Baby photo challenge

Having seen responses to this challenge yesterday from freespiral and kendall I spent yesterday evening looking through old family albums. In the end I couldn't choose just one photo so I made a collage: Top left and right, my parents with me aged about 2 months in the garden of their house. It was taken, I think, by my aunt or uncle and their presence on a visit would explain my father's cravat. This was our home after my parents were asked to leave Egypt at the end of January 1952 because of anti-British feeling, even though my father, as an early proponent of devolution for Wales, was sympathetic to Egyptian desires for freedom. My parents met in Egypt and my father had worked there for 25 years. It must have been a stressful time, especially for my mother who was 7 months pregnant with me when they fled. They went back to Wales to this house that belonged to my father's cousin and my father didn't have a job until we all moved to north Africa again four years later. The house had no running water or electricity. The ty bach (privy) was in the roofless outbuilding next to it. It was a mile from the nearest tarmac road - not that it mattered much since they couldn't afford a car. My father had to travel around Wales doing freelance lecturing and broadcasting and although there were relatives' houses within sight across the fields it wasn't a very good place for my mother to be alone with a small baby, and then a couple of years later my sister too. I remember it as a happy place, but there must have been a lot of worries too.

So strange to realise that in these photos my grandmother was the age that I am now, and my mother was younger than my children are now. I was the first of my father's second family so he was 47 when I was born, but still a lot younger than I am now!

In the centre below there's evidence that I took an early liking to a chaise longue, and on the left my maternal grandmother is holding me (this one's for Kendall). On the right I'm taking some first steps in my aunt's garden in Port Talbot. My mother, leading me, was looking smart and elegant as she always did when she had the opportunity to leave the mountain. I was known for not being very keen on walking and still need some persuading that a walk for its own sake, rather than to get to somewhere, is a good idea.

I hope lots of other blippers will respond to peopletwitcher's challenge!