Anlaby in the 1950ies

.Well, I seem unable to put these photos where I want them to go. The top one is my Dad and me holding some hares we shot and which my mother ( who is on the left here holding my black pup called Tor which could mean "beetle" or the Norse God Thor ) would have cooked slowly with plenty of bacon into succulent portions...yum yum...and above is my little sister Jo with the pony Flicka belonging to the managers daughter, but I was teaching my sister to ride. What a fabulous life we rolled into after migrating from Holland. My mother used to be so thrilled to be able to bring the washing in , dry as a chip in no time at all. In Holland I can remember her bringing in the washing with my Dad's long johns frozen and stiff as a board.
She warned us not to touch them as the fibres of course would break and cause holes, and they would be planted around the pot bellied stove to defrost and dry. I was shoved behind that self same stove once, nude as the day I was born, because I had slipped into the canal through the ice hole cut for the fish to breath and the boys I was with had managed to fish me out and bring me home.
I was probably seven or eight at the time.We certainly weren't restricted there as we played out on the street and no one warned us of "stranger danger" in those days, nor obviously how dangerous open cut squares in the ice were.
Back to the photo in which my mother is holding the black pup Tor, the house was corrugated iron and hot as Hades in the summer.Luckily we were only there one summer as we were shifted to what was known as the dairy house, a beautiful stone house with masses of room.That was because my brother as well as being a station hand was also milking the 12 or so cows to keep everyone in milk and cream.The dairy was just up from this house.There were yards where the cows waited to be milked and a very placid Hereford bull used to stand outside and wait for his harem to return.
After the starvation Holland had suffered during the winter of 1944/45 my mother was so thankful for all the good food we were able to have at Anlaby and it erased some of the memories of not being able to feed her family during the war years.We had been more fortunate than most Dutch city dwellers as my father had a job inspecting the market gardens in 'het Westland" and so was able to sneak in potatoes and root vegetables for his family which averted death from starvation.