pack up again. Nenak came to us in tears, saying that his father would not let him go so far away. It was decided, reluctantly, that it was too long a journey for Nutty, and so he was given to an unmarried sergeant who admired him. Nutty knew him and went peacefully. Ralph and Bob were quite upset at losing both Nanak and Nutty. When we said goodbye to Nanek Bob clung to his legs and cried. It was a long journey to Nowshera but not unpleasant. By now we were seasoned travellers. Father was pleased to be posted to a Scottish regiment and the Seaforth were splendid in every way. They treated us very well and made us fee1 welcome. The schoolmaster in a regiment was often thought of as an outsider. It may have helped that father himself was a scot. Mother became especially friendly with Mrs. Mar the Regimental sergeant Major's wife. Mrs.Mar had come from Scotland as the nanny to the children of the a commanding officer and had been married from his house. When she told mother about her wedding I was listening and found it most romantic. She said that the colonel and his wife had treated her as a daughter. They were still very fond of her and she of them. Mr.Mar was very young to have become a R.S.M and was reputed to have been a very good one. He was a handsome Highlander with golden hair, and their baby Spenser, was exactly like him. They were an extremely pleasant couple. Mrs.Mar was very efficient; she had excellent servants and her house was run like clockwork. She was exceptionally gentle mannered. Mother said she seemed like the wife of a minister. I was asked by Mrs.Mar to sell poppies for Remembrance Sunday and, much against my will, since I was very shy, I agreed. I was to go round the married quarters. At the end of the morning most of my poppies were gone but my collecting box was very light. Several women had given me one anna and taken poppies for the whole family, and some of them had very large families. As I was going, disconsolately home an Indian Ghurka officer stopped me and gave me ten rupees for one poppy. I was overwhelmed. It was about one tenth of fathers weekly pay. Nowshera was a hot and dusty place. It left no lasting impression on me.We found a very superior cook who wore a fez. All went well until an ice-cream machine was bought. It had to have ice put in it and the cook turned the handle until the custard turned into ice-cream. The icecream was so popular that we wore out the cook. He gave in his notice, saying he could do it no more. Then we had Nanoo. He was a delicate looking man with a sad, gentle face. He was a very good cook, perfectly clean, and most satisfactory when he was working, but periodically he disappeared for weeks on end and then returned and resumed his duties without any explanations. It was assumed that he lost himself in the bazaars for long bouts of alcohol and drugs. He had his own dog, Punjera, who stayed outside the cookhouse all day Jean, the baby, was devoted to both of them and she,of course, was Nanoo’s favourite. Punjera was the ugliest parish dog she could ever see, but he was very affable and Nanoo kept him clean and free from fleas. Nanoo’s departure was as sad as that of Nanek. Nanoo was dismissed for stealing from the school. There could be no doubt of his guilt. I heard my parents discussing, very seriously, what they should do. They liked Nanoo, they were sorry for him because there must be something very far wrong with his private life, about which we knew nothinq, and he was going downhill fast. But they concluded, a theft from us could have been overlooked, with a warning, but a theft from the school had to be reported. So he was sent away. Jean ran after him crying. It was very distressing. We had to have a chokidar or night watchman, while we were on the North West Frontier. His job was to guard the house against raiders during the night. He kept his charpoy, a wooden framed bed with webbing, on the verandah, and as soon as it was dark he lay down and snored loudly all night. To make a good show he kept a big axe under his pillow. By paying a chokidar we ensured that his friends and relations did not rob us. He was a tribesman, a Pathan, a tall, handsome man with a fair skin , hooked nose and blue eyes. His beard was dyed red. The pathans were fine looking people, very proud of themselves and fierce fighters. British soldiers had to sleep with their rifles beside them to prevent their being stolen. If a man lost his rifle he was in serious trouble. The raiders were clever thieves and we heard stories of barrack rooms being entirely looted while the men slept. There was sporadic tribal fighting on the North West Frontier but nothing serious whilst we were there. While we were in Nowshera I learnt Scottish dancing. The young private who was caretaker of the gymnasium invited all the children of the regiment for lessons. He played the bagpipes. I enjoyed it and went regularly. It was useful to me years later when I went to school in Scotland and knew the dances already. My teacher, Mrs. Macrae, went with her husband, a sergeant in the regiment, to see the Khyber Pass. They also had splendid holidays on a houseboat in Kashmir and in Simla. I was very envious when she told us about it and showed her photographs. But a family of our size had no money for holidays. I think it must have been the heat and dust that made father think of emigrating to Canada. At that time it was possible to buy land in Canada extremely cheaply. In the less favoured parts lend was given away free to settlers. Father sent for all the information and got lots of books on farming. We decided that we would go to New Brunswick and build a log cabin and be highly successful farmers. We were all very enthusiastic, all, that is except mother. She said nothing, but let us go on with all our talking. She knew father was not really serious about it. But it was good entertainment for several weeks. We got a second dog while we were in Nowshera. An Indian sergeant gave him to father as a present. He had been stolen by an Indian soldier from a camel caravan and was confiscated by the sergeant. They thought this was an exceptional dog. His name was Tiger. He was a big, grey and white dog, strong and fearless, but gentle and tame with the family. We did not know what breed he was, father thought he must be part timber wolf. He certainly looked like a wolf. All other dogs were afraid of him but he only once attacked one and that was not his fault. We were all out walking one evening when we met a young officer with his bull mastiff. As we were passing them he deliberately, with complete contempt for all us as low orders, set his dog onto Tiger. The bull mastiff sprang, but Tiger was too quick for him. In a second the face of the English dog was ripped open and pouring with blood and Tiger was sitting silent and grim amongst us. We were all horrified. Mother in particular grieved for the poor English dog, so beautiful, so well-trained, so basically tame. The young lieutenant, however, felt no shame, and tried to intimidate father, saying that he had not heard the last of this and dogs like ours would be better destroyed. We all stood our ground and father told him that he did not deserve so good a dog. Finally we went our separate ways, Tiger, as ever, walking with us, not on a lead, not at heel, unferocious, returning home with his family. "Sit! Stay! Heel!" Tiger walked with us, not behind us, and never on a lead. I did not know until much later that dogs have only one meal a day. Tiger ate when we did. The cook brought his food after he had served our meal. He enjoyed tea very much. On two occasions it was reported to us that Tiger had been seen chasing leopards in the hills. We were not surprised. One day when we were up in the hills we met an old hill woman with a yoke on her shoulders to carry two pots of wild honey which she had collected to sell. She was wearing unusual pantaloons and had very bandy legs. Those legs were irresistible to Tiger. He darted through them sending the old dame and her honey flying. Then, if dogs can laugh, he did! The old woman was ,naturally, most indignant. We picked her up, dusted her down and paid her for her honey and loss of dignity, and she went off mollified. Jean, who was just a toddler used to roll about on the floor with Tiger and ride on his back, and we were afraid that he would hurt her. The teacher at my school, however, was afraid of him. He always came to school with us and sat quietly at my feet. At playtimes he frolicked with the children and was given titbits from their lunches. The teacher asked for him to be kept at home and so he was, but ten minutes after we had started, there he was in his usual place. This went on for several days, and so she gave up and tolerated the extra pupil. Cherat The hill station for Nowshera was Cherat. It was not far away and not very high and seemed little or no improvement on Nowshera, equally hot and barren. There was a double wedding while we were in Cherat. Two young women came out from Scotland to marry Seaforth sergeants. They had been engaged before the regiment left for India. I thoroughly enjoyed the wedding and the reception which was arranged by Mrs.Mar. It was rare for soldiers to marry while they were in India. They did not get a marriage allowance and quarters until they were twenty-six, and they had to ask the Commanding Officer’s permission to marry. If the girl was Eurasian, the permission would almost certainly be refused. There was little or no chance for ordinary soldiers to meet British girls. Sometimes Eurasian girls attended the regimental dances, but before they could be invited their names had to be submitted to the Commanding Officer and they were carefully investigated to make sure they were respectable. Eurasians were usually referred to as “chee chee” or even worse as “chilli crackers”. We were delighted when we heard that the Seaforths had been posted to Lahore. We had not expected to see it again. For the rest of our time in India we were stationed in Lahore for the winter months and in Dagshai, Sabathu and Kasouli (2011: Kasauli)for the summer. The hill stations were all much the same, but Kasouli was more beautiful than the others. News had somehow reached nanek that we were coming back to Lahore and he came to meet us. He was delighted to see the children, and they to see him. He thought he was bound to be reinstated as our khensama (2011: a male servant who cooks and often is also responsible for taking care of the house and organizing other servants) but we had brought our cook with us and Nanek was working for a private’s family nearby, so it was not possible. He was disappointed, but thereafter he made periodic visits bringing sticky sweets for the chotah wallahs (children, lit. little people). We were very proud to belong to the Seaforth Highlanders. It was a great sight to see them on parade, so smart in their kilts and with the pipe band or regimental band playing. It was mostly the pipe band. The regimental band was often away on engagements. The bandsmen were paid extra for this, and so were much more prosperous than the other men. This caused some ill-feeling in the regiment. Father, however, liked them very much because he found a number who were intelligent and genuinely ambitious to improve their education in preparation for civilian life. They were already skilled musicians. Now, with father’s help and their own correspondence course, they were working for external degrees of London University, usually in Economics. Church parade was compulsory for the men. There were special racks in the pews to hold their rifles. We always went to church. Mother liked being able to attend a Presbyterian church again. The families had to sit at the front and the troops behind them. What we did not like was seeing defaulters doing ‘jerkers’. As a punishment they had to march up and down, in full uniform, with packs on their backs. This was sometimes in tropical temperatures. Father always told us to avert our eyes when passing them to save them embarrassment. Mother, of course , was shocked and indignant. "They are only lads" she would say. "Some day they will kill them." Every New Year's Day there was a big parade in Lahore. All the British and Indian troops of the district took part and the Governor General took the salute. The Indian Cavalry regiments, with their magnificent uniforms and with pennants flying from their lances, rode past on their beautifully groomed horses. Then there were the Camel Corps and the smart little Ghurkas and other picturesque Indian troops. The British soldiers were extremely smart, but plain in comparison, except, of course, for the Scottish regiments. There were military bands playing and tanks rolling along. It was a most splendid occasion. The Seaforths had celebrated Hogmanay the night before but they showed little sign of their carousels. Father said that some of them did not go to bed at all; they continued their jollifications until it was time to be smartened up from the parade. They were kept standing for hours, long before the inspection was due. For spectators it was a magnificent sight, but should a soldier faint on parade it was literally a crime. In the regiment, however, the