Princess Aldridge, AKA Blossom, was born in Trelawny in the Jamaican countryside in 1933
Her dad grew yams, bananas, cocoa, 'dasheen' (Taro plant), and another root vegetable, 'tyre'.
Her parents had children from previous partners, so Blossom had a big family with many siblings and step-siblings.
One of her earliest memories is being around four and starting at 'Quatty School', where you pay the teacher a penny-halfpenny weekly for lessons. (Quatty comes from the fact that a penny-halfpenny is a quarter of a Sixpence)
Her parents sent her there to get her education going before proper school started at seven years old.
She walked to school on rough stone roads; there was no tarmac back then. She enjoyed school, and just one teacher taught everything from arithmetic to gardening.
Around the time she finished school, her mum suddenly passed away. She had previously hit her head, which affected her blood pressure, and she died sometime after the accident.
At the time, this never really sank in for Blossom - she thought her mum had just gone away to another country. There was no such thing as an undertaker - you died on one day and were buried the next. It was all so sudden that it didn't feel real to the 16-year-old.
At her first job, she learnt embroidery. She could hand sew and use the machine, but couldn't get into dressmaking. She left this job and went to Kingston to work as a domestic for a couple from the Cayman Islands, looking after their new baby.
One of Blossom's most vivid memories of Kingston is sneaking into the grounds of King's House to see Princess Margaret, who was staying there while on a tour of the Caribbean. There was no security then, so Blossom and her friends crept under the fence and into the compound to get a better view.
When her employers decided to return to the Cayman Islands, they asked Blossom to accompany them. Blossom decided against this, so she had to find a new job.
She went to see one of her older brothers who lived in the St Thomas district east of Jamaica. It was through her brother that she met Solomon, who was known as Mike (Many West Indian people have a nickname). She remembers that it was all down to eye contact - they knew immediately that they liked each other.
Mike was a shoemaker and had a room in a small community near the church, where Blossom moved in with Mike.
