Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Introduction
The story is a memoir of a child, Elizabeth Watt, and her sister , Margaret, growing up in Calcutta and Darjeeling before going to live in England after the War.
Liz, or Lizzie, is a slightly solemn, cautious child who, fortunately for her, has a happy-go-lucky older sister, who helps her when they are both thrown into testing situations by parents busy with their own lives.
Browser by chapterMusic
My father was an excellent pianist who could play anything by ear. He could accompany Mrs. Leigh Bennett or play the latest hit tunes or a version of the Moonlight sonata. He could read music too but, as far as I know, often took the easier or faster way of playing by ear. American films were coming to Calcutta then. There was lots of discussion about Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh. Crooning was pretty new to these Anglo-Indian ears and not everybody liked him to start with - besides he was a scrawny young man.
One of the soldiers billeted with us, I remember, wanted desperately to make it as a song-writer. He spent hours at the piano picking out a tune to a verse that began: "When the poppies bloom again I'll remember you..." I hope I am not ascribing someone else's song to him, but I have googled this phrase and nothing pops up. I don't recall him getting any further than the first two lines, which quickly became tedious. None of us were sorry when he and the song had to move on.
We had a gramophone of course, of the old HMV type that used to be pictured on their records along with the little dog. Winding up the mechanism was not to be done by small children because it was all too easy to knock the arm holding the needle and wreck the 78 rpm record. Surprisingly I still have one or two of those records which made it back to England with my mother. There is the Mills Brothers' "Deep in the heart of Texas", and a great rendering of "Home James and don't spare the horses".