ordeal was considered a joke because it was assumed that any who fainted had drunk too deep and too long the night before. Father could enjoy all parades because the Seaforths excused him from all strictly military duties. Splendid Christmas parties were given for the children of the regiment. Every child was given an expensive toy or book and a dress or jumper and the ladies had a silk dress length. Mrs. Mar chose the presents with great care and they were always suitable. One Christmas in Lahore stands out in my memory. Grannie wrote to say that a Blyth woman and her Indian army husband were home on leave and had offered to bring us our Christmas presents to save posting them. But they lived somewhere beyond Lahore and we were to meet their train when it stopped at Lahore station. We were later given the time of the train. Mother and I got up very early that morning – it seemed like the middle of the night to me- and went by tonge to the station. It was very dark and cold and I had a rug to keep me warm. It seemed a tremendous adventure. We arrived at the station in good time and when the train pulled in the people were looking out for us. They gave us our parcels and after they had departed mother and I went to a smart restaurant in Lahore and had breakfast. Then we went home with the presents which were bound to be lovely. The rest of the family were just getting up.We were allocated a much better bungalow that our first one. It was detached and stood in its own compound. Father made a garden and grew annual flowers and lettuces. They did very well because he dug irrigation channels which he filled with water. He worked hard on the garden and it gave him great satisfaction. There were some scrubby baobabs around the compound and there lived a mongoose. We were very pleased about this and put out food regularly for it. We would have liked it for a pet but we seldom saw it. It certainly earned its keep because we were not bothered with snakes there at all. We had had snakes in the house before this, some of them cobras. Father kept a big stick ready to deal with them. Schools were provided for the children of British soldiers. Each regiment had an army schoolmistress attached to it as well as an A.E.C (2011: Army Education Corps) Warrant Officer. The small places like Nowshera , where there was only one regiment, it would be a one teacher school with perhaps some assistance from the A.E.C men , and in larger military stations, such as Lahore, the teaching staff gathered together to make a big school. The age range was from five to fourteen. This was the normal pattern in British schools at that time. Children left school at fourteen unless they attended grammar schools. These army schools were just as good as schools in England, better in fact, because theye were so well equipped. Our family all went to them. We were constantly changing schools but it did not seem to do us any harm. Mrs. Macrae was the Seaforth teacher. She was a very strong-minded lady with aloud voice and a habit of calling children, silly little rabbits, bit I got on very well with her and liked and respected her. She was married to a Seaforth sergeant, a gentle, mild, handsome Highlander. He was very fond of children, especially our family, but they had none of their own. After we had left India we heard that at last they had had a baby and we were very glad for them. The army gave scholarships for children to go to boarding schools of their parents’ choice. When I was nearly eleven I took the examination. I had been well prepared for it. Father coached me and Mrs. Macrae gave me extra lessons in the evenings. Mother thought it was too much for me and I was being overpowered by a dominating personality. She could hear Mrs. Macrae in her house next door but she could never hear me. In fact I was having a most enjoyable time. Mrs. Macrae always gave me smart refreshments at half time which made me feel quite adult. The examination was held in Father’s school. I was the only candidate. Father was in attendance to hand out the papers and the invigilator was 2nd. Lieutenant The Viscount Tarbet. He was the education officer for the regiment, which meant he was the liaison officer between the regiment and the A.E.C. I knew him well because he often came to the house to see father. I thought he was the most charming and handsome young man I had ever known. Bonnie Prince Charlie should have been exactly like that. In honour of the occasion he wore his kilt and full dress uniform. Whenever I looked up he smiled encouragingly. It was a pleasant examination. A few weeks later a young soldier from the adjutant’s office came up to me on the veranda. He was carrying a note and smiling broadly. I said “I’ll fetch my father”. “No” he said, this is for you. I opened up my letter. It said that I had been awarded a scholarship of so many rupees a year and that I had come first in the whole of India. I could not believe it at first. The young soldier said it is true, congratulations. I’m very glad for you. That was the first of many congratulations. Shortly afterwards there was a telegram of congratulations from the Governor General. Then the Seaforth’s commanding officer and father’s A.E.C captain and Viscount Tarbet and all sorts of other people came. It was overwhelming but enjoyably so. The first thing to be done was to choose a school. Most of the boarding schools for Northern India were in Simla and so we had all Prospectuses. We were told that convent schools were the best and so, although I was not a Roman Catholic, it was decided that I should go to the Convent of Jesus and Mary. There were two schools on the same campus, the Boarding School and the St. Francis School. My scholarship would have more than covered the keep for the St. Francis school but was not enough for the Boarding school. Mother thought I should have best and decided that she could just manage to pay the difference. After I had been at Simla for a year I took the Punjab Middle school examination and won another scholarship so that my school fees were more than covered. I was glad to feel that I was almost self-supporting for the next two years. The list of school uniform and equipment required was enormous and mother, amazed, supplied everything on the list. I found later that most of the girls did not have so many of each item. But mother was determined that I should be provided with all that the school demanded. I had to have warm gym slips, blouses and dresses for cold weather, cotton gym slips and blouses for warm weather, white silk dresses for best, white silk dresses for Sundays, and colourful dresses for Saturdays. There had to be dozens of underclothes for two kinds of weather, a blazer, a warm coat, a dressing gown, black shoes, brown shoes, white shoes, slippers, tennis shoes, black cotton stockings, brown cotton stockings, white cotton stockings, white silk stockings, black woollen stockings, white cotton gloves, brown leather gloves, bath towels, hand towels, a mattress, pillows, blankets, sheets, pillowcases, white bedcover, serviettes, silver serviette ring, shoe cleaning equipment, mending equipment, hair ribbons, navy, white & mauve, English & French dictionary, mathematics instruments, sponge bag, soap dish, soap, brush and dish and an enamelled mug. We were not allowed to wear socks, and all dresses had to have long sleeves. We could not understand why it was considered immodest for little girls to show their arms. It was very uncomfortable in hot weather. Mother went to the dhurzi’s cotton mills for a great quantity of material which was made up by the ordinary dhurzi. The grand dhurzi made my silk dresses most beautifully. Then I had to have two metal trunks to contain my vast trousseau. Mother’s contribution was to print my name neatly in marking ink on yards and yards of tape. I stitched the names on - a very long job. SIMLA 1926-1930 The school year started on 1st. March and finished on 1st. December. It was too cold for the girls to remain in Simla for the three winter months. There were ten days holiday in the summer for girls whose homes were near Simla. Fortunately my family were in the Simla Hills at that time. Father took me in the train as far as Kalka, the terminus for the mountain railway. There all the girls gathered up in the charge of some teachers, and we all travelled up to Simla together. At Simla there was a fleet of rickshaws waiting and we piled in, two or three to a rickshaw. I had never ridden in a rickshaw before and it was a strange sensation to be jogging along pulled by a coolie. The coolies did not walk, they ran all the time. I was amazed to see deep snow and brilliant sunshine. It was just like Switzerland. I had not seen snow since leaving England. The school was some distance away and we passed through Simla town. Its houses, churches, shops and hotels looked extremely English to me. In the next three years I saw very little of Simla, but I thought it was a beautiful place. It was very fashionable. All the "best" people, including the Viceroy and his staff, spent the summer there. I had read Kipling’s stories of Simla and it was just as I had imagined it. The school was a very long, low building with a veranda running its whole length. There was a big compound and trees and flower beds and a khud with a path leading down to the netball and tennis courts. It looked very attractive. The dormitories had white curtains, which were never drawn, round the beds. They were tied with red, blue, yellow or green bows and the dormitories were called the Red Dormitory, the Blue Dormitory and so on. Apart from being new to a boarding school I had never known nuns before and the girls were different from any I had ever known. I felt very, very strange and suddenly wished I were at home with mother and father and my brothers and sister. I cried myself to sleep that night. In the three years I was there I never really got over my homesickness. Many of the other girls were the same. We used to make calendars and cross off the days till it was time to go home again. "Only another so many days," we would say to each other. The St. Francis School was at one end of the long building and we were near the other. Between the two were classrooms and dining rooms. At our end were the nuns' common room and the "parlours" -sitting rooms for visitors and the music rooms. Beyond them was the church, and, some distance away, a teachers' training college run by the convent and a monastery. We were not allowed to go beyond the church except on special occasions. St. Francis' School was just the same as the Boarding School, so far as I could see, except that they did not have the curtains and bows in their Dormitories and they did not use serviettes. But there was a great deal of snobbery and the girls of my school considered themselves vastly superior to the others. We had lessons together but were not supposed to fraternize in our spare time. We kept to our end and they kept to theirs. Later on my best friend was a St. Francis girl. Her name was Catherine Braganza. She was a Goanese and quite black. I found her intelligent and sensitive and I liked her better than any of the other girls. We used to sit together in the no-man’s land between the two schools. This was not stopped, but I was asked several times by nuns why I was so friendly with Catherine. "Weren't there better girls in my own school?" I said, "No. I like her." And they left it at that. When I started school I was put in a class of girls of my own age. After a short time it was evident that I was wrongly placed and so I was moved up two classes. The other girls were thirteen or fourteen and I was eleven but I seemed to fit in. All the way through I was top of the class. I wish I could say that this was due to my natural brilliance and that it was all effortless but it was not so. I tried very hard and was determined to do well. I felt I owed it to my parents who were sacrificing so much to keep me at what they thought was the best school possible and so I always did my very best. Domestic science was most peculiar. We cooked on a long charcoal stove with holes along the top and little ovens below. There was no way of regulating the heat. Whatever we made was taken away to the big kitchen and what became of it I do not know. We certainly did not have it. In laundry work we sometimes starched and ironed the nuns' collars and caps. The ironing was done with box irons filled with hot charcoal. The caps were corrugated round the front, with a soft cap for the head, and were crimped with goffering irons. Some of the girls used these to wave their hair when they were unobserved. Most of the girls had piano lessons. This was an extra and so I did not have them. The sound of scales being practised and the click of metronomes seemed to go on all the time. The nuns were of various nationalities. English, Eurasian, French, German and one was Spanish. Rumour had it that she had been a Spanish Countess. Those who were not teachers ran the domestic side of the school. The nuns, I think, taught efficiently, but they showed no warmth or affection to us at any time. I, in turn, obeyed them and worked for them; but I did not like them. All the time that I