Page 40 - My Story

By now we were pretty well established in Kleve. We had lots of visitors from the UK – my cousin
Ariel arrived with a jeep load of his fellow students one night and spread themselves all over our living
room floor and he came again on his own one fall – I remember we were just making the last calls of the
year at Wissel – and stayed and stayed. It was nice having him and the children enjoyed him, but I
remember thinking I would like to have my living room couch back!

Ludie came and Auntie Anne from Australia. She was making a pilgrimage to the UK and my
mother brought her over and left her with us for a few days. She was good company and always took
Toby out in the pram to rock him to sleep. And, of course, there was Aunt Doris. Always embarrassing,
she would insist on calling every waiter, “Garcon” and with her endless curiosity would have the girls ask
the shop assistants to take every item out of the shop windows in order to study it – but never to buy.
“PLEASE don’t make us take her shopping again,” they would cry!

Around this time three-year-old Hilary discovered books and started trying to read. She had
barely started to speak although she understood two languages. One morning she woke up and looked
at me, and I looked again, and the child was completely cross eyed. I rushed her over to our friend, Herr
Doctor Wiegand, who said she was longsighted and all the concentration on books had been too much for
her eyes. He gave her glasses and a patch.

The three girls started playing the recorder and took the lessons very seriously. They would
perform together and entertain our friends – well, proud Mama thought they were entertaining our
friends!

Peter was asked to teach an English class at the local night school. When he was travelling, which
happened more and more, I would call Elisabeth in to take care of the children and take over the class. I
enjoyed it.

Somewhere on the route to Holland, on the Dutch side of the border was an Albert Hein
restaurant where they served the first Wimpy’s. A Wimpy was a small hamburger and our children loved
them. I remember going in to Albert Hein one time with Jackie and Peter and their two girls and we got
through twenty-three Wimpys, most of them eaten by Helen and Lesley.

Jackie with Lesley & Debra

It was very easy to pass between Germany and Holland in those days – it probably still is. We
went through a small border post and rarely needed to show any kind of papers. One day Peter went into
Holland to the Rotterdam office but was stopped on the way back and asked for his passport. He didn’t

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