Life in Burma, 1930-40

Sheila began her account by describing her childhood in Burma:

My earliest recollections of my life start somewhere in Burma, where we lived from the time of my birth in 1930 until finally we left to come home to England in 1940 after the outbreak of World War Two. My memories are very patchy of my childhood, but I do remember the heat, the incredible heat, and the fact that we spent a great deal of time either in the lake or the swimming pool to cool down.

The swimming pool was our chief joy. We used to go there virtually every day in the evenings after the heat of the day and swim with our parents and spent most of Sunday there. Not only did we have a very helpful and friendly coach called Uncle Mac (MacMahon) who got together a team of children whom he taught to swim, and there were lovely gardens and also an excellent restaurant so that our Sunday swimming session was always finished off with an excellent curry lunch.

We had several houses while we lived in Burma, always rented and always a different one when we had been home on leave. The nicest of these houses was on the lake - what was then known as the Royal Lake. This has now become a house occupied by the elite in the dictatorship that now rules Burma, but at that time it was one of many English houses situated so that it picked up all the cool breezes off the lake. [This house was probably 54 Windermere Park, the residence on Sheila’s baptismal certificate]. They also had a little sailing boat, and we belonged to the boat club.

The second house that I remember well was the final one we lived in, number 21 (or perhaps 22) Kokine Road. This was a very large house, not near the lake, but with a large garden, which was perfect for children with an adventurous spirit. I remember my father rigged up for us an aerial ropeway with a pulley on it, where we used to climb up a tree, take off along this wire and swing down at about ten feet above the ground until we met another tree at the bottom of the garden. This was very popular with all our friends!

I also had a bicycle which I chose with the aid of my great Burmese friend, the Burmese driver's son Kwai, who was my greatest companion (though according to the pictures of us together he must have been rather younger than I was) but he certainly took charge of my bicycle, and of the two of us he learnt to ride it more quickly.

We shared many of our games and toys with the Burmese children who lived in the servants’ compound at the bottom of the garden. We preferred their company to that of the rather prissy English children who had to be dressed up in frilly frocks and kept clean by their nannies when we went out to meet them for afternoon tea. So it was always a delight to get back to the house and change into our ordinary shorts and shirts and race around in the informality of our own house and huge garden. We did have some Burmese friends who lived next door whose father was a judge and they used to come across and play quite often.

Robin and I shared the same bed all the time we lived in Burma. It was a huge slatted wooden bed, very hard but cool, which was very important in the hot season. He and I were fairly inseparable and played all our games together out in Burma.

Unfortunately Robin had very bad asthma which meant that he was always being admitted to hospital.

This could be very frightening at times, particularly when it occurred while we were on holiday miles away in the jungle, as I recall it did one Christmas when we had to set off on a long trek to the nearest doctor and then returned home earlier than intended to Rangoon. As so often happens with children with asthma, as soon as he was in hospital on oxygen he made a rapid recovery.