During World War II my mother was evacuated to Oxford. She had just started secondary school and she, an only child, was separated from her parents. The brother and sister with whom she another girl were billeted were “wrong ‘uns” and my feisty mum went back to the billeting officer the next day to tell them that they must move her and the other girl. She was then placed with an upper class Oxford Professor’s family. Safe with a “nanny” who looked after the children in the family, there was not much affection or attention from the don and his wife but they were fed and housed and mum was visited once a month by her own loving mother. Later mum returned to London and she snd her parents evacuated themselves to St Albans where some of mum’s aunts snd uncles and cousins lived. Mum was now a teenager. One day she was at the bus stop when another girl (the woman above, herself an evacuee) approached mum and asked her, “Are you a Jewish girl?”

Mum was and she and the girl became good friends and some years later the young woman was invited to my mum snd dad’s wedding

This afternoon this branch of the family were privileged to meet up at The Gables. Mum’s cousin died at a very young age leaving an even younger widow (the lady above in the photo with me) and two little girls under the age of three. When the widow remarried we saw less of the girls snd then she and her second husband retired to Florida. Her grown up girls remained in London. My mum and her teenage friend stayed in contact and whenever her friend travelled from America she visited mum

Only now, since my mum died just over a year ago, we three girls who are now ourselves of retirement age, have rekindled our friendships as distant cousins with an intimate past. It is as if we had always been close and this afternoon cemented the relationship between our two families snd showed me that “blood really is thicker than water”.