And this, I should imagine, is one of the last pictures taken of my mother before she became a widow.  She is posing in untypically daring style on the bonnet of our Rover while we were on our last family summer holiday at Perranporth, Cornwall, in August 1955. Or maybe she was daring in those days, before my father died.

We stayed in a caravan. I remember running excitedly across the beach to the village to buy the latest Enid Blyton book, which was probably River of Adventure, in hardback. I seem to recall that it was 7s 6d (37.5p). The beach was rocky with hard sand.