Picture gallery - heyday

Thanks for your birthday greeting Lillie. The actual day (last Wednesday) turned out to be rather miserable, as November days often do, and produced nothing worth writing about. So I have decided to cheer myself up with some of my favourite 'snaps' from the past, which mark the passage of the years.

This was taken standing in a field on my cousins' farm in Clee St Margaret, Shropshire, when I was 24. I think it was around then that I first plucked up courage to wear trousers, and I am quite surprised to realise that we apparently had jeans around in those days. The belt I am wearing is a typical schoolboy's belt - elasticated with and S-shaped snake clasp in front.

Feeding the pigeons in St Mark's Square in Venice in 1954. I had recently gone to live in Switzerland to work for the World Health Organisation, and this was one of the first holidays I took with three friends, travelling by train from Geneva. It was only a long weekend, and I never got to ride in a gondola. I am still hoping to get back there and make that good.

The skis are my friend's, not mine! I was far too frightened of hurting myself to be any good at skiing, and soon gave up. But it was so easy to get to the resorts from Geneva that I went with my friends anyway to enjoy the sun and snow. This was in Oberlech in Austria in 1955.

And this is at one of the lakeside beaches on the edge of Geneva. The Vespa is mine, the first vehicle I ever had, and I loved it. I have never enjoyed driving a car as much as I did buzzing around the place on my two fat wheels - so unstable on the tramlines, especially in wet weather!

I have posted this wedding picture before, but while I'm showing off my legs, I may as well show this one again too. It was taken by a friend whom we commissioned to do the wedding pictures, and she did us proud. My last few moments as a single woman.

My first born is on his way. Every now and then my husband would take a really smashing picture, more by accident than design, I think, and this is one of them.

And this, though nothing special as a picture, represents for me a time of comfortable and satisfying fulfilment. In my 40th year, I had recently given birth to the last of our four sons, and was perfectly happy in my role as a family woman. My three older boys were with me in the garden, and made nice pictures on that occasion, smiling handsomely instead of pulling faces. The little one was probably asleep in his pram under an apple tree.