My life begins

Yours truly

By early 1927 my parents were expecting their first child, and I recently came across a beautiful love letter which my mother wrote to my father one night, when she was already in bed, and he was still in the bathroom. What she was writing about was their joyful anticipation of my arrival, though of course they did not know it was ME at that stage. On 29th November I was born, in a nursing home in Birmingham.

I was taken home as a new-born infant to live in Henley-in Arden at The Corner House, from where my parents ran their business. Before becoming The Newcombe Garage it had been a shop, on a splendid plot in the market square, with windows facing both down and across the street. Our garden was detached. We had to cross the back lane, walk through the garage yard, and down alongside the repair shop, and there it was – a charming walled garden with a pond, and also a stream running at the bottom.

When she returned home, my mother had what was known as a “monthly nurse” : a live-in nurse to look after the baby, allowing the mother a nice long rest and recuperation period in bed! I believe it was the nurse who imposed the discipline of the renowned babycare specialist Dr Truby King, but despite its rigours I seem to have grown up healthy and conscious of being loved.

If you have followed the Truby King link above, you may enjoy a cradle story which I only know by being told about it. When they settled into their first home together, my parents began to collect dark oak antique furniture, which looked well in an old house like The Corner House. As a surprise for my mother, my father went out and bought a beautiful Jacobean cradle on rockers for their sitting room - something in which, as a baby, I could be safely parked when I was downstairs with them. Unfortunately, because of Dr King's strictures about spoiling babies by rocking them, my father had the dealer remove the rockers before he took the cradle home to my mother - thereby considerably reducing its integrity and value, of course! I used to recount this story to my son's antique dealer father-in-law, and watch him turn green at the mere idea of it! Later, the cradle sat for many years beside the piano, full of my father's sheet music. Now, in my house, it has spare blankets, rugs and cushions in it.