Monday 26 December 2016

Elephants at home







My wife has digitised some old slides of my mother's, and we were able to include discs of them as Christmas presents for my brothers.

For a few months in 1964, between returning to England and finding our own permanent home here, we let a flat at the top of a large house at Burwash in Sussex.  It belonged to a diplomat who had recently retired from successive stints as Governor of the Falkland Island and then of the Bahamas.  His wife’s father had also been a diplomat, our Ambassador in the USA at the time of the First World War where he wrote the poem I vow to thee my country

She is supposed to have referred to my brothers and I (aged 5, 4 and 3) as ‘the three little elephants from Africa’, presumably the only reasonable explanation for the thudding sounds above her.

So here is my mother waving from the flat window, and here are my brothers and I in the grounds and (the clues to the exact location are substantial) at Rushlake Green nearby; the two pictures appear to have been taken on the same day.

1 comment:

ElsieJoy said...

What glorious photos Peter.

After my Father died I set out to digitise his vast collection of slides. It took two years with the help of a special adaptor for the scanner , many had faded but at least they are now saved for posterity and wonderful memories.