Some Notes from Bob

Bob says:

I've always liked to relate family activities (B,D and M and special days in the year)  to what  I was doing at the same age. At present, WhatsApp is providing a record of daily activities and could be made good use of.

A big event for me, a major part of my  history,  is on reaching the age of 12, in May 1940, second year  of WW2,  I was told to look after Peter and Sheila and we were put on a double-decker bus at a primary school (not our school) in  Poplar, Isle of Dogs, to be sent  away from London  for our safety from the expected German bombing. So anyone who reads that  can relate my 12-year-old event to what they were doing at 12.                                   

I was old enough to regard this all as a big adventure although I knew there could be dire consequences.

Lt-Col Robert Henry Baker, participant in the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58, is still just  fiction for me.  Nana Griffin told me he  was  given a military funeral when she was a little girl (early 1900s) and the event was written up in a local East Ham paper.  But when his son, also named Robert Henry Baker (Nana's dad; my granddad) was married his father's occupation on the marriage certificate was 'Mason', not 'colonel retired' as would be expected.

As a kid remembers seeing airship flying over London
Benno Moiseiwitsch  recital in Banbury (Bob had access to inside) and got his autograph