Betty

March, 2006

I haven’t heard much from Betty since September. She, too, reported happily on her lunch with Audrey in Manchester.

As for the reunion, she is not sure of her plans, for the nicest of reasons: “I may be with Joanna and second baby in Dubai.”

September, 2005

"Joanna is very happy in the ex-pat scene. She works hard and plays hard … She will spend Christmas with her man-friend and another couple skiing in Lebanon.” That’s what Betty wrote for the Christmas, 2002 update. By January, Joanna was engaged and in March, Betty wrote of her plans to attend the wedding in Dubai and again enjoy the wonderful sunshine she had just experienced on a Caribbean cruise. The wedding took place at Easter. Clearly the bride looked beautiful and Betty made an elegant mother of the bride, but “What a disappointment the weather was for us. True English grey skies and gusty swirls of winds! For months I had been saying to people here, ‘the one thing I don’t need to worry about is the weather in Dubai. It will be sunny every day.’ Well, the worst tropical storm in thirty years blew up the evening before the wedding. Trees were blown down and roads were flooded. The reception was rapidly transferred from its idyllic setting around the pool of the Ritz Carlton Hotel to a beautiful suite of rooms indoors. In spite of the beastly storm, the wedding, meal and party all proceeded beautifully”.

In July Joanna and Ian were back visiting Betty in Lancashire and when they visited again in July of 2004, Betty wrote “I am feeling very relaxed and energetic after waving goodbye to my daughter, her hubbie and daughter Maddie Elisabeth…It was really lovely to see them again, particularly little Maddie, now 8 weeks old.” There have been more visits from Maddie, and Betty got to see her on her own turf in Dubai shortly before Christmas 2004. Betty clearly loves being a grandmother, so I was happy to get an e-mail from her at the beginning of September with the news “I am going to be a grandma for the fourth time at the end of March next year. My daughter is delighted to be expecting again.” And of course, she has Oisin and Amber closer to home when she needs a grandchild-fix.

Betty has been great about keeping touch via e-mail, and I have heard of a number of trips she and Jim have taken. There was a second Caribbean cruise, trips to the Lake District, Norfolk and other domestic locations, but Betty’s longest trip was to New Zealand in the company of her friend Pam in January of 2004, where they met up with Anne (Burt) and Peter Moss. That was shortly before the trip Anne and Peter took to the states. There is a photo of Anne, Pam and Betty on Anne’s page and I give you Betty’s account of the meeting: “Anne and her husband had arranged to meet Pam and me at our hotel in Christchurch. I knew I would recognise her immediately, as I had seen from her photo in your newsletter that she had not changed one iota! I knew her at once. She very kindly said I hadn't changed either! (Thanks for your tact, Anne!). Anyhow, to get back to the important details—Peter and Anne took us back to their home for a delicious lunch (very tasty quiche home-cooked by Anne), then took us for a very informative and interesting tour of the historic beginnings of Christchurch. Fascinating to learn of the very hard life endured by the earliest settlers, particularly the women. Later we were taken on a panoramic tour of the Port Hills, from where we could see the whole of Christchurch, and beyond, and then on over the top to the coast and the pretty, little holiday spots which reminded me of the little south coast holiday places in England. Then back to our hosts' home again for another lovely home-cooked meal.

Most important of all—the chats and catching up on people we both remembered from our days at Bedford College. We had some lovely heart-to-heart talks, then and a week later when we met again, just before we flew back home.”

Thanks for being so good about keeping in touch, Betty. Now I can do photos, let’s have some more. Especially Maddie, who delighted Betty “peep(ing) around the bedroom door early in the morning—so long as it wasn’t too, too, early!”