I’ve always been a very big cereals lover, particularly fond of large bowls of bran flakes into which I throw in copious amounts of sultanas and then smother with my (not so) secret ingredient fresh ice cold cows milk. I think it stems back to childhood days when I struggled (or gagged more like) with food (particularly solids); cereals were easy to eat and filled my belly. Why am I telling you this? What’s that to do with Gibraltar? I’m not sure really other than I sense a tenuous connection with what I’m writing about today so maybe as I go along it will become more clear and connect somehow 🙂 Then again maybe it won’t.
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Back in the seventies fresh cows milk wasn’t as available in Gibraltar as it is now although that may have been due to the lack of cows on the Rock 🙂 These days that isn’t the case; on my recent visit (in May 2016) I loved being able to walk into Morrisons and pick up fresh milk everyday. 

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If my memory serves me right we had to mix a powdered milk called Nido which didn’t ‘sail-my-boat’ for me and my cereals. In fact I hated it that much I stopped having my beloved bowl full until I got back to UK although I did have to mix the stuff up for Tracey and Sam who didn’t have an issue with it. As well as mixing Nido milk for them I also had to mix up a baby milk called SMA for Benita and so I’m sure I went through (what felt like) months of just mixing up powdered milks – the word torture springs to mind. I suppose if there was one consolation at least that Kenwood electric mixer I bought Carol as a Christmas present (that she was not best impressed with) got some ecky-thump.

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Amidst all of this milk-mixing came baby bottles, sterilisers, broken nights of sleep then later on (and even worse) nappy buckets, liners, zinc and castor oil cream and getting used to having a baby in the house again. Remembering to take all the paraphernalia with you whenever you stepped out of the house was an art; an art bordering on a crisis if you forgot something. At one point I remember thinking our pram should be given a knighthood for services to the cause; it spent most of its entire life with a child in it, a child sat on it and another child holding on to it while its undercarriage shelf between the wheels was literally stuffed with everything a parent could ever need. The term ‘Camel Train’ springs to mind.

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Of course there were times when the older children were at school or playgroup and I was out at work, Carol would just have Benita and could use the little buggy to pop up to Main Street to visit her favourite haunts one of which (as readers will know by now) was Princess Silks haberdashery. Back then it was quite acceptable and safe to leave a pram or buggy outside a shop while you nipped in to get something partly because of the practicalities of getting around inside the shop. 

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As mentioned we were at the stage of still getting used to having a baby in the house again and on one particular day Carol obviously forgot that and sauntered off home without the buggy leaving Benita in it outside the shop. Later when I came home for lunch and asked Carol where the baby was her face said it all. But in the ‘Land of Loving Bambinos’ there was nothing for us to worry about. By the time we got back to the shop she was being slobbered all over by the local people and loving every minute of it. Back home the only way I could get her to wind down and off to sleep that night was BH putting the headphones on her and playing John Lennon at her. (She’s a big fan of his even today 🙂 ).

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