Snapshot: my mother, the toddler émigré, 1940
The two forlorn-looking little girls in this picture are my mother, Moragh, and her older sister, Kathrine. Their smart outfits make them look older, but they are aged just two and four. Behind them is their mother’s sister, their auntie Con, who they have recently met for the first time after leaving behind everyone and everything familiar to them and travelling halfway around the world. The photo was taken in 1940 in Dunedin, New Zealand, to send to my grandparents in Britain with news of how their young daughters were getting on in their new home.
On the other side of the world, the Nazis were advancing across Europe and an invasion of Britain seemed so inevitable that many parents believed evacuation overseas was the only hope of a safe future for their children. Those, like my grandparents, with relatives abroad were more fortunate than most. Still, it must have been an agonisingly hard decision – imagine waving off your children, not knowing when or if you would ever see, or even speak to, them again. In an age when international phone calls were extremely expensive, the girls had no direct contact with their parents until they learned to read and write well enough to communicate by letter.
My grandparents had sent their young daughters away with the best of intentions, but they must have questioned their decision when they saw this picture. My mother looks so close to tears that you can practically see her lower lip trembling. The girls’ evacuation had a huge impact on Auntie Con’s life, too. Unmarried and with no children, she had a successful career as matron of a nursing home, so suddenly being responsible for two small girls must have led to major changes in her lifestyle.
Moragh and Kathrine grew to enjoy their new life. Other pictures that were sent back show them having fun, but I’ve always found this one the most striking; it is unusual to see young children looking so unhappy in photographs. Later in the war, when there were fears that Japan would invade New Zealand, the girls were sent to live with “foster parents” on a big sheep station near Mount Cook. My mother has particularly fond memories of this time, which left her with a lifelong love of mountains.
After the war, the girls returned to Britain – to parents they couldn’t remember, a baby sister born in their absence and a Wigan primary school where they were mocked for their strange Kiwi accents. Auntie Con must have grown very attached to them, but they were not to meet again until she visited Britain more than three decades later.
Ruth Bradshaw
Playlist: it’s funny how you turn into your dad
Brahn Boots sung by Stanley Holloway
“In brahn boots … I ask yer … brahn boots!”
As young kids, our biggest Sunday afternoon treat came when Dad brought the Bush record player down to the living room. We played the few albums we had very loudly and sang along like injured cats. Queen’s A Night at the Opera, with the inevitable Bohemian Rhapsody, was a highlight for these eight- and 10-year-olds.
After he had tolerated all he could, Dad would often bring his own records out. Some of these were TV-advertised and frankly dreadful. The one that caused us the most grief was Stanley Holloway’s greatest hits. When the yellow 12in Starline sleeve came out of the record box, our hearts sank. I think Dad thought we would be taken by tales of The Lion and Albert. But we were far too sophisticated for that. We were men of the world. We had a Sparks album in the house.
It’s funny how you turn into your dad. As the years passed, I started to build an appreciation for Holloway’s turn of phrase on these monologues. But the tracks I secretly learned to love were the songs. Brahn Boots is the best, a sweet song about a bloke who gets shunned at a family funeral for wearing “brahn boots”. Unbeknown to the others, he had given his black boots to someone with no boots at all. Not your typical single.
Fast forward a few years and I was working as an audio-visual librarian in a university library. For reasons I never understood, we had a Stanley Holloway studio album in our collection. I naughtily recorded the album for Dad on to tape.
A few years later, my dad died. When we cleared out his car, the only cassette in the glove compartment was this one. I often think about that when I play his Stanley Holloway greatest hits on vinyl.
Antony Brewerton
We love to eat: Marie’s Hollywood chicken casserole
Ingredients
4 large chicken portions
3-4 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp paprika
2-3 tbsp oil
225g (8oz) small onions, peeled and left whole
2-3 carrots, scraped and chopped
1 can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed, plus 285ml (½ pint) water, chicken stock or orange juice
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
¼ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp curry powder
115g (4oz) mushrooms, sliced
Mix flour, salt, pepper and paprika in a bag. Add one piece of chicken at a time and shake, reserving leftover flour. Fry chicken portions then onions until brown and place in casserole with carrots. Blend flour with oil in pan and stir in orange juice. When mixture has thickened, add sugar, ginger, curry powder and mushrooms. Add a little chicken stock or water if sauce becomes too thick. Pour over chicken, cover and cook in moderate oven (180C, 160C fan) until chicken is tender, about 1-1¼ hours. Serve with baked potatoes. This recipe serves four.
It was August 1975 and we were getting married in a Sussex village near to the family fruit farm. Our present list was quite modest by modern standards and, looking back, eerily resembles the kind of items you’d see on the conveyor belt of the Generation Game (then at its peak). It included a Ewbank carpet sweeper, plates and cups from a Denby service, cutlery, a flan dish, a Black & Decker drill and a wall clock. But the best presents are always the ones you haven’t asked for, in our case a Grecian urn, brought back with care by our best man from an Ionian island (and still in our lounge); an LP (Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No 1, from my father-in-law’s friend, who played at the wedding); and a cookbook, from our bridesmaid, Marie.
We can’t remember any celebrity chefs from those days, but in any event this cookbook wasn’t of that lineage. It was an orange ringbinder containing 30 recipes, chosen personally and lovingly hand-typed, replete with cartoons (with a penchant for Snoopy) and cooking tips. The recipes were aimed at twentysomethings: post-student, post-single, getting used to holding dinner parties. It included gems such as crispy cod balls, eggs tetrazzini and meatballs stroganoff …
Our standout favourite was Hollywood chicken casserole – a wonderful mixture of chicken, citrus and spice. Marie subtitled the recipe “how to create a smash hit without really trying” and noted that the dish had attracted compliments from a colleague whose comments about food were usually so rude they would be unprintable. We’ve made it hundreds of times over the years and changed it a little – more spice, no sugar and, of course, frozen orange juice has disappeared from supermarkets. This page in the ring binder is well thumbed and stained by many of the ingredients. It always reminds us of Marie – her warmth, openness and ability to add a touch of Hollywood magic to any situation.
Steve Pitt
We’d love to hear your stories
We will pay £25 for every Letter to, Playlist, Snapshot or We Love to Eat we publish. Write to Family Life, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or email family@theguardian.com. Please include your address and phone number.
