We awoke this morning to a beautiful blue sky with tons of sun. In fact, The Times has reported that this March has been one of the 5 sunniest Marches in Britain since records have been kept over 130 years. We are really seeing the best side of England in our 3 week visit. Tomorrow is predicted to be 18 C. We loafed around the house and left around 9:30 a.m. to visit Auntie Margaret in Cobham. Margaret is not really my Aunt, but she played an impressive part in my young years and was always called “Auntie Margaret” by all the children who knew her on the diamond mine in Africa where we lived.
I am not sure if you know that between the ages of about 4 and 14, I lived in Ghana and Sierra Leone while my Dad worked as the chief construction engineer for CAST in Akwatia, Ghana, and SLST in Yengema, Sierra Leone. Margaret’s husband Bob was the mine manager, and Margaret, a Canadian from Vancouver, used to put on the best parties for the kids on the mine. She also used to let us dress up in her bedroom by putting on her evening dresses and stuffing our boobs with crisp, white, linen table-napkins, and smearing our mouths with lipstick as we pretended to be “adults”. Margaret made us all feel important, and special, and I have many happy memories of her.
It was a short visit this time due to time restraints, coffee at The Cricketers in Cobham, a quick viewing of some of her pictures, and a trip through her guest book starting in 1955 when she married Bob. Many of the names were familiar to me, some of the people I knew; others I had just heard mentioned in my Dad’s stories.
We got back to Dusty and Fiona’s around 3:30p.m. and spent the rest of the day chatting to them, answering email, down-loading pictures and calling Alanna on Skype.
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