BLOG | christinecohenpark

1953 in My Father’s House XXI - Finale

Dear Readers, many of you have commented on my mother’s negative reaction, when she glimpses me at the gate of La Maison d’Été, along the...

Christine Cohen Park

Jun 241 min read

1953 in My Father’s House XX - Nearer, Nearer

During the first week of the summer holidays the weather was consistently sunny. One of my father’s brothers and his wife – I can’t...

Christine Cohen Park

Jun 131 min read

1953 in My Father’s House XIX - Summer Term: Hamsters, Shakespeare & Swimming

Poor dear Jaggi died on the day I went back to Badminton, but before I got there. Fred, the groundsman, put him into a Kleenex box for...

Christine Cohen Park

Jun 21 min read

1953 in My Father’s House XVIII - Oh woe, I’m in trouble.

In the summerhouse at 55 Dyke Road Avenue a couple of days after Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation is a dismal scene. A dozen boys are...

Christine Cohen Park

Jun 21 min read

1953 in My Father's House XVII - The Best Things in Life are Free – Unless We are Speaking of a Coronation!

On the last afternoon of the holiday my father and I took the Cocker Spaniel up to Devil’s Dyke. It was a breezy day with a sharp north...

Christine Cohen Park

May 141 min read

1953 IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE XVI - Chaos in the Drawing Room

The canvassing experience acted as a kind of unintended initiation rite which somehow, by the skin of my teeth, I’d managed to pass. In...

Christine Cohen Park

May 21 min read

1953 In My Father's House XV - Hanover Ward: Canvassing

On the walls of the Labour Party constituency headquarters is a blown-up map of the area with red and blue crosses marked against the...

Christine Cohen Park

Apr 101 min read

In My Father's House XIV - A Nice Quiet Companionable Time

Surprisingly enough I did feel better the following morning. I bounded out of bed and went to check on how Mustard was getting on in the...

Christine Cohen Park

Mar 201 min read

1953 In My Father's House XIII - The Chasm Between Home and Away

I’m on the train to Paddington, hamster in cage in the rack above my head and Belinda with hers is in her folks’ car on the way to...

Christine Cohen Park

Mar 111 min read

In My Father’s House XII - Till We Two Meet Again

My father could also be an embarrassment. When we took off for Bristol the following Monday morning in my uncle’s grey Austin, he would...

Christine Cohen Park

Feb 201 min read

In My Father's House XI - Houses, Hamsters, and Robert Browning

The story so far: Aged ten and a half, in the first days of January 1953, leaving my mother and siblings behind in South Africa, I...

Christine Cohen Park

Jan 161 min read

Read my Memoir on Substack

Now over 700 readers of my memoir "1953 In My Father's House" on Substack. If you're not one of them - stert here: ...

Christine Cohen Park

Jan 71 min read

1953 In My Father’s House X - Half-term: First Day Back

In Badminton’s reserved carriages of the train pulling into Paddington there was general jubilation, spirits were running high. The doors...

Christine Cohen Park

Dec 17, 20241 min read

1953 in My Father’s House IX - The Rough Patch & the Wild Patch

Boarding school was a foreign country: the distance from Brighton seemed equal to the distance from Cape Town. As Margaret Atwood...

Christine Cohen Park

Dec 6, 20242 min read

1953 in My Father’s House VIII - What Is It to be a True Socialist? Further Education of a Young Mind

The day for boarding school arrived. We set off straight after breakfast in my father’s highly-polished racing green Bentley. Griff, with...

Christine Cohen Park

Nov 26, 20241 min read

1953 in My Father’s House VII - The Jive and the Tote

Carole came to tea. Mrs Ash and Fay decided that we would have it out in the summerhouse – if the children were to make a mess, then not...

Christine Cohen Park

Nov 26, 20242 min read

1953 in My Father’s House VI - Last Weekend Before School

Dear Readers, this is my continuing memoir of arriving from South Africa, aged ten and a half, to live with my father (who I barely knew)...

Christine Cohen Park

Nov 26, 20241 min read

1953 in My Father's House - V The Fight and its Aftermath

The fight took place one January afternoon with a cold wind blowing off the sea. When it bit into us you could smell the salt. There were...

Christine Cohen Park

Nov 18, 20241 min read

1953 in My Father’s House - IV Feeling My Way

Other writers talk of fully entering the world of adult literature and consuming volumes from public libraries, or should they be lucky...

Christine Cohen Park

Sep 18, 20241 min read

I'll be giving a reading from my new novel at Needlewriters, Lewes on 13th June

The next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 13th June 2024, featuring Charlotte Gann (poetry), Christine Cohen Park (prose),...

Christine Cohen Park

Jun 4, 20241 min read