My 6th Birthday

I wondered in my last posting why I was so well dressed sat in our garden at Jalan Wijaya with my talking tin robot. Then I came across this photo which was obviously been taken on the same day. There's Alan and me with my cake for my 6th birthday and the reason I'm tidier than usual is because everyone was due to come around for my birthday party. There were many kids on the estate and we all went to each other parties. Many of them I didn't even know. We all looked forward to our birthdays and knew that all the other kids would bring presents. I remember one boy brought me an excellent electronic tin car. He was so excited about it that he unwrapped it himself before giving it to me and then we both drove it around the front room!
It's hard to remember much about the day but I remember that we played pass the parcel and mum had bought many toys to wrap up so that everybody got something. I always liked the cheaper toys and I remember being pleased with a Bugs Bunny watch! We also played games like pass the parcel and pinning the tail on the donkey.

The second photo shows us playing in the garden on the same day. This is one of those photos that got lost over the years but I found that I'd once photographed it onto a slide and just discovered it recently. It's not too clear because of this. In it I can recognise my dad, Debbie Sharpe and Ian Bagwell, who lived nearby, as well as my brother. We had another photo of Ian taken just after this one which I can remember but it's long since disappeared.
I've no doubt I had a great day but probably the thing that stayed in my memory the most was playing with that talking tin robot!

Family photos

I haven't written anything on this blog for quite a while so I thought that I would go through our old family photos taken in Singapore and Malaya during the 1960s and write a bit about each of them.
This photo shows me in our back garden at 103 Jalan Wijaya in Johore in about 1967. I wouldn't be surprised if it's my birthday (I'd have been 6) and I'm sat with my favourite toy - a Cragstan talking tin robot! It said many phrases, my favourite being, 'I am bulletproof too! Ha, ha, ha!' If you search through my blog you can hear m copying him on the reel to reel tape that we sent home to my gran in Seaham Harbour. In the background is the tree I planted myself when I was about 4 years old. It was just an old branch I found by the side of the road and stuck in the ground in the back garden. It didn't take long for it to start growing and I was soon climbing it and trying, unsuccessfully, to build a tree house.
I've got socks and shoes on so something must have been going on. I look very tidy too so perhaps my birthday party was about to happen or was taking place indoors.
I loved that robot but unfortunately he ended up in the bin. I've got another one now though (ebay!).