Memoirs

Although born in Scotland I have no memories of there as we left when I was two. My first recollections are of Las Palmos in the Canaries. I recall the donkey passing daily and being told he bites. I was given a caterpillar and tended it, oh so carefully. My mother when it was a cocoon persauded me to put it outside. Well you can imagine my intense disappointment to find that it had hatched and flown without me getting a single glimpse!! This is the first disappoint in life that I faced. Our house had a flat roof with a lovely garden on top and in the distance an enormous tall chimney. I remember our boxer Susie she was real crazy especially on the beach and while breaking open sugur cane it slipped and cut me wide open right between the right thumb and first finger. I was taken to the doctor who would you believe? poured iodine into it, he wanted to stitch it too, but no way was I letting that sadist anywhere near me again. I still bear the scar today. I recall seeing a woman dressed in black perched atop of a towering cliff when we were out in the car my sister saw her too. We had to turn back due to landslides and she was gone, she also had a pointy hat did we see a witch? I had a wonderful dolls house into which I could walk, yet I took all my dolls apart to see how they worked I was such an inquisitive child. At five we returned to England living very near Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill fields. One day when my mother walked me to school I entered to find not a single soul present so I walked up to my Aunts as she lived very close. Needless to say I got into a real heap of trouble from both school and mum. I recollect an outing to Hampstead Heath there was a cafe surrounded by a large hedge from which I could never find the way out. I ran ahead and entered through the hedge only to find my parents nowhere to be seen. Of course I could not find the way out back to the car. This couple found me and insisted on taking me to the police station four miles away I kept trying to tell them I only lived two streets down from the Heath, Grown ups!!! I remember always wanting to speak Spanish and people refusing to answer me telling me I had to speak in English Bah! I used to ride my tricycle up and down five stairs mum always telling me I would fall. Well one day my sister called me and I tumbled down breaking my right wrist I used to stuff vegetables up inside the plaster to avoid eating them. I hate most vegetables to this very day. When I was seven we got Kim our German shepherd who we took to Africa with us. I recollect the excitement of visiting Gibraltar and seeing the monkeys, the mystery of sailing through the Suez canal the banks so close as to seem touchable. A giant ray getting caught on the ships bows oh boy did it stink. It stayed with us from the equator to Zanibar yuck! I looked on all goggle eyes at the first dark people I had ever seen cowering by my mum as they banished machetes in the air some with only one eye. I was trembling in my shoes. Kim took a dislike to them as they teased her by poking her with sticks through her cage. This dislike stayed with her for life. We arrived in Dar-es-Salaam on my eight birthday. From here another tale begins, later to be told.