A very non-PC tale - sorry, everyone!

Charles Pretoria, my mother's cousin, was named after his house, like many Welsh people. His brother was Bob Pretoria, but really they were both Joneses. Presumably the house name commemorated the Boer War.

The mystery of why he turned up at the Strand one Saturday afternoon in 1947 with 5 young airmen who had known my father was solved quite recently when another of my mother's cousins told me he'd been gay. He said at the time that he'd happened to be passing, saw them at the door and 'took the opportunity to make the acquaintance of these brave young fellows who've been fighting for their country'.

Afternoon tea in the drawing-room being insisted upon, I , then aged six, was sent to Railway Stores at next-door-but-one to buy an extra loaf and two packets of the ubiquitous, chocolate-covered round marshmallow and biscuit delicacies, the only shop cake available then. Auntie Kate had half left of the one sponge cake a week she could make from our sugar ration, and this was cut up into very small pieces. Even salmon sandwiches were rustled up with a tin saved out of a parcel from Australia.

Everyone puffed away at their cigarettes while Auntie Kate trotted back and forth to the kitchen like a waitress. There was much cheerful badinage, in English of course. Charles, taking on the position of gracious host, handed round the chocolate marshmallows saying in his affected Oxford accent, 'Do help yourselves to an Abyssinian bosom, boys.' The reference to the Haile Selassie visit was of course quite lost on me, but I appreciated the mirthful attention the remark earned him. So, a little later, when I had been ignored for at least ten minutes by the company, I passed round the plate again with the same exhortation, delivered in my squeaky imitation of Charles' plummy tones.

Everyone roared with laughter, a most satisfying outcome for me. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that when Auntie Kate entertained the minister of Salem Chapel to tea a few weeks later, I didn't realise that the refined Welsh conversation, subdued atmosphere and the absence of my mother's cigarettes made it a somewhat different kind of occasion. Yes, we had chocolate marshmallows again to boost the Victoria sponge, and yes, I repeated that remark again. Oddly, though, nobody heard me this time. So I had to repeat it very loudly. With the result that my mother removed me from the room none too gently and smacked my bottom. Grown-ups! I was never going to understand them.