Bucks, Beds and Bricks: A Phorpres Childhood

The author was born towards the end of WWII in Bletchley, England, home to the famous code-breaking site Bletchley Park - ＂Station X.＂ By the age of ten she had moved with her family to Stewartby, a small village just outside Bedford that was then home to the largest brickworks in the world. She spent a number of her early adult years living overseas on three of the five continents, before returning to England in 1974. Her career path here took several unexpected and surprising, but ultimately fulfilling, twists and turns. The same has held true so far of her personal life and retirement. In 2014 she moved with her partner John to New Zealand, where her daughter and family also live. Her new life in Christchurch, which includes many and varied activities and interests, keeps the author as busy as she has ever been. For leisure, reading still remains a great love. The author conceived the idea for this account of her childhood at a time of serious illness and major surgery, when she began the gathering of memories and pictures. She remembered her regret that her own grandparents had died before she had discovered very much about their early lives. This concentrated her mind on the possibility that, whatever the outcome of her illness, she might not be around to satisfy her own grandchildren’s curiosity in later years. The author has three children, each born in a different country and on a different continent, and six grandchildren. She has sons and grandsons, other family and friends, in the USA, the UK and around the globe. She gratefully embraces the technology that enables instant communication wherever in the world any of them may be. The author has written a book of poems, ＂Variegated Verse,＂ also available on Amazon.