Happy Family?

This is one of a couple done by a professional photographer. They are both awful. The other one has the wall light by father's head, firmly planted on my mother's.

I think the occasion was connected with us all soon to pack bags and make our way to the UK where I was to be planted in a boarding school and in future would only be allowed home once a year in the summer school holidays. Every other year my parents would have their holiday leave in the UK around Easter or Christmas. So with luck, we would see each other 3 times in two years.

I am sure this very thought accounts for the look on my mother's face. The idea of sending a child of 8 off to school several thousand miles away must have been unbearable. While she bit her adopted British upper lip, it was no doubt dreadful. And I don't think it did me any good either.

But that was the way it was back then in the colonies. I knew it was coming from the day I could think. It was the norm, not the exception.