They settled into a house locally, had fun playing tennis, which they both loved, and raising chickens, and motoring around in their Austin Seven, but World War II broke out, and my father went to North Africa, saddened a few weeks later by the death of Stanley in action. Stanley had been abandoned as a child, and he was overjoyed when he married a lovely girl and had a baby son - happiness cut terribly short when his tank was blown up. My father came home briefly on leave in 1941, to find my mother tearful because Cecil and Peggy had just produced a baby boy, so I arrived 10 months later, in 1942, though he wasn’t able to see me till his next leave, in 1945.

SEE PHOTO – me aged 1 year. With all the menfolk away, I was always surrounded and spoiled by pretty aunts and very loving grandparents, and as a baby, I could be found most mornings propped up on the Off Licence counter enjoying lots of attention from family and customers! My grandmother was a lovely plump Cockney ( a superb cook and always laughing), and as soon as I could climb up beside her on the piano stool, on quiet shop days afternoons, instead of nursery rhymes, she would teach me all the music hall songs she’d heard as a girl from watching Marie Lloyd at the London Hippodrome. She played them all by ear, with not a sheet of music in sight and she’d fill me with stories of her courting days, when her and her sisters were very often taken out by their ‘young men’ on a Sunday in a horse and carriage, with all the young couples returning to her home for a big Edwardian high tea, and a jolly singsong round the piano.

Her parents were a wonderful East End couple, with a fascinating family history. My Great-Grandma delivered all the family babies, PHOTO, and was another great cook. She was a big woman, full of confidence, and all the young mothers-to-be in the family were very relieved when she arrived at their front door on time, with a large supply of spotless white aprons, in time to shoo their husband off to the pub. She lived long enough to see me, but took to her bed after seeing a bomb drop on a local school playground, and she died 4 days’ later.

My Great-Grandpa Argent was a Lay Preacher. One his ancestors had been Head Chef to King George IV at the Brighton Pavilion. His son inherited a vast amount of money, set up a big publishing company, but had drunk himself to death by the age of 30. His son was teetotal. Parlour games were great fun, and I remember my grandfather 40 years later always playing an old trick on any budding boyfriends which involved a glass of water held against the ceiling with a broom handle, which always ended up with the chap getting his best clothes soaking wet, but still trying to smile in front of the giggling girls! In later years, on my Grandpa’s birthday every June, new chaps were made to play all the Dads and uncles in a table tennis tournament in the garden to see whether they were any good, with black marks if they dared to win!

My earliest memory is of my 4th birthday party. I received a doll’s house, fitted out with furniture made by my grandfather, carefully upholstered by my mother. I was so happy with it that I couldn’t bear to share it with the other little girls who’d been invited to tea. My mother was a great stickler for good manners (as a mother and later as a Grandma!) and she immediately took it all away from me, and I have never forgotten looking up in tears as it disappeared onto a high shelf for the rest of the day.

I was enrolled at Stanley House School, a small private one near our houses, joining my cousin Gavin there who was 10 months older than me. On my first day, I knocked over a pile of toy bricks some spoilt little rich boy had just built. He screamed and screamed, I was banished to the coats and shoes room, where I was found crying by Gavin, aged 5, who took me home and I never went back.

My father came back from the War about this time, bringing me as a gift a tiny porcelain tea service that he had carried safely in a little leather bag all through the North African Campaign. It has gradually been broken over the years, with just a few pieces left. He also brought back a dull pewter pepper pot (long since lost) marked HMS Strathallan. that he’d taken off the troop ship that had been sunk on her next voyage. In honour of his return, my excited mother had decorated our house (see PHOTO with me standing outside the front gate) with a huge welcome home banner, had left me with my grandparents, and had gone to meet him at Aldershot railway station, wearing a big fresh chrysanthemum pinned to her coat, she told me years later. She saw troop train after troop train come in, but he wasn’t on them, and finally went home (still wearing the, by now, she said, very bedraggled crysanth) to find him at her parents home, consuming gallons of tea, having missed her at the station. He always got on well with his in-laws, and my Grandpa helped him a lot through the years, with his calm, wise advice.

My brother was started off during this first leave at the end of the war, and then my father was posted to Austria as part of the Army of Occupation. Eighteen months later we all joined him there, travelling out on a military train, which took 10 days with much stopping and starting. I remember always being very nervous of the moving pathway between the carriages, at last remedied by modern trains only a few years ago. My little brother developed a heavy cold on the journey and also fell out of his bunk the day before we finally reached Vienna. My father greeted this bruised and snotty toddler for the first time with the words ‘Oh, surely he’s not my son?’ much to my mother’s great distress! I had a very happy time in Austria. I went everywhere by Army lorry, including being collected from the house for school every morning, which gave me my life-long love of big vehicles.

Three clear memories stand out. My grandparents came out to visit (on a huge Russian military train), and I remember my beloved Grandpa walking with me along the River Danube, bringing down fresh walnuts from the trees lining the bank. I remember the wonderful smell of the Daphnia flowers known as ‘pinks’ which stretched along the edge of our veranda. Whenever I smell them now, I’m a 6-year old girl again for a few minutes! I also remember watching my father and a fellow officer push an empty car off a steep mountain road down through a forest, To my horrified excitement, it caught fire and crashed down through the trees (shades of Indiana Jones!)

In 1948, my father finally left the army that he’d joined as a boy of 14, and with his gratuity he and my mother bought a village store. I had to settle down with clipped wings and start at the village school properly at the age of 6, but the memories of my early childhood are very dear, and the music-hall songs, the loving aunts, the big lorries, and my grandparents stories are always with me.