was at Simla I knew that this relationship was unnatural, and I never understood it. Two nuns were quite different from the others. They were Sister Rosie and Sister Lily. They were very pretty Indians and lay sisters. They both worked in the school hospital under the supervision of an old nun. We were expected at all times to stand when a nun passed, and if one was engrossed in a book and happened not to see her one was in trouble. Otherwise the nun always passed without a smile or any sign of recognition. When I was new in Simla I stood for Sister Rosie. She laughed and said that I need not stand for her. Thereafter I always stood for them both with pleasure and always received a warm smile in return. Every morning there was a surgery at the school hospital. There were always a great many candidates for admission. It was most enjoyable to be kept in as a patient. We were looked after by the two lay sisters. We all thought they were the loveliest people we knew, so kind and cheerful and homely. They made us feel very comfortable, tucking thick red blankets round us. My ailments were very minor and so I could enjoy my few hospital visits. Most of the morning queue, however, was returned to duty after a dose of salts or castor oil. We were given the choice! The girls were mostly Anglo-Indians. There were hardly any who had come from England as I had. Army officers and senior Indian Civil Servants usually sent their children home to England when they were of school age. The girls in Simla were the daughters of railway officials, oil men, shop keepers, and merchants. They had always lived in India and expected that they always would. Most of them were Eurasians, although this was never admitted. It was considered shameful. Most British people in India despised Eurasians, as did the Indians, and they themselves had no pride in their ancestry and pretended to be entirely British. I could never understand the British attitude. Many of the girls were strikingly beautiful with their dark hair and olive complexions. But fair hair and fair skin were considered the quintessence of beauty and I was much admired by all. In fact I was a very ordinary looking, healthy girl such as one would have seen by the thousand back home. The girls secretly tried all sorts of creams and lotions to make their skin paler. When the nuns discovered them using talcum powder on their faces they were in serious trouble. One day, when we were being inspected before going on an outing, one girl was called out of line and denounced for wearing rouge on her cheeks. In front of us all her cheeks were vigorously scrubbed with a flannel by the nun. In fact nothing came off on the flannel. She just happened to have particularly nice rosy cheeks. No apology was given. It was very cold when we arrived in Simla and remained so for several weeks. It was very cold again before we went home for the winter holiday. But there was no heating whatsoever in the school. The nuns had a fire in their common room but that was all. We used to be absolutely frozen and wore our overcoats all the time, even to lessons and meals. Some of us put warm water into little bottles which were kept in our pockets to give a few minutes warmth to our cold hands. Bath mornings were worst. My dormitory was a long way from the bathroom. We had to go down some open stairs and along a very long open verandah, dressed in a dressing gown with a coat over it and carrying our bundles of clothes. This was no joke at six o'clock in the morning and with deep snow on the ground. We had only one bath a week. This was quite enough in the Winter, we thought, but not enough in the hot weather. At home we bathed twice a day and would have liked more; only the colossal labour of preparing a bath prevented this. The bathing arrangements were peculiar. There was a huge bathroom with shelves all round on which stood our enamel basins and jugs with our names on them. On ordinary mornings we washed there. On bath days the room was filled with zinc baths. Coolies kept coming in with hot and cold water to fill them and to empty the used ones. Before we left our dormitories we had to put on long robes made of ticking. We got into the baths wearing them and washed ourselves with complete modesty and yet in public. It took great skill to get dried and dressed and to get rid of the wet gown. We were taught how to do it with decorum. The older girls bathed in private in cubicles. I envied them. I found that all the girls in my class had this privilege and so I plucked up courage and asked if I could have a cubicle. I said that I was in Standard VII and by virtue of my seniority in studies I was entitled to it The answer was ,” No. You are only eleven. Not until you are older.” I waited a month and asked again and had the same reply. When I was a week older I repeated my dignified request and this time the nun weakly gave in. I thought it was only fair because I knew that big, fat, stupid girls had cubicles. I was small, admittedly, but I had my dignity. It was a great struggle to wash my long hair and even to plait it. Mother had always done it for me. On one of my holidays I told her of my difficulties and she immediately had it cut. When I went back, to my surprise, all the nuns exclaimed that it was a terrible thing that my long hair was gone. Later I tried for a locker. Only the older girls had bedside lockers to hold their possessions. I put forward my argument that I was in a senior class. It was just as before and I won in the end. But I was told that first I must get a cover for the locker and some ornaments and photographs to stand on it. Of course mother sent something suitable by return of post. Breakfast was always thin, sweetened porridge without milk and dhal( lentils) and rice. The main meal usually consisted of curry, mostly vegetable, and rice, or dhal and rice, followed by semolina or sago or rice pudding. Tea was a cup of tea and one slice of bread with either butter or jam. Supper was cocoa and one slice of bread. We lined up and collected our food which was served out by an old bearer with a red beard and a severe manner. When everybody was served we could go with our plates for a second helping if there was any left. All eyes were on the serving table when the queue was coming to an end. One day there was a near riot. Everybody rushed forward with their plates and spoons, desperate for more. The little French nun who was in charge could do nothing but wring her hands. The old bearer made for the door carrying his dish, hotly pursued by the hungry horde. Then he turned, lifted his dish above his head and said loudly and clearly, "You are supposed to be young ladies, but you are behaving like savages. Sit down! ". We all slunk back to our places, bitterly ashamed. Nobody had ever heard the bearer speak before. One night I was so hungry that I ate a whole jar of vaseline that I had to put on my chapped hands. We used to eat nasturtium seeds and leaves that grew in the garden. Some of the girls had food parcels sent from home. I did not have them because mother naturally thought that I was being well fed and I never told her otherwise. I never complained to mother and father about anything at Simla. Some girls from Karachi became friendly with me and asked me to sit at their table. They often had parcels and they shared their good things with me. I was not a cadger but I was glad to have kind friends. These girls, about ten of them, were all sisters or cousins or close friends. Their fathers worked for the Iranian Oil Company. They all had Irish names and so, although none of them had ever been anywhere but India, their forbears must have come from Ireland. They were good girls, pious Catholics and well thought of by the nuns, but they were not at all academic. One of them was nearly twenty when she left school. She was a very nice girl but she kept coming back to try to pass her examinations and never succeeded. When eventually she did not return after a holiday I asked what she was doing. "She got married last month," said her sister. On Sunday afternoons the tuck shop was open. Our pocket money was kept for us so we did not know how much money we had or if we had any at all. Most of the girls seemed to be very well off and were able to buy sweets and chocolate every time. I was not so affluent. We had to buy our own soap and toothpaste at the shop. It was very hard if, after queuing up in eager anticipation, there was no money or only enough for toothpaste. On Saturdays we had school in the morning and were free in the afternoon after we had done our mending. The mending was in big clothes baskets and as our names were called we went to collect it. The lucky ones who had none could go free. The other's had to mend their clothes and have them inspected before they could go. Nothing was ever condemned as worn out, it had to be mended time and time again and darned properly. Drawing holes together would not do. Mother exclaimed in horror when she saw vests and stockings which were darned all over and said she should have been told that I needed new ones. Some of us had very little playtime on Saturdays. If, to make matters worse, there were no sweets on Sunday, life seemed very hard. We went to church every morning before breakfast and on Sundays in the evening too. The few Protestants had to go to church with the others because there was nobody to take charge of us. There was no pressure on us to be converted to Roman Catholicism but we were made to feel that we were different from the others. A nun once said to me, “You are a good girl in spite of being a Protestant." I am sure that there is more tolerance nowadays on both sides. I always took my Bible to church and read it solidly. There were hymns at the back which I sang silently to myself. One day I got into trouble for letting some girls read my Bible because they were allowed to read it for themselves. I read the Bible from end to end several times in the three years that I was there. On Sunday there was a sermon and I listened to that. At first there was a German priest who spoke very poor English. His sermons were always about what bad girls we were. We thought this was unfair because we were not bad girls. Then there was a young English priest, handsome and charming. He gave good sermons and talked to the girls pleasantly. We all liked him. The Bishop of Simla, came for special occasions. He was a most impressive figure, tall and stately. I had never seen a bishop of any kind before and he was just as I had imagined a bishop would be. The papal legate from the Vatican visited the school once on his tour of India. He was Italian and spoke no English. Later he became Pope Pious XII. During Lent the nuns and girls went into retreat. It seemed to me to be for a long time but it was probably only the week before Easter. They went to church, had religious instruction, read religious books and did not talk. The non-Catholics were given some school work to get on with and told not to speak to the other girls. We could speak to each other of course. The school seemed very silent. When Easter Sunday came there was great rejoicing. We wore our best clothes and had splendid meals. May was a special month. It was the month of Mary and we had to be especially good. If we did anything wrong we were given a black mark and these marks were added up at the end of the month. It was very difficult to avoid them. They were given for being a minute late, for having untidy hair, for not polishing our shoes well enough, for spilling food and many other peccadilloes. On the last day of May, there was a special service taken by the Bishop of Simla. We proceeded to church, wearing our best white dresses and each carrying a candle. There our names were called out, first the girls with no black marks, then those with one, then two, then three, then four. We went forward and kissed the bishop's ring and he put crowns of flowers on our heads, gold for no black marks, silver for one, white for two, blue for three and pink for four. Most of the girls had no crowns. I had a gold crown each time. Although I was always well behaved, it took a great deal of effort to avoid those black marks. After the ceremony in church was over, we lined up outside in order of merit. There we were joined by the monks from the monastery and the students from the college. We walked in procession to the Grotto, carrying our candles and singing hymns. The Grotto was in the grounds but some distance away from the school. It was beautiful. There was a big statue of the Virgin Mary, and in front of it were flower beds and many little paths and rockeries, with holders where we put our candles. There were roses everywhere, mainly creamy buff ones which were possibly Gloire de Dijon. Even now I can remember the scent of the roses and incense and candles. When we had sung some more hymns and the bishop had addressed us and had prayed, it was getting dark. The hundreds of candles were left softly glowing as we walked back. Once a year we had our feast day, the day of Saint Ignatius, our patron saint. After a later start than our usual six o'clock rising we went to church dressed in our best clothes, our hair curled and tied with mauve