I was born on Friday 6th June 1958 at 11 Queens Drive, Hassocks. It was normal for the first child to be born in hospital, and subsequent children to be born at home. Unusually however, my father was present at the birth and told me that he later made ham sandwiches for the midwife and my mother!
My mother was kept at home and largely in bed for the next month, which was again standard practice. During this time a succession of relatives stayed to help, including my Aunty Brenda.
By the time that I was born, my father had spent 12 years traveling to London to work, and the novelty had worn off! He was also not very optimistic about his further career prospects in London, so applied for, and got, a position with on of Grey Dawes subsidiary companies in East Africa – Smith MacKenzie and Co. My mother’s mother had died in 1953 and my grandfather had remarried, so my mother felt that her father was taken care of. The house in Hassocks was sold for around £2,000 and they sailed of to Kenya on the SS Kenya in June 1959. I was one year old.
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