Mark Anthony

31 March 1964 (Tuesday)

Mark came to life truly fighting for his survival. The first seconds, minutes felt for me like hours. Mark had the navel string around his neck and his face was blue. The doctors worked in frantic and Liz was constantly shouting at them, despite she had taken a lot of gas. I will return to this scene later.

1964 was the year the Beatles Can’t buy me Love 1964, No Money can’t buy you, Love!

My son Mark was created ‘in love‘ and deliberately since I had read that it was best for children to grow up with 20-30 months between their births. Further, I wanted a family and many children. Therefore, Liz and I planned to make Mark in the summer of 1963 in Djursholm at Burestigen in Sweden, madly in love. My parents came to stay with us in June, for Mogens’ christening. We had this beautiful villa in November 1962. A beautiful place, in the best part of Djursholm and with a very large garden – park. See pictures on the right.

I believe Mark was created either just before or after we had been in Copenhagen to see Maria Callas perform at 3 Falke Centre on Mogens first year birthday. Liz loved the voice of Maria Callas, as Liz herself wanted to become a singer when early teen. Liz sang in front of the Queen, at the Royal Festival Hall in 1952/53, participating in a choir from Yorkshire, which was very exclusive, considering the selection process.

The villa was located in the best part of Djursholm, which was the best part of Stockholm. It was so idyllic, with the winter snow rapping the cosy house. We had everything, a beautiful fireplace and lots of space, lots of love for each other and our baby. The only thing, it was difficult for Liz to get any staff, we had a young Danish girl with us, when we travelled around with the group of students, however, and she did not like housework as she was hired as an au pair.  I recall we had a month’s difficulty employing someone to live with us; however, we did have the cleaner from the owner of the house. The owner lived only 200 meters away in a big palace type house; she was Finish and a widow. Somehow, she did not get along with Liz, and I found her rather difficult and lonely, somehow reflecting jealousy on a young family.

Liz got to know many people and after joining the Women International Club, become very close to many American and English women, married to prominent international company directors in Stockholm and embassies senior personal. We become friends with the GM managing director and Gillette’s who was British. Liz started going to several monthly meetings and lots of women lunches and we did get a Swedish girl from the North working for us allowing Liz to go to Stockholm more often, moreover, she could go to London for 10 days to visit friends, returning with lots of presents for Mogens.

So we decided in the summer of 1963 to create a baby brother for Mogens, all planned in detail, sadly everything thereafter did not turn out just so……

Continued with password below