Page 29 - My Story (final)

Other good friends were Norman Diamond and his cousin Bonnie who had been at Mimi’s party.
I think Bonnie had been at school with Peter and he always hung out with Norman who was a little older.
Peter and Norman played tennis together. We often visited Norman at his home in Crouch End and got
to know his parents quite well, Dave and Dolly. Dolly remembered my parents from the shop in Ridley
Road. They were nice people, always ready to laugh and Dolly gave me her recipe for Mandelbrot which
I use to this day.

Peter had a good friend from the army, when he was doing his National Service, Phil O’Grady. Phil
was in the regular army but came out eventually and lived in London, at a very posh address, I believe it
was 1 Queensgate, with his parents who were chauffeur and housekeeper to Sir James Miller, a building
magnate, who spent a year as Lord Mayor of London. Sir James ran a Rolls Royce and Mr. O’Grady was a
certified Rolls Royce driver. Sir James and his family spent a lot of time in Scotland, so we were always
being called in to eat leftovers of salmon, jugged hare, venison and other foods that our mothers had
probably never dreamed of cooking. All the shopping was done at Harrods and Mr. O’Grady would drive
his wife there, an insignificant little woman sitting knitting in the back of the Rolls Royce! We had some
grand evenings with them, usually with Mrs. O’Grady’s sister who was a singer with the Carla Rosa opera
and had some colourful tales to tell as another guest. We also got to watch television there, a rare treat.
Neither of us had a television set at home in those days.

I loved spending time with Peter’s mother’s family, they were so jolly. She had seven sisters, Aunt
Alice, whom we’ve talked about, Aunt Doris, unmarried, who had been an assistant matron in a large
mental hospital and was pretty frightening, Aunt Clara who lived in Bournemouth who had had a fish and
chip shop in Wood Green and had three daughters and a son, Jeff, Aunt Nell who was married to Horace,
the milkman for whom Peter had worked at weekends when he was at school, who had two daughters,
Aunt Ol who lived in sin with David, somewhere up north, Aunt Flo who was married to someone
Longworth who became the coach for Liverpool football club and Aunt Betty who was married to Len
Tanner, who worked for Danish Bacon. They had three daughters, Margot, Wendy and Hilary, each more
beautiful than the other and a son, John and they lived in Harston, near Cambridge. Peter took me down
to meet them one Sunday on the Vespa and we were made very welcome and given a delicious roast
dinner.

Nana Lanzer: Lilian Jessie Taylor, aged about 17 in 1919
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