Everything was great. My life was full of wonder and I had plenty of love around me. The whole family, uncles aunties cousins, friends I had were related to my familly in one way or another, cousins had married cousins in past times and no doubt a few sisters and brothers got together ( village life in the past mmmm !! ) anyway nothing new there. But time past and yet again it was time for us to leave and this time if 've got it right we went to live in Germany in a place called ' Lemgo '.


Lots of Army quarters , very concrete with ......' The NAAFI '... (be all and end all shop). And I was about to learn a bit about prejudice and that parents have everything to do with teaching their children hatred. Do they really know how dangerous that is and how it spreads like wild fire in a bone dry forest ?

By this time I'm about seven I think and I am able to speak Friesian , Dutch, understand German and can only speak English with a strong foreign accent with words that tended to come out back to front . I wore clothes that were very Dutch/Friesian, I still had my 'clompen' clogs and I had, had my ears pierced when I was just a few months old, which was a tradition in my family and most little girls had earrings until the day they died. That's why you see old ladies ears stretched because of the heavy gold (it's always, always gold ).

We were always taught not to wear shoes or clogs in the house and everyone even the adults would take their shoes/ clogs off at the front door and even police, ministers etc. would never dream of keeping their shoes on, it was just very disrespectful .... I wonder if the idea came from the Japanese as the Dutch did a lot of business with them in the old days ? My ancestor seemingly had a ship which I think they called a 'ton boat' ....I'm not sure anyway he would sail to Japan and back he would come with lots of blue Delft , the Dutch love it and coral.

I didn't have a brilliant time with the people in Lemgo, but got by, because my parents tried to teach me tolerance . Having nasty names shouted at me and children laughing at the way I spoke and the clothes I wore was a bit confusing as I hadn't known about that before.....but then..........I met my best friend , Ruby ( yep! she had ginger hair ) .... and lots of laughs and fun began to take my sadness and confusion away slowly, but surely.