| Sheona's Incredibly Un-Interesting Autobiography |
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| So, where was I? Oh yes, Grove Park. As I mentioned, back in the Dark Ages of the Army and Army Families (or the 1960s and 70s) it was quite normal for the dads to suddenly disappear as though some sort of secret police action had schlepped them all off somewhere. And so it was a few weeks after the spectacular arrival (I'll get the Aged Parents to post their descriptions here.... don't hold your breath) of my little brother, my father disappeared in the direction of Germany, leaving my mother to pack and clean the flat whilst looking after two children under four years old. She can tell her own story on her own website. Suffice to say that it can't have been easy, but somehow she got us - and our posessions - in one piece to Detmold. A pretty town, about which I knew - and still know - nothing. We lived in a part of town called Hakedahl, which was popularly renamed Crocodile by it's British inhabitants. We had a sparkly nearly-new flat, on the ground floor - more of this later - of a 2 storey building. It was a long row of flats, each divided into four, with one main entrance per four flats. As you went in we were the bottom right flat. The previous grown-up female inhabitant of our new abode had worn - remember, we're in the mid 60s here, man - stiletto shoes. The evidence of this was the pock-marked tiles around the living room carpet, up and down the corridoor and in the kitchen. I can't remember much of the flat, it seemed huge to me, there was a long hallway which bulged into a larger area at the bottom. The first two rooms were: to the right our room (Spencer and I shared) and to the left my parents' room. After that, off the bulbous bit of the hallway were the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom and the toilet. I was absolutely fascinated by the tiny hand basin in the loo, never having seen a loo that wasn't in the bathroom before. The washing was done either by hand in the kitchen (mostly involving soaking smelly terrycloth nappies) or in the boiler or washing machine in the communal cellar. I don't have any recollection of this beyond that lovely smell of boiling white clothes. Ah, actually I remember throwing Sindy's multicoloured jumper in the boiler once, and forcing my dad to wear pink shirts and underpants way before he was ready for that. Sorry Dad. To this day, the smell of a boil wash can transport me back there instantly. Other smells are equally good at taking me back to being four or five again the smell of a German baker's van in particular, or the smell of the deli counter at the supermarket. But other things can whisk me back to that time like the taste of lemon ice from the Italian ice-cream shop, or macaroni cheese. Eventually I attended the infants' school in Hobart Barracks, which wasn't far from where we lived. Every morning we walked down the hill, and I boarded the green Army bus that transported us to our place of learning. My teacher was Miss Burns, and I loved her. Which is more than I can say about the building which housed our classroom - a nissan hut. If you don't know these constructions try to imagine this: sheets of corrugated iron bent into a half cylinder and blocked up at both ends. That's it. I went to school in half a loo roll! Mind you, later on in my school life I spent time in a terrapin... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Beyond these reminiscences I don't remember much of my school in Detmold. Which is a shame, but I don't expect it consisted of much more than reading, playing and eating lunch. Oh yes, I remember that we often had sliced beef in gravy for lunch, which was my favourite! In the summer we would play outside in a little herd. One of the flats halfway up the hill sold ice-lollies (I assume he was the estate warden or something) from a room in the attic. Peculiar things they were, with two sticks, so we often shared them by breaking them in half. At that time the road - Bergstrase - extended only half way up a hill. The blocks of flats extended away perpendicular to the tarmac, three on each side if I remember correctly. At the end, the road came abruptly to a halt, and there began a farmer's field. We ran up and down endlessly and watched the bigger kids speeding up and down on proto-skateboards (made by nailing rollerskates to planks of wood). Winters were full of snow. It was probably my fourth birthday when I looked out of the living room window to huge fat flakes of white stuff falling from the sky. It's my first recollection of snow and I was so excited I don't know how I survived the walk into town to buy my present: a sledge! That sledge saw a lot of service. Spencer was only 5 or 6 months old, so Mum used to tie a washing basket to the sledge, pack it with blankets and put him in it. She dragged us all over the place like that, which we thought was great but I'm sure it was really hard work for her. (ok I have one more memory which will be expanded upon when the muse hits me: losing my teeth and cutting my chin... twice) One final memory of Detmold before I scoot off back to England is of the first snowman I ever made. I started with a small ball of snow and rolled it around until it was huge. By this time I was on the grass at the bottom of the hill. I carefully shaped a head and made eyes and so on before running excitedly home to show Mum my creation. At that time Dad had just arrived home from a mess meeting with his friend Del - they weren't exactly sober. We all stood on the balcony as they admired my snowman. Then Dad and Del decided that in order to take a look they would sledge down on my birthday present. Of course they demolished it and I was heartbroken. I don't expect either of them even remember it now!! And so the time passed, winters in the snow and summers around the pool getting brown and learning to swim. Until all of a sudden it was 1969 (was it 1969?) and my dad was sent to Sandhurst. |
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| Part 2 - The Detmold years |