Monday, Bank Holiday

Still raining. What a day. Still we decided to go into town for a bit of shopping and perhaps coffee and cake, which we did in Starbucks. There were plenty of people around as I suppose no one wanted to go far in this weather but it was nice to get out of the house.
I think it's time to say a bit more about my early days on earth - 1941 a few months after I was born mom found she was expecting another child. She had been married for five years before I was born now another baby in less than a year. My sister Valerie was born in March 1942 just 12months and 28 days after me, on my grandad's 70th birthday. She was premature as mother had been drawing blackout curtains, remember it was war time, and she fell bringing about the early arrival of "Titch" as dad called her. At only 2 pounds 4 ounces it was a bit touch and go at first whether she would survive. She was put in one of grandad's boot boxes lined with cotton wool, no incubators or high dependency units, but survive she did and to date at 65years of age she is still going not altogether a picture of health but not so bad for someone who wasn't given much of a hope back then. I am tole I thought she was a doll and kept trying to pick her up and dress her up in some dolls clothes, which would have been much too big for her.
By this time dad had been called up to join the forces. He was put into the army and into the Royal signals where he went on to train other men in morse code. He was always interested in anything to do with electronics I can never remember a time when he wasn't fiddling with bits of wire, soldering irons or valves. He was in the D. Day landings and became lost from his group only to be found later in no man's land between our army and the Germans. Needless to say he was shipped back to England quite badly shell shocked and spent some time in hospital in Manchester, but he still went back into service when he was well enough till the end of the war.