My early childhood memories are few but vivid.

According to my mum I was born with a twisted bowel and the doctors sent me home to die. However, she persevered, feeding me drops of milk and I pulled through. There are photos of me as a baby showing that I was completely bald for most of my first year and one, in particular of me sitting in a wooden 'rocking duck' that my grandad had made.

I was born in London but following a separation leading to an acrimonious divorce my mother and grandparents moved to Norwich when I was two or three. I never knew my father but we met him once on a bus in London (he was the conductor) and mum didn't tell me until we got off. However, I do recollect a few uncomfortable visits to my paternal grandmother* which involved sitting still and quiet on a hard chair until it was time to go.

Then there was the enormous easter egg in a huge box on top of the wardrobe that I was not allowed to have because it came from 'him'.

The house we moved to was  a large Victorian terrace with a very long garden. One of the things I hated was the back parlour (only used on high days and holidays) because I had a recurring nightmare about a train coming up the garden path and crashing through the French windows. Consequently, I was always ill at ease, listening for trouble, when the family spent any time in there.

There was a most interesting hole in the garden where I could find frogs and I took great delight in bringing them indoors, knowing that my grandmother would be terrified and an orchard where I was allowed to climb the trees under supervision. 

My grandad had been very strict with my mum and her brother but he was a real softy where I was concerned. He would give me rides in his wheelbarrow down to feed the chickens and make wooden toys for me. I still have the money box he made me for my 4th birthday. It has 16 screws on the bottom to discourage me from opening it!

Another thing I remember about my 4th birthday was that I had measles and was brought downstairs from my sickbed for the birthday tea.  I didn't feel like eating so played about with my food, cutting it up and arranging it to give to the rabbit I hoped I was getting. But suddenly I was sick all over the plate. I can remember how upset I was at spoiling the rabbit's tea. I needn't have worried , though, because I didn't get the rabbit!

Our neighbour was an elderly lady called Mrs Newham. One day, for some reason there was a gap in the fence and I wandered through it and into her kitchen. She was highly amused at this unexpected visit but my grandmother was terribly embarrassed. I'm not sure how often I was allowed to see her after that but when we eventually moved  house she gave me a little silver purse containing a silver threepenny piece which I still have to this day.

Then there was Aunt Alice. She was my nan's eldest sister and lived in Grimsby. I remember the first time I met her. I think I must have been expecting her to look like Alice in Wonderland because (as I've never been allowed to forget) it seems I stared at her long and hard and then slapped her face!

It seems I wasn't a very good little girl at times, maybe because I spent a great deal of time with my grandparents who tended to spoil me, but I adored my mother, even though she was more strict.

The reason for having dancing lessons is not clear but I vaguely remember going to a lady's house and dancing in what seemed to be her living room. After a short time these lessons ceased and I was sent to a piano teacher called Beryl Henrietta Bunn.

Later, mum explained that dancing 'used up too much energy' and the doctor had recommended a less active pastime. It's true, I often suffered from bouts of shortness of breath which were quite frightening but if someone told me a story - or when I was older, if I concentrated on reading or sewing - the attack would pass. The mystery about these incidents was that, although they lasted until I was in my twenties and then faded out, when I had similar 'attacks' in my forties, the doctor could find no written record in my past medical notes.

*Since making contact with my father's family I have learned that his mother died two days after his birth. His father remarried and so the grandmother I remember was, in fact, his stepmother.

Despite a poor start to my schooling whereby I missed most of the first year due to some 'nervous illness' that no-one was prepared to explain to me in later life I enjoyed school and did well.

I remember my first class, and the teacher, Miss Randall but I don't think I learned much as because of my poor eyesight I spent a great deal of time playing in the sand tray - that's when I wasn't absent.

At home I learned to read somehow but couldn't write much and only in capital letters. When I went back to school in the second year of infants I was put in Mrs. Hipper's class and one girl took great delight in telling me that if I was in her class I'd never pass the 11plus.

Fortunately for me, we moved house during this year and I found myself in the Infant school right opposite our new house - or rather bungalow - in Costessey.

Someone made an error and I was put in a class with children a year older. The teacher realised that as my reading was good I should be able to catch up with arithmetic so she gave me individual lessons at break times. In those days 'class positions' were the be-all and end-all  so I can remember that, thanks to her efforts I went from 24th in class to 3rd by the end of that year.