ribbons, and with bunches of artificial violets pinned to our dresses. There was a special mass and we went back to a splendid breakfast. We then changed into non-uniform dresses and went down the hill to the tennis courts where we played games for the rest of the morning. We were given refreshments of Indian sweets and lemonade. I had never tasted Indian sweets before. They were fried in ghee, boiling butter. Some were sweet and sticky and others were spicy or savoury. Most of them were delicious. For dinner we had chicken curry and trifle, as much as we could eat. Then we changed our dresses yet again, this time into party dresses. One year it was a fancy dress party. I was a Dutch girl. The party went on until bedtime. There was an orchestra from the town and we had dancing and games, non-stop. The Charleston was the popular dance of that time and all the girls did it. But the Black Bottom was banned because it was said to be vulgar. The buffet was marvellous with all sorts of luxurious food and there was claret cup. There surely could not have been any wine in it. We smuggled out some food to our friends of St. Francis' School and when it was their feast day they did the same for us. The day after the orgy we were back to normal, though some girls were rather bilious. Feast or famine. In my first year at the school there was a concert to raise money for the Church. We prepared for it for months ahead. Professional painters came to paint the scenery and a stage was put up with footlights. No expense was spared on the costumes. I was with a group singing Irish songs and dancing. I cannot remember much about the concert but it was a great success. The college students took part as well as the girls. The general public came on the first two nights and each time the hall was packed. The audiences were very enthusiastic. The third night was reserved for Indian ladies. We did not know who they were but thought they must all be princesses. Their saris and jewels were magnificent. They looked as if they had come out of the Arabian Nights. There was a great deal of chattering and giggling as they took their seats. The concert started and the talking and laughing went on and continued throughout the performance. They took no notice whatsoever. The concert went on as usual but everybody was disappointed. There was not even any applause. The Hindu Festival of light, Diwali, was in the autumn. Hindus used to light many little lamps in clay dishes and put them outside their houses. From the wall at the back of the school we could see all the little lights twinkling in the village nearby. The festivities ended with fireworks. We found it very entertaining. There was some trouble about this same wall. Down a slope was the road leading to the town. Some girls were caught talking to soldiers who were on the road. It was the scandal of the century. It was kept very hush hush but of course it leaked out to the rest of us. I could not understand why it was such a criminal offence, nor why anybody should bother to climb onto a wall just to talk to soldiers. I was used to seeing soldiers all the time. We went to the pictures twice while I was there, first to "Ben Hur" and then to "The King of Kings". The whole school went in rickshaws. These were great treats and we talked about them for weeks afterwards. Other outings were for the select few. There was a music festival for Simla schools. I was in the school choir. A party of us went to another convent school to a garden fete. I was amongst them. I was also one of the chosen few who went to the Viceroy's garden party. It seemed to me to be most unfair that I should have the few treats that there were and others had none. I thought that I was preferred partly because I was always well behaved but also because they liked to show off my fair hair and complexion. The garden party was for representatives of all the boarding schools in Simla. We were dressed in our very best, complete with violets and mauve ribbons. The inspection before we set out was even more stringent than usual. Not a hair was out or place. We had to ride two to a rickshaw instead of the usual three so as not to get our dresses crushed. Vice Regal Lodge was palatial, with beautiful grounds and flower beds. There were marquees on the lawn with little tables set for tea. We were entertained by charming, young aides-de-camp who showed us round and then plied us with exquisite refreshments. None of us needed much persuasion to eat! Then there was a film show followed by ice-cream and lemonade. We were disappointed not to see the Viceroy or his wife, but we had been entertained right royally. One morning I was summoned to the parlour. There were the Reverend Mother and, to my amazement, my old teacher, Mrs.Macrae. She was having a short holiday in Simla. I was delighted to see her but felt somewhat inhibited by the presence of the Reverend Mother. Mrs.Macrae asked if she could take me out for the day. 'No, "was the reply, "because her parents have not told me that you were coming. She cannot go without their permission." I was not at all perturbed. I knew Mrs.Macrae would not take "No" for an answer. She would get her own way even if it meant standing up to a Reverend Mother. And she did. I was sent off to get changed and I did it in double quick time. When I got back Mrs.Macrae was alone. She said that she would like to have a quick look at the school. Lessons had started and so we kept well away from classrooms and I took her to see the dormitories, the bathrooms, and the dining room. The next day I was reprimanded for taking her round without permission. It had not occurred to either of us. "And did you even show her the bathrooms and lavatories?" It seemed that this was the worst thing that I had done during my entire stay in the school. I had a splendid day out. We saw the whole of Simla. I had only seen it in passing a few times before. It seemed a most elegant place. We looked at the shops and Mrs.Macrae took me into a bookshop which was just like a shop in England. She said that I was to have some books. I had a good look round and chose one. "You must have some more” she said, and so I came out with four lovely books. We had meals at the hotel where she was staying. It seemed to me the most luxurious place I had ever seen. Of course she plied me with food. I remember that there was a plate of strawberry tarts with cream which seemed to disappear very quickly and she asked for another plateful. But best of all was the talk of home. She spoke of mother and father, and of how the boys were getting on, and of Jean's latest sayings, and of children whom I knew. She even talked about Tiger whom she did not really like. I wished I could have gone back with her. No time limit had been set and so she said that I might as well have as long a day as possible, and not go back until bedtime. When we got back I was carrying my four books, a big box of chocolates, and two large boxes of cakes. Mrs.Macrae embraced me warmly and said ”Keep your pecker up. You are doing all right. I will go to see the family as soon as I get back.” After she had gone I had a nice warm feeling inside me which was not just a full stomach. A nun who was standing by said “Was that your mother or your aunt?" "No, she used to be my teacher”. “But she has given you all these things, and she kissed you," she said in surprised tones. "Yes," I said, "She likes me." That night I could be Lady Bountiful with my cakes and chocolates. In the summer we had ten days holiday. I was lucky that Dagshai, Sabathu, and then Kasauli were near enough for me to go home. It was lovely to be home and the holiday seemed much too short. But we had three months holiday in the winter. That was the best time of all. The checking and packing of clothes had to be started several weeks ahead. It was a great thrill to be summoned to the linen room to pack. Excitement mounted as the day of our release grew nearer. Most of us hardly slept at all the night before. When we looked out in the early morning darkness there were the lights of hundreds of rickshaws waiting for us. After church and breakfast we were given sandwiches and our own money for the journey. Then we were off. A few nuns came to the station to see us safely on the train. Probably they were glad to see us go. We were all together on the first lap of the journey on the mountain railway down to Kalka. It was traditional to sing all the way in the little train. We used to sing to the tune of “Riding down to Bangor" Riding down to Kalka, On the homebound train, No more awful lessons, Isn't it a shame. No more watery porridge, No more rice and Dhal, After this long journey, We'll be home again. There were numerous verses which I do not remember. The nuns would have been horrified if they had heard us. At Kalka we went our several ways. Some of the girls had very long journeys to Southern India. My journey to Lahore took only part of a day and one night. There were quite a number of girls who lived in Lahore and one teacher, and so my travelling was no trouble. At Lahore Station I was handed over to mother and father and three months of happiness started. When I went back on 1st. March the homesickness began all over again. Home to Kasauli then England We had had five years in India and were due to go back home in the spring of 1930. So 1929 was to be my last year at Simla. Soon after my fourteenth birthday in November I was sent for one day and the Reverend Mother said that I had to go home to Kasauli at once. She said that my mother was in hospital and I was needed to look after my brothers and sister. I was most alarmed and asked what was wrong with mother. All she would say was that I would be told when I got home. I was to go and pack and then go for a meal, and a rickshaw would be waiting to take me to the station. I got ready in a daze. There was no time to say goodbye to my friends. The more time elapsed the deeper grew my panic. Before I got home I was really afraid. I was accustomed to mother having babies. That was something pleasant. I was sure that the mystery meant she was desperately ill of some illness that the nuns could not mention. The truth of it was that mother was having a baby, but this time as she was over forty they wanted her to have a longer time in hospital. I was to help at home until the baby was born and as soon as mother was fit to travel, we were all going back to England again. Nearly everybody had left Kasauli by now and gone down to the plains. Father had been granted leave to stay on until the baby was born. It was strange living in such a deserted place. There were not even many stalls left in the bazaar. The only people living near us were the barrack warden and his wife who stayed in Kasauli permanently. She had not known mother before, but kindly visited her every day in hospital. We all went to the hospital every afternoon. There was no school for Ralph, Bob and Jean, of course. I would get them all washed and in clean clothes to face mother's inspection and before I had finished off the third one the other two would be outside and dirty again. I found it was best to get Jean done first, as she was less insubordinate than the boys and more likely to stay put, and then the other two simultaneously so that they could not escape. Another of my duties was to give the cook his orders and "take account, miss-sahib”. I found this very difficult. I was not good at planning menus and often had to appeal to the cook for suggestions. There was a great deal of washing and ironing, not only for the tribe at home, but for mother and later for the baby. Washing was no trouble but ironing with flat irons heated on a primus stove took me hours and hours of toil as everything had to be perfect. The domestic science I had learned at school did not seem to be of much use to me. I asked father if he could iron and he just said, "Why bother. Just give them a bit of a smooth down." I cannot imagine what he was doing while I was struggling with my chores. Perhaps he was packing. One day a letter came from the Reverend Mother in Simla. She asked if I could be left to finish any schooling there and then go on to their teachers' training college. I could stay with them throughout the time at no charge and they would take good care of me. Father wrote straight back declining the kind offer. There was no need for consultation. The idea of abandoning me was unthinkable. Besides, their qualifications would not count in England and I would have been there for ever. I knew that there could be no question of my being left behind but at the same time the letter was a shock. Before we left India the Reverend Mother wrote again to wish us a safe journey and gave a most glowing account of my work and character. I felt rather confused. It seemed that I had not understood the nuns at all. Anne was born on 23rd. November 1929. She was a beautiful baby weighing 8½ lbs. We all thought she was lovely. Mother was the only patient in the hospital. The staff consisted of two army sisters and an ayah. They were glad to have a patient and enjoyed the baby. There were always a great many monkeys in the hill stations and they became very bold when there were so few people about. Mother