Happy Birthday, Mum!

My mother was born on 28th February 1913 when her mother, with Mum's older sister Christian, was staying with her mother in Newick, Sussex so, had my mother survived, she would have been 110 today.

It's not clear from my mother's writings why the family was in Newick, for my grandfather was working in Karachi at the time, where Christian had been born, and travelled to the UK to see my mother christened in the family's home territory of Stirling. On their return to the Far East grandfather was posted to Rangoon, in Burma, where my mother spent her early years. This return trip must have been after the war started in 1914 as their ship was escorted by naval ships in the Atlantic.

My mother is the dark girl in the centre of this picture, taken in Burma, with Christian on the left and Noel in my grandmother's arms. My mother used to joke that her dark skin was an inheritance from the Spaniards who were wrecked on the Caithness coast of Scotland where the Wilson family originated.

My mother's experiences in Burma gave her an urge to travel, which is why she seized the offer of a post working for the British administration in Zanzibar, where she met my father. Their peripatetic life - they lived in at least seven different houses in their years on the East African coast - probably goes some way to explaining my brother's and my wanderings.

So, happy birthday, Mum, and thank you for your part in making me the person I am.