Daffodils dancing on a gentle breeze
This is my family. My sister Alice, my mother Carmel, my brother Patrick & me (the cheeky little one on the right)
So yesterday I was talking to the ageing mother of a client who grew up in England during the war. I find her to be a very intriguing woman indeed.
On my arrival to her house yesterday I found mail in her letterbox, so brought it up to her. Amongst her mail she had received a letter from a place called Lefthand Branch. She asked me did I know of such a place. Well, I have never heard of it.
I have since looked it up & it is in the Toowoomba area.
I watched her face as I handed her the letter & I could see the excitement of a little girl all written over her aged face. A delightful expression adorned her face as she read the letter aloud to me. It was priceless moment!
The woman whom sent the letter was also in her mid 80’s. This beautiful letter, with such neat penmanship was full of pleasantries about the weather, her family & memories of curfews, rations & service men during wartime in England.
I listened to this lady & felt as though I could sit there and listen all day. She had an amazingly warm voice, comforting, like my grandmothers.
I told her how wonderful I thought it was that she had a pen pal & asked her how long they had been writing each other, expecting that it would have been for years. She responded that it had only a month.
She then proceeded to tell me about a movement called “Living Letters” & the young gentleman whom visited her socially every week, that had encouraged her to write to this lady in Lefthand branch.
I thought it was a wonderful concept. We all have a need to feel connected. To feel as though we are interesting enough that someone, even if it is a stranger ( a penpal) would want to share our lives with us.
After she finished reading the letter, memories from her past were sparked & she began to share stories of hardships that she had endured during wartime.
She told me a story of how they had lived on rations & how her mother would purchase 1 chop & 1 egg for her father. Her brother & sister would watch longingly as their father would sit & devour his chop in front of them, as they sat ate small amounts of vegetables, bread & dripping.
She told me it was her fathers theory, that because he was the bread winner, it was his entitlement to eat chops & eggs and they weren’t. She said he was an abusive drunk & she recalled that one time, he had tossed a chop bone across the table to his wife, uttering the words... "Here woman, have a morsel! Treating her no better than one would treat a dog, in my opinion.
After hearing this small excerpt from her life, I wanted to reach out & hug her 'child' self. I wondered what kind of a man could do this to his wife & children!
I wish time management wasn’t a factor of my day yesterday because I could have listened forever to her stories. What an interesting & very beautiful woman!
I ‘feel’ nothing
But I make some feel good
I have five jointed fingers
Created from wood
Malleable digits
That can be moved about
Hard, cold & polished
But lifeless, no doubt
I am a puppet
I dangle from string
I make children happy
I am a play thing
I live in a toybox
I come out now & then
Sometimes I am Brenda
And sometimes I’m Ben
By KMF
I wrote this for Magpie Tails.... I know mine not as good as others that I have read but it's all good because I had a lot of fun doing it!
http://www.magpietales.blogspot.com/
This is a Pink Azalea
This is 'Merlin' my Uncles cat
The front of my Uncles property at Lower Beechmont in the Gold Coast Hinterland. Such a gorgeous place to live.
My husband took this photo of a honey bee
How majestically beautiful is this old tree .... I absolutely love trees!!! This photo was also taken at my Uncle property
My youngest son on our visit to Cape Byron Lighthouse!
This is the most Easterly Point of the Australian Mainland. My husband took these photos on one of our weekend trips to Byron Bay! We had the most perfect weather that day... hardly a cloud in the sky... the sea was the bluest of blues. Just magical!
This is the bald rocky headland with a precipitious cliff and a sheer drop of approximately 100 metres, Cape Byron Lighthouse is the most easterly lighthouse in Australia, and one of the most powerful.
This is the Cape Byron Lighthouse was built in 1901.