said they scampered about on the roof and came on the veranda. She was afraid that they would harm the baby when the door was left open and she was confined to bed. Their chattering was very disturbing. Soon after the baby was born father was recalled to duty in Lahore. The Seaforth’s had been very generous in granting him so much leave. Mother and Anne had to be left until mother was fit to travel. Father and I unpacked only the essentials as it was going to be for such a short time. We went to Lahore and bought a cot and a bath for the baby, and some thick tweed for a coat for me. The cot folded up and it had a white muslin valance and canopy. It was very pretty. The bath had a lid so that it could contain the baby's clothes for travelling. Mother was pleased and surprised at our purchases. It was unusual to find warm material in India. My coat was warm enough for Scottish winters and I wore it for several years. When it was time for mother to come home father tried to get a few more days leave to go to Kasauli to collect her, but it could not be granted as he had already had so much. So she was escorted on the journey by a young Royal Army Medical Corps orderly. Mother said that he was most kind and helpful. He held the baby throughout the journey. She was amused that a young unmarried man should be so experienced with a new baby. Father went with a car to meet them at the station. I got the family spruced up for her arrival. They insisted on going to the end of the road to watch for the car. When it came along they ran behind it and got covered in clouds of dust, so that when mother saw them they were filthy. I do not think she was convinced that they had been perfectly clean and tidy a few minutes before. There was not much time to get ready for embarkation. We were to sail in January. Mother could have delayed going as the baby was so young but she wanted to get home. Before the baby was born mother had been informed about this embarkation. "Tell them I will be on the ship," she said. The nurses pulled comical faces behind her back, but she met her deadline. The serious preparation for this trip was to get us all kitted up for the rigours of a Scottish winter. Fortunately Kasauli, by now, was quite cold and so the change was not as abrupt as might have been. The Seaforths sometimes legitimately sold surplus kilts and mother bought one. There were many yards of material in it, enough to make skirts for the girls and trousers for the boys. When families were going home, the army gave them so many yards of cream flannel for each child. As there were five of us there was a vast amount. The clever dhurzi made vests and pants for the boys, combinations for Jean and me, his own invention, and pyjamas for all. It was very comical because it was not thought seemly for the dhurzi to see us in a state of undress and so mother measured us and tried the garments on all the children in the bedroom, stepping out onto the verandah to report her findings to the old dhurzi. I can remember one day, when he came for a fitting, mother was holding the baby who was crying. Without a word he took the baby from mother. She stopped crying immediately and mother was free to take us into the house for the trying on of the underclothes. One of mother’s friends knitted all the baby’s clothes. She was kept in jumpers and pants instead of the usual fancy dresses and petticoats for ease in travelling. We were all very sad that Tiger had to be left behind. He was given to a soldier, but not until the night before we left because we thought that he might come home again. Just as the train was pulling out of Lahore station, Tiger dashed onto the platform. He ran alongside the train at tremendous speed, dragging a great chain behind him, while the cook, who had come to see us off, ran in pursuit, trying, in vain, to catch him. We hung out of the windows, afraid that he would be run over by another train. He ran until he was exhausted and dropped out of sight. It was harrowing for all of us. How our clever Tiger knew that we were at the station and on that particular train is a mystery. But we all knew that there would never be another dog like Tiger. We were to sail from Karachi on the troopship “Devonshire." It was a long train journey from Lahore, two days and nights, but it took three days and nights to Bombay, and so it could have been worse. We were now such seasoned travellers that the journey was easy and quite pleasant, The picnic basket with all its contents and the Primus stove were given to coolies on the quay as we embarked. The “Devonshire” was a much bigger ship than the one on which we had set out for India. There was third class as well as first and second. Sergeants and other ranks travelled third. Father thought that it was unfair that sergeants travelled in inferior accommodation from ours, and he was particularly embarrassed since he knew a number of sergeants socially, having belonged to the same mess. I do not think that third class accommodation was bad but it was crowded. The men had P. E. sessions to break the day and father and other A. E. C. men offered light weight courses as entertainment. But for the most part, from their deck came the interminable chant of housey-housey and crown and anchor. We had to get to our deck through theirs. Men always spoke to father. If I went alone they spoke to me, kindly and pleasantly. I did not know what to say. Once I dropped mother's button box and buttons rolled all over the deck. Immediately men were scrambling to pick them up. I was so embarrassed that I wished I could have vanished into thin air. There were social graces that I had not learned at Simla and I knew it. However, it was a perfectly comfortable voyage and we all enjoyed it. Mother, Jean, Anne and I had a cabin to ourselves and father and the boys shared a cabin with one man. Everything was most smoothly organised for our comfort and entertainment. The children had their meals separately from the adults and were supervised only by the stewards. I was fourteen and so ,to my delight, I was classed as grown up. I used to put on a party dress for dinner. The boys ate tremendously. With no parents to check them, instead of choosing from the menu, they went right through it regularly. The stewards must have been very indulgent to them. Nobody was seasick or bilious. When we left Port Said we all threw our topees into the sea. We were told that this was always done as a final farewell to India. It was a strange sight to see them all bobbing about in the water. We were always demanding to be measured on birthdays and other important occasions to see who had grown most. I am certain that there would be no pencil marks on cabin walls from our parents. But I can record that we landed at Southampton in February 1930 when I was fourteen, Ralph ten, Bob seven and a half, Jean five and a half years and Anne two months. It was bitterly cold, but the sun shone brilliantly. It was good to be home. THE END Return to MENU AUDIOBOOK of INDIA Return to MENU AUNT GERTIES FULL DIARY Return to MENU VIDEO Return to MENU That's all Folks

By keef & annie, Mar 11 2012 01:39PM Are you planning on taking your motorhome to Ireland? A KeefH Web Designs Travel Blog We came across this wonderful site which should help you. Total Camping Ireland lists information on every Campsite, Campervan, Tent, Caravan Park, Touring Park in Ireland for your Holiday. So like us go and have a look. We cannot wait to return to the lovely Emerald Isles. We definitely high recommend this site if you are off to Eire We consulted it before our major trip to Eire in 2018, Blog 129 as well as the ACSI sites and Motorhome and Caravan club sites. Both clubs have handbooks if you are not keen to use their websites or phone apps The INDEX page has TAGs for all Blogs and by year or month, A-Z INDEX alphabetically or just using the LETTERs in the Tag maps, or you can use the SEARCH page to look for something or just use the search facilities here on the BLOG or the associated Blogs attached to each Blog, entirely up to you, there is a wealth of ways to find what you want, thanks for looking motorhome-travel blog, LIKE to join our Facebook community or have a look at all our great "motorhomes" on our pin board, why not, join the conversation “motorhomes R us” 😉 🌠 ✅ 🤔 Here are some Travel Route videos to accompany this blog plus show the route we took using info provided by this site in 2018. We aim to return in 2023 to complete the Wild Atlantic Way as well as visit the Giant's causeway in Northern Ireland.

By keef and annie hellinger, Aug 6 2016 07:44AM See below... South America and China are the real ones left for us, oh and Greenland and Antarctica, will be fun to see how to get the Motorhome there ;) Update 2021, now been to China , see Blog 133 Updated 2023, now been to Thailand, See Blog 192 Original / Previous map 2016 It's a process code if you click on the top box you will be able to enter your own places visited hopefully #tick As at 2016 As at 2017 since all these travel maps are now out of date I will have to create a more up to date one in a later blog, note to self action for 2022 when I have a spare moment not dealing with 10 website needing to be "redone" on WIX as Moonfruit dies, Grrrr See our Round the World Ticket flights / Travel Blog routes plus click on the link to see ALL TRAVEL BLOG routes HERE, Thanks That's all Folks!!!

By keef and annie hellinger, Aug 1 2016 07:42AM I have taken time to revisit our old holiday website and hopefully improved the videos and photo slideshows as well as make the website much more "mobile" friendly. It now doesn't look too bad on your phone. We loved this holiday and it is reawakening the travel bug in us. To go directly to our 2007-8 holiday site please click HERE thanks Please enjoy and let us know what you think PS Music on the website slideshows is by the fabulous Fijian band Rosiloa (or Black Rose), just click on the speaker symbol to listen See the travel blog route and flight path we used That's it for our gap year

By keef and annie hellinger, Jul 15 2016 02:36PM We have now been to North Island three times and South Island twice on our 2007/8, 2013 and 2017 trips. We camped under canvas in 2007/8 for 55 days plus used motels / car but are probably a little too old now for tenting so in 2013 & 2017 used a Britz hired motorhome. If you would like to see more click below 2007/8 2013 2017 #majortrip #revisited #friends #motorhome #motorhometravels #travelsin2016 #campsites #family Have a look at the Travel Blog route / flight path you tube video created by KeefH Web Designs, why don't you? That's it for reviewing our Gap Year

By keef and annie hellinger, Mar 11 2016 11:42AM We have now been in essence from Carnavon on the west coast above the desert right the way across the Nullarbor and up the east coast as far as Cooktown, plus thru the red centre from Darwin to Adelaide and diversions to Broome and Kunnanarra. Loved every moment of it and most of it in a Motorhome! The first occasion we only had the motorhome in Queensland, the second was our gap year where we had a motorhome on both the west and east coasts, the 3rd after Doug & Phoenix's Wedding and the 4th with our dear pals Chris & Allyson. Why not take a look at our various expeditions, writeup, pictures and videos to maybe wet your appetite! 1995 2007/8 Take a look at our travel blog route / flight path in this You Tube Video 2013 2017 All questions answered! Big regards Keef & Annie Our motorhome website want to travel across and around Australia in a motorhome? we have quite a few times, maybe the links here to our major holiday websites would help you, we have hired britz, maui, apollo vans , note they are all now owned by THL (transport holdings limited) in both Australia and New Zealand. Don't get caught out by the additional road tax in New Zealand they don't tell you about it up front so maybe google it before you book or go, just a thought Whilst we are on NZ

By keef & annie, Aug 25 2013 10:48AM Join the new motorhome-travels blog and get you views and comments across. In the meantime...... I was afforded the opportunity to redo the old website. It has now been redesigned to run on tablets, smart phones and old trad browsers with hopefully easier to view slideshows of photos from our lovely trip to Oz, NZ , California, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga & Hong Kong in 2007/8 where we hired a motorhome in 2008 and travelled most of the way up the east coast. Please please let us know what you think, I am very happy with the new design but only you letting us know what you really think will see if we have achieved what we set out to do. Leave us your views via the comments box below and we will get back to you. The updated blog 162 is HERE! The updated HOLIDAY 2007-8 site is HERE UPDATE Nov 2021 the holiday2007-8 website is also being migrated as Moonfruit shuts down and transfers to WIX, not sure what state it will be in, fingers crossed not as much work as this blog Update Dec 21, now merged into the motorhome-travels blog as Blog 162 #tick #done UPDATE Jan 2023 Take a look at the travel blog route / flight map now available for our Gap Year trip That's all Folks!

