She and Pa have not been well and she tells my parents that 'I am very sorry to put you chaps off this Xmas but for your own sakes think you'll enjoy yourselves better up that end - I think we will be rather too many with Bob's crowd'.
The next letter is dated 12 December 1961, Nanny Ina sounds tired and overwhelmed in her letter to the folks, 'I get thoroughly bad tempered that I can tell you'.
She is getting organised for Christmas and her heart is not into the run around to buy gifts, 'I just really cannot spend hours choosing different articles as I used to. I am enclosing a cheque for 20 rand for you chaps please get something for each for Xmas and save the rest towards your holiday. You can sure spend cash while on holiday. I envy you going to Margate.'
When I read this letter I went up to my box to find photos from Margate. I remember so well the photos of my mother posing in a beauty pageant.
I was thrilled to realise that the holiday Nanny Ina writes about is the one where Mom is the runner up for Holiday Princess at the Palm Beach Hotel in Margate.
There is a brochure from the sixties in my box for the Palm Beach Hotel and the inside spread features a photo of my mother.
I am so impressed that she had the confidence to enter and just a little surprised as she had so many insecurities which worsened as she aged.
The back of the black and white photo has a stamp from Happy Day Tours and is dated 22 January 1962, Mom would have been 28 with two children.
I chuckled at the R20 from Nanny Ina that would both buy presents for the family and help save for the holiday, but then looking at the brochure the rates for the Palm Beach Hotel are 'from as low as R2.50 a day'.
I think I will take a drive to Margate this summer and look at the seaside town with different eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment