Anne's Blog

  How does the song go: A life on the ocean wave… How I longed to have that life when I was a teenager looking for a career after high school. Assistant purser was what I had in mind, and most of my friends had no idea what that was or why on earth I was determined to be one. (Before I go any further, let’s have full disclosure: I never attained my dream due to discovering the most important skill needed to be an assistant purser was a high level of math. Talk about a downer for this dummy, who didn’t even pass her Maths O Level!) What I would have been good at was Social Director, but it wasn’t a thing back then. What, you may wonder, attracted me to a life aboard an ocean liner? From the first voyage I made with my parents when I was nearly three and we were on our way to Hamburg overnight from Harwich just after WWII so my father’s Army posting as Port Commandant could begin, I was hooked. There was something about falling asleep to the gentle hum of the ship’s engines, the fun ...

  I learned to drive in 1965 on my father’s 1952 pristine Bentley along the winding, one-and-a-half-wide lanes in the Surrey hills. As if the size of the car and the lack of rack-and-pinion steering wasn’t hard enough to handle, the ankle-high gear shift tucked between the front seats was often the stick that broke the camel’s back for me.  Invisible gear shift between seats My father, an erstwhile British army colonel, was not the most patient of teachers, and I was glad of his additional gift of six driving lessons at the local school, with a mild-mannered, retired schoolteacher in Leatherhead. Amazingly, I passed the test on my first try, much to my siblings’ amazement, who were convinced that at 21 I was not much use at anything except a good cry. (A slight exaggeration, but you get the picture of a slightly overwhelmed middle child.) It was not the norm in England in the 1960s for every member of a household to own a car. So, I had to beg my mother to loan me her much mor...