By guest, Feb 22 2012 06:45PM A KeefH Web Designs Travel Blog Greetings from Keef & Annie. We plan to use this blog to document our travels in our Motorhome documenting via photo and video what we have seen but also sharing hints and tips along the way. We have already spent a lot of time in motorhomes travelling The Pacific Islands, NZ & Australia for almost a year in 2007/8 and from one side of Canada to the other in 2010. All of these trips were in "hire" motorhomes, but now we have embarked on getting one of our own. The world, well most of it, is our oyster. Stay with us, register using Facebook or your own login and come on our fascinating journey. Note no need to do this now, ANYONE can read our blog, it is entirely open YOU ARE MOST WELCOME MENU Intro Travel Blog Route videos, an introduction History of our travel Blog How to use the blog That's all Folks This blog features an image from our very first big trip away down to Dorset and Devon and is covered in full by BLOG 37 but our very first short weekend break just to try it out after we bought it was to Clumber park in Nottingham, so not very far away, that is covered retrospectively by BLOG 60. Here are some travel route videos using a clever phone app to illustrate those journies, please enjoy, thanks for looking. Return to MENU HISTORY Old Summary Pre November 2021 What you might call the "small print" details, ignore if no interest and why would you have? #deeplytechie #sorry #not 😉 Blogs 1-67 are under motorhome-travels.net, I don't have the energy to migrate , sorry Blogs 68-145 are in old HTML5 format using Moonfruit' s proprietary Blog functionality Blogs 146-158 were written in Moonfruit' s responsive code Technically a mish-mash of formats Yell who own both Moonfruit & WIX decided to close Moonfruit migrating (although very inefficiently) all websites to WIX This afforded me the opportunity / requirement to redo all my past motorhome blogs in the same format using WIX, it should be noted that the functionality on this web site development tool is much more modern, intuitive and faster #tick #greatnews #joined Historically from 18/8/2016 website development was converted to HTML5 so will run without the need for Flash on all devices. Blogs 1-67 were initially flash but then converted Historically from 16/12/2020 website development was upgraded to the more modern responsive coding but HTML blog functionality remained the same and so did blogs 68-145 , at this point blogs 146-158 were written in that new code Historically from Blog 159 15/11/2021 all blogs were written in WIX's responsive code and all blogs converted / rewritten in that Associated Blog 160 marks the relaunch Return to MENU ADVICE FOR USE OF BLOG #motorhometravelsblog #motorhome #rv #campervans #hintsandtips #usefulblogs #travel Advice for use of site The INDEX page has TAGs for all Blogs and by year or month, A-Z INDEX alphabetically or just using the LETTERs in the Tag maps, or you can use the SEARCH page to look for something or just use the search facilities here on the BLOG or the associated Blogs attached to each Blog, entirely up to you, there is a wealth of ways to find what you want, thanks for looking motorhome-travel blog, LIKE to join our Facebook community or have a look at all our great "motorhomes" on our pin board, why not, join the conversation “motorhomes R us” 😉 🌠 ✅ 🤔 #timeline Return to MENU THE END

By keef and annie, Nov 16 2021012 06:45PM This is what we said back in 2012, we say it again in 2021 Greetings from Keef & Annie. We plan to use this blog to document our travels in our Motorhome documenting via photo and video what we have seen but also sharing hints and tips along the way. We have already spent a lot of time in motorhomes travelling The Pacific Islands, NZ & Australia for almost a year in 2007/8 and from one side of Canada to the other in 2010. All of these trips were in "hire" motorhomes, but now we have embarked on getting one of our own. The world, well most of it, is our oyster. Stay with us, register using Facebook or your own login and come on our fascinating journey. We have relaunched 16th November 2021 See Blog 1 for further details Old Summary Pre November 2021 What you might call the "small print" details, ignore if no interest and why would you have? #deeplytechie #sorry #not 😉 Blogs 1-67 are under motorhome-travels.net, I don't have the energy to migrate , sorry Blogs 68-145 are in old HTML5 format using Moonfruit' s proprietary Blog functionality Blogs 146-158 were written in Moonfruit' s responsive code Technically a mish-mash of formats Yell who own both Moonfruit & WIX decided to close Moonfruit migrating (although very inefficiently) all websites to WIX This afforded me the opportunity / requirement to redo all my past motorhome blogs in the same format using WIX, it should be noted that the functionality on this web site development tool is much more modern, intuitive and faster #tick #greatnews #joined Historically from 18/8/2016 website development was converted to HTML5 so will run without the need for Flash on all devices. Blogs 1-67 were initially flash but then converted Historically from 16/12/2020 website development was upgraded to the more modern responsive coding but HTML blog functionality remained the same and so did blogs 68-145 , at this point blogs 146-158 were written in that new code Historically from Blog 159 15/11/2021 all blogs were written in WIX's responsive code and all blogs converted / rewritten in that Associated Blog 160 marks the relaunch #motorhometravelsblog #motorhome #rv #campervans #hintsandtips #usefulblogs #travel Advice for use of site The INDEX page has TAGs for all Blogs and by year or month, A-Z INDEX alphabetically or just using the LETTERs in the Tag maps, or you can use the SEARCH page to look for something or just use the search facilities here on the BLOG or the associated Blogs attached to each Blog, entirely up to you, there is a wealth of ways to find what you want, thanks for looking motorhome-travel blog, LIKE to join our Facebook community or have a look at all our great "motorhomes" on our pin board, why not, join the conversation “motorhomes R us” 😉 🌠 ✅ 🤔

by keef & annie hellinger 1 May 2022, 10.16 a.m. NOT A MOTORHOME TRAVEL BLOG BUT DEFINITELY BLOG RELATED *** PROUD **** To 25th June 2022 we have had an average of 19 visits per day to the site, pretty good in anyone's book #illtakeit Most of my friends and family know of my obsession with numbers and statistics, a defect I accept , but a product of my mathematical background and a lifetime as an "IT Guy" and Annie will tell you a full gadget freak, if its new technology I am there. #3fingersalute #ctlCctlV #imsorryHALicantdothat MENU Visitor Counter Table for website over time June 2022 Stats with Comparison on Visitors June 2022 Visitors by Town since start of the year June 2022 Visitors by Town for that month April 2022 Stats Counter for ALL my websites You Tube Channel Tags and Comments Witness after our time up with pals on Mull (see BLOG 177) where we were 1st introduced to FiFi the robot cleaner, that we now have one Alexa driven, tee-hee "Alexa Start Fi-Fi" Clearly we have Blink cameras focused on our motorhome as protection, in this day and age when you are proud and protective of your vehicle you can't be too careful #recommended Motorhomes are now much in demand, an adjunct of the Covid pandemic possibly and peoples desires to 1) save cost on their holidays 2) use stay-cations. Part 2 hopefully will not last too long, we would love to get back to Europe for some long trips again in our lovely Wendy House. We also have a TruckNav for the motorhome which enables us the enter its full dimensions height, width and length which means in planning our route it will avoid narrow roads and low bridges, a real plus I've always believed since my early discussions / disagreements with a boss at work who said early 80s that the "information supe highway" (now known as the internet would not happen, time for a name drop, it must be in my DNA being at skool wiv Sir Tim Berners-Lee #fact So I discovered a whole stack of clever ways of getting statistics and reports via WIX, my website creation tool to analyse my blogs and for your delight and delectation I have decided to publish them here, my guess is I will feature a month here every now and then, potentially yearly just to see how the Blogs are being received but who knows, depends on my level of Nerdyness at the time. I know for you techies a lot of this stuff is available by Google Analytics but this is in so much better presentation material, I'm impressed and that don't happen often #fact VISITOR COUNTER TABLE The above table gathered over the years from our embedded counter shows the growth in daily visitors to the site over time, evolving from infancy to where it is now. It has undergone 4 different technologies to create and maintain it #functionalityretired and various rewrites along the way. I confess to struggling to understand the 2 huge hikes in number of visitors per day apart from at the first I probably introduced and / or plugged so much more through social media and was rewriting using WIX although my own visits are allegedly excluded from this equation. Did that obliquely attract more visitors, not sure #yourspuzzled Anyhow it is my intension from now, maybe yearly to update this table. Graphically the above table translates as such, the 3 graphs are date 25th June 2022 This actually using summed totals means since inception we have had a average of 19 visits per day to the site #proud By JULY 2022 we had also had over 250+ NEW visitors to the Blog from around the world. Here is a snapshot of that but you can see up to date details on our site under the dropdown , just search for VISITORS, thanks for looking. As at March 2023 we now have a fully paid up Visitors map on 3 of my 11 web sites crafted by KeefH Web Designs, all the rest only have the free version of the Visitors map so top out at 100 last visitors but I'm not currently prepared to pay for those. RETURN TO MENU JUNE 2022 STATS I have just taken a look at the comparison of new visitors between April and June 2022. The visitor traffic map (which has been a real issue and 7 days wrestling with WIX & Names both of whom said it was NOT their responsibility - it is I pay you both, Grrr x when the map was classed by MS Edge as "unsafe content" / dangerous.... the final solution was WIX had messed up the pointer to a domain for this embedded app so now all sorted - see the commentary at the end of Blog 182 if you are interested) Anyhow .....rant over ....to the Stats comparison It should be noted that the "traffic" recognition on this map is only for entirely NEW visitors from that location , returning visitors do not count. Comparison: So, in 60 days between the 2 dates, we have had 67 NEW visitors that's just above an average of 1 per day, not bad in this lovely motorhome world #tick I've also included the overall site visitor counter from the Trailer NOTE on the visitor maps the stats if you don't pay ONLY record the last 100 unique visitors, Google Analytics or Microsoft Clarity are a much better place to look for real statistics. If you do pay and the only one, I currently do that for is motorhome-travels blog .NET you get the last 500 unique visitors. By September 22 this site had 340 unique visitors. This is 114 more than when we last checked in June, so between the 2 dates, which is 95 days. So slightly more than 1 new unique visitor per day, social media is certainly helping #proved RETURN TO MENU MORE JUNE 2022 STATS This is the map of visits by town since the start of the year, note that not all 139 towns are listed on the key, but the slideshow that follows shows all the detail #nerdy NOTE Ashburn listed here with high user count is the Data Capital of the world , want to know more, feeling Nerdy enough then click HERE This data has been gathered from Google Analytics. I have also looked at the WIX Data, not sure if they match but I would expect WIX to get their extensive site statistics directly from Google Analytics but I could be wrong. For good measure you will see following my Statistics here by town taken from the start of 2022 that I also have some statistics for the month of June taken directly from WIX and exported to Excel where maps and charts can be easily made. Let me know what you think in the comments below if you feel so inclined #overmyhead The TOP 20 town visits since the start of the year are featured in the next image, a lot of them are local attracted potentially by local posts via social media, next door app or whatever It makes interesting reading. Why Columbus Ohio is the top visitor I have no idea #puzzled RETURN TO MENU Data taken from WIX Statistics for just the month of June 2022 Here is the accompanying list of towns (with their countries attached) and visit data RETURN TO MENU APRIL 2022 STATS So here goes, these stats refer to the Month of April 2022 when there were 187 published Blogs on the site, maybe it will only have an audience of 1, i.e. ME ha-ha Details for the most visited Blog posts in descending order on motorhome-travels blog dot net for the month of April 2022, how about that #nerd #statistics #obsessed RETURN TO MENU Other WEBSITE Stats (created by KEEFH WEB DESIGNs) RETURN TO MENU YOU TUBE CHANNEL 1.Statistics as of 20th September 2022 for Keef's You Tube Channel, 16 subscribers, 913 videos, 23.6k views, 480.1 hours watched (Created to match date of Top 10 below) Likes 2643 2. Statistics as of 2nd September 2022 for Keef's You Tube Channel, 16 subscribers, 908 videos, 23.1k views, 469.9 hours watched TOP 10 Channel videos I am starting to collect and create a new TOP 10 playlist roughly every year, I first did one on 10 Sept 21 but forgot to create statistics lists so for the second I have decided to record them here. There were on 20 Sept 22 8900 views of my top 10 videos. This had slightly changed both in terms of sequence of the Top 10 and adding 2 new videos created during the year since the previous September. Here are 19/9/22 image captures for prosperity If you want to know all about the KeefH Web Designs You Tube playlists then have a read of Blog 8, there are a whole stack of nerdy stats in there as well. RETURN TO MENU That's All for now folks

