Bradfield Letters

I continue to work my way through the letters I wrote home during my years at school in England while my parents were in Mombasa. Not all the letters are preserved but there is a full set for 1959, starting with....

....a letter written from the house near Fareham where Richard and I spent our Christmas and Easter holidays. Mrs Groom had up to four children staying with her and, in general, we were happy at Tanners particularly as she kept cocker spaniels for breeding, with which we spent a great deal of our time.

The first letter, like many of them, isn't dated but the postmark is for 4th January, two days after my birthday, and contains the typical sort of cheerful news which I was taught to send home in my letter-writing days at Glengorse.

I would have been fourteen at the time and, after five years of schooling in England, quite used to being a long way from both my parents and the place I loved, but my suppressed emotions do surface occasionally, as in....

....this letter, written on 19th July 1959.  "Here we are," it starts, "with those lovely five words on the tips of our tongues, only a week to go" before hastily moving on to topics of a less emotional sort, such as the exam results.

I find these letters rather upsetting, as the feelings of abandonment, of rejection, of exile I had all those years ago run close beneath their surface; and I remember how we suppressed those feelings, except as each precious summer holiday drew to a close when we begged our parents not to send us back to England.