Part 1.
Early Years 1933-1937
I was born at 5 am on Thursday February 2nd 1933. My birth was followed by a loud clap of thunder, which is perhaps why I have always hated thunder and lightning. I was born in a house belonging to the Behesnilians, an Armenian family, on a road leading from the current Churchill Street to the market. It was painted yellow and blue and was still there in 1956.
Addis Ababa was littered in houses where my siblings had been born, the reason being that Mum(Chris) always came in from Mulu to have her babies, in case of complications, I suppose. My sisters complain that I was a spoilt brat but I suspect that changed when Stephen was born two years later and he became the spoilt one, being the second boy in a family of six. Back at Mulu I think I was looked after by “black nanny” whom I do not remember. She was part of a group of people captured for the slave market and brought back to Ethiopia by the Emperor. He had heard of this group of Ethiopians who had been rescued from a slave trader ship and taken to South Africa and he brought them back and made sure they all got jobs. She is remembered by my older siblings as using a particularly painful pinch, when they were naughty. She was still alive when my Dad (Dan) arrived back in Ethiopia in 1942 but she died shortly afterwards. Some of you will remember Tedale at the Sandford School. She was Black Nanny’s daughter.
I cant remember myself anything about my life for the first two years but I was put on a horse for my daily airing and have loved horses ever since. After all, my name Philippa, means lover of horses. In 1935 the Italians invaded Ethiopia and Chris had to return to England with Stephen and myself and maybe Audrey. We went by boat, possibly from Djibuti and hearsay relates that the horn on the boat got stuck at full blast, which terrified me. We arrived in Europe in Spain, I think in Barcelona, where either Stephen or I caused consternation by pulling the tablecloth off the table with the resulting loud crash which apparently alarmed everyone as there had been political trouble and people seemed to think the crash was a prelude to more trouble. Also legend has it that the Thomas Cook’s agent who was helping Mum, on receiving a tip from her said “Madam, can you afford it?”. Was it genuine concern or a pointed remark that she had not given him enough.
On arrival in England, I think we went to stay in Dursely with Aunt Emma Awdry. She had a big house with large grounds and also had horses so I managed to go on getting some riding. The other thing I remember there, was a large revolving stand on the breakfast table which held butter, marmalade etc and which you could rotate till what you wanted was there in front of you. I think they are called Lazy Susans I also remember planting an orange pip with my cousin Simon Awdry and wondering how long it would take to become a fruiting tree. On a visit to the same house with Michael about fifty years later, alas there was no orange tree but the garden pool into which Stephen fell was still there. He was rescued by the gardener whom I think was called Gapper. He was very bad tempered and has always reminded me of Mr McGregor in Peter Rabbit.
This must have been a very difficult time for Chris and Dan. They had come back to England with no money and no job. Dan had come to England later than Chris as he had been sent to Maji to help stamp out the slave trading routes across the southern border of Ethiopia from central Africa to the Red Sea. He had no obvious trained job that he could do. Chris had her teacher training and I remember that we went up to Beverley in Yorkshire where Mum got a job at a girls school in which Aunt Ethel was involved in. I think we were in rented accommodation and for some reason I
remember a butchers shop across the road and the friendly waves he gave to us children. After that I remember being in Dorset in a village called Batcombe where we lived in the old school house. Chris had a job teaching in Yeovil. I remember that Stephen and I had to go and collect the milk from a farm up the road and we would go up the road chanting 2 quarts, one pint or whatever it was that we needed. The church was across a field at the far edge. We also used to go sledging on tea trays down a steep part of the downs. It’s strange what one remembers. For some reason Audrey decided that I needed to learn to make and light a camp fire though I don’t remember cooking anything on it. We had a maid called Lily and she fell off her bike down the hill and was scratched and bleeding. I also remember being near a community of Brown Brothers. I think they must have been Franciscans and we used to get a Christmas tree from them. We seemed to have had a lot of visitors coming to see us – relatives, I think, mostly, but who they were I have no idea. Dad was with us by then and I remember him being there at Christmas one year. I also remember having a ghastly earache. I do remember Dad searching desperately for a job and at last he got one becoming secretary to the building fund for Guildford’s new cathedral. This must have triggered our move to Surrey and the village of Ewhurst. The house was called Brookside and was to be a home for us for several years.