Created by KeefH Web Designs, December 3rd, 2022, 07.13 AM A KeefH Web Designs Travel Blog Genealogy Trip No 2 & Not the Motorhome trip No 21: August-September, 1969 INTRODUCTION This is a very retrospective blog, during the winter months of November and December 2022 I decided to translate most of the handwritten diaries we hold in our Family Tree data to supplement our Genealogy info featured here under the Family tab, good website design, backing up audiobooks, videos and slideshow with text. Enjoy! MENU Diary Audiobook Videos with audiobook overlay showing relevant and irrelevant areas of Australia, cars, and images from places visited, created via Clipchamp by KeefH Web Designs Trailer DIARY Jones family holiday to Queensland, Sydney to Rockhampton, written by Wilfrid Masters Jones, this is an account of the Jones family’s winter holiday, taken at the end of August 1969, in Australia. There were five of us, myself, my wife Jean, and twin daughters Anne & Margaret (aged 15) and my son Brian (aged 13). We headed north from Sydney, crossed the border into Queensland and travelled up the road known as Highway 1 with the intention of reaching Proserpine. Australia has often been described as a country of strange contrasts and we found this, even on our short tour of 2,000 miles. We passed from floods to drought conditions in a distance of 200 miles and changed from a bitter cold wind coming off the sea at Port Macquarie to the heat of a tropical sun at Rockhampton. We passed through Buderim, a land flowing with milk and honey to a drought-stricken area of dead trees, scorched grass and dried up creeks, where the cattle were being moved south in an effort to save them from starvation. We found a contrast in accommodation too. One night we slept in a beautiful glass fibre caravan and on another occasion in a single decker bus, about 30 years old, which had been converted by a very amateur carpenter. Knowing that we would find bad roads I had new rear springs fitted to the Rover and carried quite a few spares. We had two tents on the roof and carried complete cooking equipment. I removed the windscreen washer bottle from the side of the engine and made a wire basket to carry a kettle, three saucepans, a meths stove and five enamel plates, which all fitted between the exhaust manifold and the wing. It looked odd, but it made quite a talking point whenever I lifted the bonnet to take on oil at a garage. I also removed the arm rest from the front seat to make space for a first aid kit and my wife’s handbag. The car alone weighted 30 cwt (hundredweight) and when fully loaded it must have been well in the region of two tons. I think some of our Aussie friends thought that they would never see us again, because we had warnings about staying with the car if we broke down and not trying to get help. I know there are some regions in the north where the police refuse permission to proceed any further unless one has a Land Rover. There must be thousands of these go anywhere vehicles in Australia, giving good service in rough country. Well, we started our safari at 6 am on a Saturday morning. Rain was falling, but we hoped that as we proceeded north up the Pacific Highway the weather would improve and so it did, after two days of torrential rain which at times slowed us down to 15 m.p.h. Some roads were flooded but fortunately not enough to hold us up. At O’Sullivan’s Gap we passed through our first rain forest, and it was so heavily wooded that we had to put our headlights on. We slept in motels or caravans, as camping was out of the question and spent our first night at Port Macquarie. We found a motel on top of the cliffs and took a family suite. I thought any port in a storm. The rain was coming off the sea and just running from the car to our quarters got us wet through. We left Port Macquarie the next morning after the proprietor had given us a large sheet of plastic to put over all our belongings on the roof rack. Our canvas sheet was no match for tropical downpours. On the second day we came to a place called the banana bowl, acres of banana plantations growing on steep slopes. This area is supposed to have the most equable climate in Australia. Average winter temperature 67°F and in the summer 80°F. Each banana plant produces a bunch of about 300 fruits every 18 months. The plant is then cut down and a new one grows out from the base. A good bunch can weigh from 70-100 pounds. Growers use coloured plastic bags to help ripen the fruit and this makes a strange sight when seen from a distance. The bags are a light blue colour, and it appears to every traveler passing by that they are growing balloons on the trees. On approaching Grafton, we had a drive through floods six inches deep and progressed very slowly in bottom gear. I called at the NRMA office to find out if there were floods ahead, we wanted to turn back after 400 miles. Whilst waiting for them to phone I bought a canvas tarpaulin and some rope at a government surplus store and we lashed everything down on the roof, guessing that wind would be our next hazard. We were too early in the season to see the famous Jacaranda avenues in bloom, so we bought a picture postcard instead. We crossed the Clarence River which was in flood and looked like the Mississippi. At Tweed Heads we had just erected our 2 tents when a hurricane arrived, blowing off the sea bringing most of the sea with it. We found under these conditions the tents were not waterproof and so it was necessary to pack up in double quick time and bundle everything in the car. Jean tried to find accommodation for us in the town, but everybody had gone to earth, and so we had to sleep in the car, all 5 of us. The third day brought us to a stretch of beach known as the Gold Coast, and Surfer’s Paradise, a brash holiday resort very much akin to the French Riviera with concrete hotels, neon signs and various devices for extracting the visitor’s money – we passed on. The following day we came to Glasshouse Mountains but could only see the base of two of them, because of the low rain clouds. We had no idea how spectacular they were until we saw them on the return journey. On the fifth day the weather improved, and we found ourselves in sugarcane and had never seen pineapples growing before. They are cultivated on slopes facing the sun where there is good drainage. A detour then brought us to Buderim, a place we had read about in England and wanted to see because of its amazing fertility. The soil is unbelievably red, and produces strawberries, pineapples, and ginger of very fine quality. We spent an hour touring round a ginger factory, the only one in the southern hemisphere we were told. By the way Buderim is the aboriginal word for honeysuckle. We thought the place was rather aptly named. On our return to England, we found Merry bud Ginger could be bought in most of the better-quality shops. On the sixth day we passed through more sugarcane plantations and noticed they were usually on flood plains alongside wide rivers. The cane factories run their own railways called trams and the lines cross the roads with no gates or barriers of any sort. We came to a town called Gympie, where 170 dollars’ worth of gold had been mined about 100 years ago. The few remaining homes were built up on stilts to get a flow of air underneath during the hot weather, at least that’s what we were told, but I think it probably has something to do with snakes. It was about here that we were climbing a steep hill and came up behind a heavy lorry struggling up in bottom gear. The road was narrow, and I was wondering if there might be an opportunity to pass when I suddenly noticed the letters TNT painted on the back. Now in England it is the law that any vehicle carrying explosives must have the fact painted on the lorry and TNT to me meant trinitrotoluene. If that lorry was loaded, I thought, there was enough explosives to flatten the whole of Paramatta and if it was likely to go up, I preferred to be in a different part of Australia when it happened. So, I pulled off the road and let the mobile bomb get ahead for a few miles. It was sometime afterwards that I discovered what TNT meant in Aussieland and we all had a jolly good laugh. We were now a thousand miles north of Sydney and the temperature was rising. The next town on Highway 1 was Childers, in the midst of sugarcane country and we stopped for petrol and a picnic lunch. I got talking to a cane harvest contractor and was complaining about the heavy rain we came through earlier that week. He said, “pity you haven’t bought some with you, the last time it rained here was on Christmas Day”. That was nine months ago, so we had passed from floods to drought country within 200 miles. As someone said, it was so dry you had to be primed before you could spit! My children were very amused by our visit to Childers. It was exactly like one of those Texas ranch towns one sees in westerns, with swinging doors to the pubs, verandas over the shops and a main street which was just about shooting distance wide. One could imagine 2 stockmen coming out of opposite pubs and whipping out their six-shooters. The men wore wide brimmed hats and at midday the place was quiet as Tombstone in the film High Noon. The weather seemed to be set fair, so we decided to camp alongside a dried-up creek, on a space set aside for travellers called a rest area. This was provided with a fireplace, kindling wood and toilets, by the department of main roads. There was a gas station near the only sign of habitation we had seen for many miles. We pulled in at 4p.m and everybody had a job to do, as we had two tents to pitch, get a meal and wash up before 6pm when darkness falls suddenly. We were running low on water and offered to buy some from a petrol station. They were using bore water, running a Lister engine to pump it up and gave us two gallons. We carried a folding table with four seats, all combined, which was a great asset. I always think a meal on the ground is more of a picnic for the ants than the humans. I unloaded the roof rack while others prepared a meal and pumped up the beds. In less than an hour we were having our tea and supper combined. There were several brilliantly coloured parakeets flying about in the tops of trees and bullfrogs were complaining to each other concerning the shocking shortage of water. We turned in at 6pm, pretty tired, as we had done 260 miles that day, some of it on really rough roads. As it turned out it was fortunate that we were tired for we discovered that we had chosen a campsite within 50 yards of a creek bridge. There was no harm in this if it hadn’t been for the fact that most of the planks on the bridge were loose and as soon as it got dark all the heavy lorries in Australia decided to make for Cairns, crossing the bridge like a herd of elephants stampeding in a drum factory. The next day we rose at 5am but couldn’t strike camp until 8.30am because the tents were wet with dew. When we did get going, we found ourselves in real outback country and saw something we had been looking for – an aboriginal stockman sitting well back on the rump of his horse watching over 500 head of Hereford cattle. Because of the drought they were being moved south along recognised stock routes and sometimes these routes paralleled the road. Miles and miles of barren country, no grass, all the trees dead and no animals or birds. At least, so we thought, until a two-foot lizard crossed the road in front of us. He froze on seeing us coming and I straddled him with the wheels. This was lonely country, with mountain ranges to our left and the Pacific about 5 miles off to our right and it was here that we had our worst moment of the whole trip. The bitumen road suddenly changed to rough corrugated gravel, and it was on the brow of a hill. I did not see the change in surface in time and we took a series of potholes at speed, which nearly shook our teeth out. When I depressed