Auntie Dorothy was born in Banbury after the Great War - one of the post WWI "baby boom". Granddad was a butler and Gran a ladies maid for the Grazebrook family at Overthorpe House. A year later a brother, Arthur, was born. My mother was the eldest of the children having been born a few weeks before the start of WWI.
In the mid-1920s the family moved to Kingsmead in Windsor with Granddad being employed by Algernon Cox, a banker. The photo on the right shows Auntie in her school uniform. Throughout her life she cringed when she looked at this photo because one side of her collar was caught beneath the neckband of her gymslip - she always reproached herself for not having noticed it before the photo was taken.
With only a year between them Dorothy and Arthur were inseparable
But then came the war and Arthur enlisted with the RAF
Arthur was reported missing over the Lybian Desert 21st. November 1941
I have a feeling that my Mum never excepted the fact that her young brother had died. I had never known my uncle but as a child I picked up on my mother's thoughts and whenever there was a knock on the door I think we both half expected it to be Arthur.
After the war Dorothy went on a cycling tour of France and this is where she was to meet her future husband, Dennis.
They married in Streatham
The smallest child in the group photograph is ME!
One of my earliest memories is of the wedding and of eating ice-cream -
a rare treat so soon after the war.
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