Boxes in the Attic

I used to imagine my brain as an attic containing carefully labelled boxes, which I could open when I wished to retrieve a memory. Now the labels have come off and been reattached to the wrong box, or become smudged and illegible. When looking for a word that I know well, but have temporarily mislaid, I rummage in the wrong box and find a quite different memory from the one I was seeking. Sallie Lloyd-Jones shares some of her memories with us.

Box 2: The Black Cushions

We didn’t often have visitors to our little house in Bermuda. Bermuda was where my family spent most of the war years while my father, who had originally been stationed there, was now at Faslane. My two sisters had friends who would come and join them in the next door pool, or accompany them on kayak trips, but Mother was disinclined to have guests for herself.