The excitement caused by the arrival of our first egg yesterday put me in mind of another moment of excitement surrounding an egg and is one of my first complete and sequential memories.

When I was a small child...............

….............somewhere around the age I am in this picture (2/3?) we were living in a rented house in Send, Surrey called Four Farrundells (there's one for you Mr. Dwyer – word smith!).

At the time rationing was in full force in post-war England.
(Another early memory is queuing endlessly, first for the ration books themselves and then for each and every item that was then rationed.)

Butter, tea, sugar and many, many other things that today we take for granted - including eggs and chickens – were in very short supply and were all luxuries that caused excitement and celebration whenever they, infrequently, became available.

So imagine the excitement of this small child when he was given an egg by the bread delivery man.

I ran back from his van, with the bread and the egg in hand, to show my mother but fell on the steps to the kitchen door - and broke the egg.

I was disconsolate.

After the grazed knees were repaired, my mother scraped the egg from the door-step and scrambled it for me!

Ingenuity (and frugality, if not parsimony) were extreme virtues in those days and my mother had them in spades!