the pedal to accelerate the engine roared up and I found that I had no drive. Immediately a broken back axle came into my mind as the car was slowing to a stop. How far was help, I wondered and what could I do about it? As there was no grating noise, I thought I would try third gear, in case of a gearbox failure, and to my relief the drive picked up again. I then realised what had happened. The gear lever had jumped from top to neutral with the shocks from the road. When I returned to work and told them what a scare we had had, someone said “that’s not unusual here. Whenever I go into rough country, I get my wife to tie the gear lever to the floor with a piece of string once I’ve got into top!” The further north we got the warmer it became, and we passed cars with canvas water bags hanging from bars in front of the radiator. These bags hold about two gallons of water, and this is apparently the only way to carry it in high temperatures. It would be very hot water if carried in the boot. The evaporation through the canvas lowers the temperature of the water and keeps it cool enough to drink. It is something to do with the kinetic energy of molecules, but you will know all about that anyway. At midday we arrived at the Tropic of Capricorn and stopped to have a look at an aluminum pylon erected to mark the exact latitude of 23.5°. The temperature was 85°F and we had crossed into the tropics. We were approaching Rockhampton and passed a lake with hundreds of herons and pelicans. Rockhampton was our furthest point north. It was a fine city with wide streets and coconut palms down the centre, blazes of colour everywhere with bougainvillea and poinsettias. Average temperature in the winter is 67°F and only exceeds 95°F for 17 days of the year. It has been known to go up to 114°F. We had hoped to go further north than this but the very bad weather we encountered at the start of our tour forced bus to cut back our programme because of time. Rockhampton was the best place we’d found so far, very clean and tidy with an obvious civic pride and very prosperous looking. We spent two nights in Rockhampton in a beautiful fibre glass caravan with a Morphy Richards fridge and electric cooker. A laundry was available with plenty of hot water and all the services the traveler could want. The trams ran down the centre of Rockhampton, the driver ringing a bell to warn absent-minded motorists. We found the people in Queensland very friendly, and they live at a much slower pace than the Sydneysiders. On our second day at Rockhampton, we visited the copper mine at Mount Morgan, having a three-hour conducted tour. An open cut mine, 900 feet deep – the ore contains copper, silver and gold and the whole production goes to Japan. We saw the complete process from mechanical digging to ingot pouring. The ore is ground to a fine powder and separates out by a floatation process leaving slurry of copper, silver, and gold. This is reduced to molten metal and poured into ingots weighting about 2 hundredweight each. When we reached the retorts, they were just about to pour five tons of metal and we saw the most spectacular fireworks display with sparks bouncing on the steel floor in all directions, the intense glare from the molten stream of metal and the showers of sparks made the place look like Dante’s Inferno. I turned away to shield my eyes from the terrific heat and found I was facing one of the foundry workers. He had his name on a metal badge riveted to the front of his steel helmet, Alf Brimstone. I could hardly believe my eyes! When I got home, I looked up the Oxford English Dictionary and there it was Brimstone, the fuel of hell fire. I thought Charles Dickens couldn’t have thought up a more appropriate name if he’d tried. In the afternoon the botanic gardens were visited in Rockhampton were visited and I discovered a new parking hazard. One had to look upwards before parking the car. Many palm trees were carrying coconuts and if one of these dropped on the roof from 35 feet it would have left quite an impression. That evening we were preparing to turn in when my daughter Anne spotted a large spider making for the light in the doorway. The sun had set, and I suppose the light attracted him in the caravan. He was on the side of the van, and I had nothing in my hands at the time, so I whipped out my knife and took a stab at it. This seemed to interfere with his steering mechanism, and he started to go round in circles, so I knocked him on the ground and trod on him. This was the first time we had seen a large spider since we came out to Australia, but of course we were in the tropics. The following day we started the return journey and I drove 355 miles before 6 in the evening. I forgot to mention something we saw on the way to Mount Morgan. The road climbed up over a mountain range and there were some very tight hairpin bends. To stop drivers from taking these bends too fast the council had put posts in the middle of the road. Anyone taking a corner too fast and swerving out across the wrong side of the road might or might not live to regret it. We’ve travelled in several different countries but never seen this done before. I felt much safer when taking the outside of a sharp bend with a drop of 509 feet on my left. On our way back we saw the Glasshouse Mountains again, but this time in fine weather. What a fantastic sight they were rising straight up from the pineapple groves like cones or candle snuffers. It was Captain Cook who gave them their name. At Brisbane we turned inland and left Highway 1 for a district called New England, with many Scottish names such as Glen Innes, Ben Lomond, Aberdeen, Warwick, Ipswich & Puddle dock. We even came across a Welsh name - Llangollen. This was a rich tableland of pasture, citrus plantations, and grain fields. We climbed up through Cunningham Gap to the Darling Downs. When we reached Stanthorpe it was late afternoon and we started looking for a caravan site. We had left it rather late for camping and for hiring a caravan too, for all we could get was a converted bus. When the Queensland border was reached, we went through the tick gate. An inspector examined the contents of our boot, saying he was looking for rocks and plants. I thought that fruit was the forbidden import. We now wished we had brought back some cheap pineapples. We had seen these at Nambour. After the tick gate we pushed on to Tenterfield, the town of willows. You cannot imagine what a lovely sight it was to see the fresh green of waterside willows after the grey green, sun scorched eucalyptuses that we had passed for miles earlier on. Seeing a nice creek which looked a likely place for prospecting the children tried their hand at gold panning and looking for gems. Although it was very rough there was plenty of room for the five of us and what it lacked in amenities it made up for in novelty. My children thought it was just the ticket, so we unloaded all our bags passing everything right down the bus to the sleeping quarters at the back end. After our evening meal was finished and just when everyone was ready for bed, I couldn’t resist the temptation to call out “all change”. Situated next to our bus were two old boys with permanent quarters in a small caravan and a couple of timber shacks in which they did their cooking. Another small shed rather intrigued us because we could see a small red flame through the cracks in the boards and my wife was convinced, they were running an illicit still. I think I rather spoilt the idea by suggesting that it could be a Calor gas refrigerator. However, we were off early the next morning so we will never know. As we were on high ground it was fairly cold at six in the morning, so our idea was to motor on for about 50 miles and then have our breakfast which we did on a clearing between the road and the railway line. The table and chairs were all set up and the kettle was about to boil. We heard a noise like an empty rail truck coming. When it came into view it was a rail trolley. Four men were sitting on a flat truck with four wheels, facing each other in pairs, and working a lever backwards and forwards to propel the wheels. We supposed they were going to work, but it did seem a funny sight to us and no doubt we appeared to be a surprise to them. It was some time before we got over the shock and waved to each other. We gave them some of our tin plates and they panned in the traditional way, scooping up sediment from the bed of the stream and gradually washing it away with a sideways motion. They said it would be nice if they could find enough gold to pay for the petrol we used on the holiday. I said “yes it would’ but they didn’t. Now I suppose everyone does the same as I do when touring a long way from home, one watches the dials on the dashboard and listens for the slightest noise which might spell trouble. I kept an eye on the water temperature gauge, as we weighed over 2 tons. It normally reaches 76°F but suddenly it started to rise, and I wondered if the fan belt had gone, but fortunately it levelled off to 85. I carried a spare belt, but one must be a bit of a contortionist to change it. Then someone shouted from the back of the car, “we’re now over 4700 feet above sea level, we have just passed a sign”. “Well, that accounts for it” I said and relaxed once more, thinking the old car wasn’t doing so bad after all, considering its age. We slept in a hired cabin at Glenn Innes that night and explored Armidale the following morning. We were struck by the tidiness of the camp site at Glenn Innes, but we very quickly found the reason. The owner employed a female person that took the role of warder, park keeper, snooper and tidy-upper, all combined. One of our girls described her as a super pernickety fussy pants! We saw an old gentleman come out of the showers and go over to the clothesline to hang up his wet towel. All the space on the lines was taken up, so he draped his towel on a bush. Like a shot, Irma (that was the name we gave her) appeared from nowhere and ordered him to take it down, which he did pretty smart as if he had been caught robbing the poor box. There was a mat on the step outside our cabin and after all the children had bought in the cases from the car, it must have got displaced slightly. As soon as we were inside and shut the door, Irma came round and straightened it up. I could almost hear her saying under her breath “Barbarians!” Two women went into the laundry, and we saw Irma hovering outside, ready to pounce, if they used too much water, left a tap running or drew rude pictures on the walls. We drew the blinds of our cabin in case we should unwittingly commit a misdemeanour. I was going to run a line from our cabin to the roof rack of our car in order to air our tent, but I could see Irma rushing up like the queen in Alice in Wonderland and screeching “off with his head!” We escaped from Glenn Innes Caravan Park early the next morning and just before we reached Armidale we passed Thunderbolt Rock, where Fred Ward, the last of the New South Wales bushrangers used to stand and survey the surrounding country looking for victims. We visited this in 2007-8 Later we came to Kentucky Creek where he was shot. On leaving the plateau country we descended into bush and saw our first live kangaroo, which was about 4 feet 6 inches tall. It crossed the road in front of us and jumped a fence. On reaching Singleton the only accommodation we could find was the Agricultural Hotel. We were too tired to camp and the weather looked ominous. The next day we crossed the Macdonald Range and ran into the first rain for nine days, at Windsor. My wife kept a diary every day and also noted some of the more picturesque names of the creeks that we crossed. Cold Tea Creek, Boiling Point Creek, Jacob & Joseph, Christmas Creek, Old Darkey Creek & Emigrant Creek were some of the names she noted. When we at last arrived home after our 2500-mile tour I looked at a map of Australia and found we had only travelled one sixth of Highway 1, which is 7664 miles long. It certainly is a big country. Our tour is something we will remember for the rest of our lives and our only regret was that we failed to reach Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, but of course one would require more time and it was our first attempt at exploring more than a thousand miles from home. THE END Return to Menu AUDIOBOOK Now follows 3 SoundCloud audiobooks of the trip, the 1st 2 constructed using text to speech with reasonable digital voice attached, from Jean & Wilfrid's diary of the road trip, the 3rd is with Keef's voice reading out Anne & Margaret's diary. Annie will also do the same thing in early 2023 so we have both our voices for prosperity reading something that really happened. Return to Menu VIDEO I have also included a video of associated places etc. with Keef's voice over as an audiobook reading Anne & Margaret's supporting diary for this trip. Annie will do one as well in 2023 so we have a record with our voices for prosperity later on, a transcript is not available to post here but there is an equivalent PDF on the family tree. Return to Menu