I have many memories of Audrey that I want to write about now that she is no longer with us.
There were six of us in our family. Christine, Eleanor, Dick, Audrey, Philippa and Stephen.
Audrey was the nearest sister to me in age but young enough to share our childhood together. I even have some photos of her when she was a teenager and some even younger than that. And latterly she and I were the youngest.
siblings left and after Stephen died the only siblings left. She and I both went to Wycombe Abbey school and both of us hated it after the freedom of Mulu and Ethiopia. She had always wanted to be a singer and she had a lovely voice. But in those days being trained as a singer was NOT the thing to do. But luckily for us, our mother Christine had also been to university at Girton College in I think Cambridge, so she supported both Audrey and I when we wanted to do something unusual for females to do. I had the same support when I decided that I wanted to go to Kenya to the agricultural College there because I knew I could not afford to go to the College in England. There was certainly one that would accept girls but when we went to look at it. It was perfectly obvious that girls were “second class citizens” with appalling conditions in overcrowded dormitories.
Hopefully, that has changed now but I do think females have a lot to thank Sylvia Pankhurst for (though I think she was far too politically minded caring about poorer candidates) I met her once and thought that politics had gone to her head.
Audrey used to sing in the house in Addis Ababa and at Mulu and would join in the local productions of Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas in Addis Ababa.
Then Bartie Knight arrived in Ethiopia. I think he came out to do some teaching and even some medical work.
Anyway, he fell in love with Audrey and they got engaged and then got married
It was f8n to have a marked sister and brother-in-law in Addis Ababa and I used to join in going out to parties with them and concerts.
There were a lot of Armenians in Addis Ababa and they were very musical and were introduced to Gilbert and Sullivan light operas that they found very amusing and intriguing and so they were co-opted into singing Gilbert and Sullivan light operas as well.
Barties mother had a cottage in the Isle of Wight and I used to go over and stay with them. It was in an area called Egypt Point and I used to go and stay with them. I was fascinated by the fact that they had bunk beds to sleep on.
At some moment they moved to the Lebanon and I remember visiting them there and going to the rock hewn buildings at Petra. Bartie was always horrified by my lack of knowledge about writing properly in the English language and would give me lessons in how to write proper English.So I remember him too and make sure I check my spelling when writing anything.
I also think I remember travelling back to England with them—a fascinating journey passing through many countries on the way.
So, she became a very special person in my life and I need to write down the memories I have of her. There are two memories I have of her which I am sure are true. The first is her dragging a shotgun into the sitting room in Addis Ababa to try and shoot the people who were laughing at her Dad. Luckily the guns were never put away loaded.
The final Memory is of her being fed a hard-boiled egg by our dad (Daniel Arthur Sandford) and it getting stuck in her throat and he had to hold her upside down to get the egg out. The final memory is of Audrey deciding that I needed to know how to boil a hard-boiled egg and also how to light a camp fire, which has been very useful in my life, when we used to go travelling to all sorts of places, especially in Ethiopia.