That living room of my childhood is indelibly printed on my memory as a place of love, comfort and happiness, a refuge in times of trouble, and always that caring figure [of my mother] with the gentle, capable hands and soft cosy lap when we felt poorly […] How hard she worked to keep everything, including us clean and sparkling. I never realized till I myself married, just how hard my mother must have worked, and how she must have juggled with the pennies to feed and clothe [all seven of] us. No state handouts or labour saving devices in those days, and yet she seemed to sing her way through life with songs like “The yellow rose of Texas”, ‘When we are married”, “When the fields are white with daisies”, “I’ll be your sweetheart”, ‘Honeysuckle and the bee” and many others of that time, though how she knew them, I can’t think, unless from some tinkling musical box or a barrel organ.