A FAMILY MEMOIR – in the lee of conflict and war
We have just celebrated my 80th birthday, a terrific occasion with 90 guests, plenty of food and drink and dancing to the Tinkers Ditch country dance band.
Our guests were most generous with presents and cards. The old men depicted on the cards brought me up with a start. I still see myself as a steely-limbed warrior. Perhaps the cards are more accurate of men in their 80s: shambling figures with arms waving like the sails of a windmill on the dance floor.
When I look back there are instances that I do not want to recall and flaws in my character of which I will say no more but there is much that has been wonderful and this gives me hope for the future, and I should try to capture and record memories of key events for friends and relations.
I made a great effort to do this before. I started a diary in the 1980s and recorded my life and thoughts day by day in bound green notebooks. My diary became a close companion particularly when abroad with much time on my hands. Near the end of my career in FARM Africa I began to wonder if I had achieved anything over the years, also my account suddenly seemed tedious and at times embarrassingly personal. So I gritted my teeth and burnt 20 or so volumes. Watching my painstaking work go up in smoke was oddly satisfying, indeed I felt purged. But it wasn’t long before I realised that this was one of the stupidest things I had ever done. I repeatedly tried to make a fresh start but somehow my hand seemed to be tied.
Recently I have been urged to try again and put it in the form of a website which can be changed and added to at will – and painful recollections can be omitted. So here is the result free of introspective ramblings and, I hope, less boring.
My parents
Crossing the Equator in a troop ship, Andrew dressed up as an angel, covering his large form with a white sheet and bearing a halo made from cardboard. He won first prize and caused much hilarity. His large nose and small, closely set dark eyes gave him at certain angles a slightly diabolical look.
He had many friends despite dark moods and was tremendously good company and yet as a father was unreliable and negligent. My sister, Jenny, and I loved him but tensions created by his leaving my mother and re-marrying stood between us. I think he loved us too but in an awkward way.
Andrew was born in 1911 in Highgate, London. He was one of eight quarrelsome siblings. His father, a stern, God-fearing man, was a solicitor with the family practice in Dean Street, Soho. They lived in a large gloomy house with a mulberry tree in the garden.
He and his brother, Stephen, followed their father into the legal profession although Andrew would have preferred to be an engineer.