When we went to the Junior School the mistake was discovered and I had to spend two years on the same class. Then, one year after that,  paradoxically, the Headmaster decided that three of us should be given a 'boost' by skipping a class and moving to the 'top' class a year early. However, we were not allowed to take the 11plus with the rest of our classmates. We had to stay in that class for another year! So in my five years at junior school I only had three teachers: Miss Rouse, Mr Chamberlain and Miss Powley.

My childhood was very happy and it was a time when we were free to roam and play where we liked. My playmates were Trevor and Lynne from next door but one on the right and Martin  who lived next door but one on the left. We often went to the woods or the marshes and would come back filthy but happy. If not, everyone had long and interesting gardens and we could make dens or pirate ships or use the greenhouses as spaceships.

 I remember that Lynne's mum lent me loads of books - mainly Enid Blyton's fairly tales  - and I devoured them avidly. There were very few books in our house but I found a copy of Jane Eyre and was scolded when they discovered I had started reading it as they thought I was too young.

It was while we lived at Costessey that mum rediscovered 'Uncle George' a friend of her brother's whom she had courted before she met my father. They had split up and George went to Australia but now he was back and separated from his wife. He and I never really hit it off, and, looking back, I wonder if he resented the fact that mum wouldn't accept his son but expected him to accept me.

As far as I know, apart from one holiday at the seaside as a 'foursome' George lost contact with his son after he married mum Many years later he tracked him down and tried to make up for lost time but there was too much bitterness and it didn't work.

Knowing Uncle George had its advantages though. He ran a Radio TV and Cine shop and had access to 16mm films which he would show at home on Sunday evenings. I was never allowed to stay up for the feature but used to watch the cartoons and the Flash Gordon serial before going to bed. He also installed a television and built a very high aerial in the back garden. On a good night we could get a signal from Sutton Coldfield and enjoy a grainy picture which may or may not last  for the entire programme. Of course, it wasn't too long before our region had its own transmitter but, for a time, my friends were pretty jealous that we had a television - even if we couldn't guarantee to see a programme all the way through before the reception faded.

My tenth year was probably the end of a period of reasonable stability because things were going to change in many ways during the next few years.

First there was the 11 plus and a move to Grammar School which coincided with moving to Norwich when Mum finally married George and he became 'Pop'. They had their shops (with flat above) only a few minutes walk from the school so I came home for lunch every day.

My sister Wendy was born a year later and Mum nearly died from a haemorrhage. Relations were a bit fraught between Pop and my grandmother so it was his mother who came to look after the new baby. Granny Smith always seemed a very hard woman and she obviously did not enjoy her new role. As soon as Mum was discharged from hospital she left her to cope.

I tried to help by getting up early and making the first bottle so that mum could stay in bed to feed the baby. Then I'd peel the potatoes for lunch before going to school at 7.30 to practise the piano. It wasn't convenient to play in the flat any more in case the baby was asleep but it meant I had sole access to the grand piano in the school hall for over an hour.

School meant a great deal to me and I would pass many days in the holidays helping prepare the books for the new intake. In fact, I had a couple of schoolgirl crushes:  firstly the nun who was in charge of the bookroom and also taught English, and then, after she was transferred to another convent,  I became attached to the music teacher who lived a few minutes walk away and who agreed to give me piano lessons when I told her I had given up (because the horrible man my parents had found when I left Miss Bunn  was a lech).

As proof of my impressionable nature my determination to become a nun faded when Sister T went away and, instead, I trained as a music teacher!

Fortunately the rift between Mum and my grandmother eventually healed  and it wasn't long before she joined us for weekends on Pop's pride and joy - a small cabin cruiser. I remember the day he bought it. Mum and I watched as he struggled with the controls, trying to get it away from its moorings. He had one or two very near misses with the bank and other craft and afterwards admitted that if someone had offered him a fiver for it he would have accepted. 

He and a mate took it to its new berth nearer Norwich and Mum drove Wendy and me back in the car. Of course, he did learn to manage it eventually but the craze didn't last for more than a couple of years. I was very thankful for that because it was my job to balance precariously at the front holding the mooring rope and then jump ashore to help pull the boat in. I couldn't swim (still can't) and we never wore lifebelts!

When they sold the boat they bought a caravan at Weybourne so we had many pleasant Sundays at the seaside - whatever the weather.