
We first started to collect when we bought a house in Westbury-on-Trym. It had a very large oak-lined entrance hall, so we collected cuckoo clocks. We brought one or two home every time we holidayed in Switzerland. When we sold that house, we left the clocks as there was no place to display them at Hotwells Post Office!
We then collected blue and white Wedgwood. Now I love white plasterwork. This interest started when the staff at the hotel we stay at in Boulogne-sur-Mer all gave me some: hearts, flowers and angels.
My husband’s dream was to have so many cars that he could have a different one every day of the week. We had so many Jaguars that if we had kept them all I would now be very wealthy.
Unfortunately, we always needed to sell one to buy the next! Our first one had wide running boards. One morning Ron filled the kettle with water and left it on the running board. It ran so smoothly that the kettle was still there on his return to Portishead after driving to Bournemouth and home again! Our favourite car in France was a Citroen-Masarati.
Did you ever have an autograph book? Perhaps you still use one. They were very popular in my youth. I wish that I still had mine, as it was full of lovely drawings and warm messages. When asked to write in someone’s book, I always wrote the following ...
“This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow,
as the night, the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
What a better world we should have if everyone took these words of advice from Shakespeare!
I wish you all a peaceful November,
Esmé
PS: The car in the picture is the Jag with the running boards! I made the dresses with the big white collars for my daughter and myself. Our new neighbours thought that we were Quakers!