My earliest 'memory'

My earliest recollection - I can scarcely call it a memory as it is very faint in my mind's eye - dates back to when I was but 2 years, three months, and about eleven days old! I had been alive for 831 days. Wow! So exact!

However, I can calculate this fact because on 11 April 1947 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and the two royal princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, visited Livingstone in what was then The Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and my birthday falls on the last day of the year - and I was born on 31 December 1944.

Livingstone 1947, I am sitting beside my Dad, Alex (pr Alec) Edmonds, with my baby sister, Catriona, after she survived cerebral malaria, one of the youngest children ever to do so, with another child to the left, and a puppy Rhodesian Ridgeback, called Roddy, a most faithful dog, devoted to me and my brother, Donald, and sister, Catriona.

I vaguely recall standing beside the road when the Royal family passed by in a large black car - and according to my mother, she got me to salute and the King gave me a smile and a wave. I do not recollect that but I do recall something of that big car driving slowly passed. No doubt we were standing as a family on what became known as The Royal Mile, a road that had been resurfaced for the occasion.

The Royal family visited to see the Victoria Falls during the Royal Visit to Southern Africa during the terrible British winter of 1946/47.

Royal Family at Victoria Falls 1947

It was a long tour in an effort to shore up the pro-British South African government of Jan Smits - but all in vain, the Africaner, Nationalist Party, came to power in 1948, despite the 'success' of the Royal Visit.

The Royals had arrived at the Zambezi Boat Club by launch from the town of Victoria Falls on the Southern Rhodesian side (where they stayed at the Falls Hotel for that Easter weekend) accompanied by the state barge of Barotseland Paramount Chief, Litunga Imwiko. They were met by the Governor of Northern Rhodesia, Sir John Waddington, and driven to the township in the governor's car. The local paper,The Livingtone Mail, wrote that it was 'the most important day in the history of the town,' although in fact, the Royals only stayed in Livingstone, which was a rather basic and unattractive township, compared with Victoria Falls, for the afternoon.

The sense of excitement - from my parents - and the cheering of those standing along the route, no doubt made an impression on me, despite my early years, must have heightened my senses and created a 'memory' for me.

My father, Alexander (Alex prn 'Alec') McDonald Edmonds

My father was born in Edinburgh, in Gorgie or Dalry near the Tynecastle (Heart of Midlothian FC aka 'Hearts') Football stadium on 16 October 1910. His father, Robert, joined the Royal Scots Greys and fought at Gallipoli and then on the Western Front along with his five brothers, all surviving the great slaughter of WWI, except that his brother George was gassed and died in 1921 of respiratory disease. My great-uncle George worked in a garage in Dalkeith - which as still in operation on the A68 near the Dalkeith High School that I attended for my high school years. As George did not actually die during the, he was not accorded 'war death' status and his widow did not receive a pension. So much for 'a land fit for heroes'!

My grandfather was a cabinet maker, but he had been absent during the war years and work was not easy to come-by afterwards, even before the Great Depression. The family circumstances were poor. My father was brought up on porridge fro breakfast and usually a kipper (smoked herring - which wrre cheap) - or part thereof for his 'tea' (evening meal). He had an older brother by two years, John, and a younger brother, Robert, again by about two years. From an early age, during WWI, my father worked on a milk float (a horse drawn wagon, pulled by a Clydesdale horse operated by the Fountainbridge St Cuthbert's Dairy - quite close to his family home, a tenement in Gorgie Road. In the winter his hands would be frozen and he suffered from chilblains on his toes and heels of his feet - but the small pay he received went straight to his mother for 'housekeeping.'

My father recalls the outbreak of the war, although he was only four at the time, as the first bombing raid of the entire war was an attack on the Forth Railway Bridge and the associated naval bases. The sound could be heard in Edinburgh - and of course the whole thing was a huge sensation and talking point.

When his father returned from the war, he liked to have a boiled egg for breakfast, occasionally sharing the top of the egg with one of his sons. When times were really tough, the family might only be able to afford one kipper - for th father. On one occasion, my Dad asked as his father sat down to eat the kipper, 'Where's my kipper?' only to be told -  'You've had yours - you got the  smell of it!' And he was probably lucky not to get what was called 'a thick ear' from a hard slap across his face for daring to ask!

All three boys were bright at school but had to leave as soon as they were fourteen to earn money for the family - even although as boy labour they would be paid in pennies! John was apprenticed to painter and decorator and that became his trade - and he eventually ran his own business and lived in a typical Edinburgh bungalow in the Edinburgh suburb of Portobello for the rest of his life, with his wife, Ina, and two sons, Robert and Ian (Scots for John). My father was taken by his mother to get a job at a warehouse to start a 'career' as a warehouse-man (he would have been a 'odd-job' runner no doubt as a 'lad') - this in 1924 and there was a queue of other lads hoping to get the one position on offer. They boys were all handed a list of items with prices and amounts. The first boy to calculate the total price - and of course all correct - would get the position. It was a race! My father didn't win. So an angry mother dragged him away. Howevrer, as luck would have it, as they passed a Boots The Chemist shop, the manager was just posting a notice in the window that said 'Delivery lad wanted! Must be able to ride a bike.' Without a moment's hesitation, my father's mother took him into the shop and speaking to the manager said, 'Excuse me, sir, Here's you delivery lad. Alexander here can ride a bike. He won't let you down.'

Alex got the job and joined Boots. He was a delivery lad for a year or so, then trained to be a dispenser, before qualifying through night school at the Herriot Watt Institute in Edinburgh (now the Herriot Watt University) as a pharmacist (entitled to place the letters 'MPS' - member of The Pharmaceutical Society - after his name). He often said to me, 'You know, if I'd been a bit quicker at adding up these figures, I could well have become a warehouseman, eventually rising to be a warehouse manager!' Instead, he became a respected professional in the health industry working in both hospitals in Africa and chemist shops, including his own business, in Scotland - and strangely, when he died at only 56 years of age, he was again working as the pharmacist manager of a Boots chemist shop - Musselburgh, perhaps about 10 miles from where he began his work career with the same firm, 42 years earlier.