I used to love it whenever Mum made puddings and cakes. My favourite was probably her apple gingerbread, but I also loved her semolina puddings( with a dob of jam in the middle), her lemon meringue pies and apple pies, her rice puddings, her sago puddings, and her bread and butter puddings (not to mention the yorkshire puddings she often made to go with a roast).

Mum loved cats and cats loved Mum, so we always had a cat. I have fond memories of Twinkle ( a tabby cat) , Spicy (a Siamese cat), Misty Meshan (a Siamese cat), Topaz (a long haired pussy cat) and Mamma cat (a black and white cat).

Once , while on a family caravan holiday to Canberra in the mid 1960s , Mum's sanguine and generous approach to strangers resulted in the whole family receiving an invite to the home of the High Commissioner of Ceylon for the afternoon. It was a luxurious mansion set in some beautiful gardens. We spent a most interesting and memorable afternoon enjoying the High Commissioner's hospitality.

maryatoakandbirch

One of my fondest memories as a young boy of Mum is : after a day out, perhaps at an ocean beach or visiting friends, we would climb back into our yellow Consul (the car we had shipped to Australia when we travelled here on a P & O Ocean Liner called " The Himalaya" from England in 1960) and start the drive home. I would promptly put my head on Mum's lap and fall asleep while Dad drove . The next thing I would know is we had arrived home and Mum and Dad were gently ushering me to my bedroom . Mum and Dad seemed the very essence of safety and security to me.