`Please remember the grotto, only once a year.

Father's gone to sea, Mother's gone to fetch him back,

Please remember me'.

I noticed that many a passer-by who contributed his penny never even saw the grotto that had been so carefully

erected, and this gave me a brain-wave. Retiring to another street, I built no grotto, but chanted the prescribed

words and collected fourpence halfpenny. My financial experiment however, horrified my mother at my duplicity,

and so perhaps a financial wizard was lost to the City!

I have been driven in a Cadillac and the seventy miles an hour seemed but thirty. I can remember much more

primitive ways of travel however. One was a one-horse bus that left St. James' Church. The passenger climbed

aboard and put his penny in a glass covered box which was visible to the driver, and when all were seated he pulled

a cord and away we went with a gentle clip-crop, no petrol, no honking, no hurry. What bad old times! Fancy, no

zebra crossings, no stop and go signals. Soon, with atomic energy and space travel we shall realise the experience

predicted of the pilot who:

`Went out in a relative way and came home the evening before'!

If, as I have indicated, I owe much to the unobtrusive guidance of my father, I am equally indebted to the

example and care of my mother. From her I have inherited a horror of debt, her example supplementing the advice

of old Polonius already quoted. Father was easy going but mother was an organizer, and both were happy in their

Although I was the eldest of the family, and the only son at that, there was never any favouritism shown. Mother

distributed her love and care as well as her correction with an even hand, which if I did not appreciate at the time I

have done so many times since.