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.