When I was about 9 years old I lived in another Police House with the Police Station attached to the house, so therefore my father's office along with his Juniors was joining the second lounge room where my Piano was situated.
I had my private tuition in piano and spent many hours practicing, infact my mother used to get cross because I spend so much time playing the piano, this continued throughout my life.
Practicing also got me out of doing so many things around the house :)
At the back of the house my bedroom looked onto the back lawn, then across from that was the 'Jail' in those days. Often there would be a great noise in the middle of the night and it was one of the Policemen putting someone in Jail.
The Jail doors were extremely dense with a round small hole in the middle of the door where the prisoner could peek out to see the grass, my bedroom window and the sky.
Often in the morning time or very early morning we would be woken with banging which came from the Jail. It was always discovered that the Prisoners would be sitting on the floor with their feet hitting the door (no shoes). Up my dad would get and tell them to be quiet. Sometimes there would be glorious voices singing :) Mostly I was amused at all of this.
In the morning time my mother would make the Prisoners breakfast, then accompanied by my dad to give the breakfast to the Prisoners.
One day I was on the lawn practicing my ballet leaps etc. and doing handstands, cartwheels when I heard a voice coming from one of the Jails, I also saw two fingers from the hole in the door and a voice saying 'Girlie, little Girlie, let me out of here'. I rang for my life inside for this surprised me greatly that I had been seen, or it was what he saw when I was doing my handstand, cartwheels and my ballet leaps. I didn't know we had a Prisoner and being a young child I was extremely embarrassed.
