My mysterious aunt.

My mother had nine brothers and sisters, all now departed from this life, although there might just be one ‘black sheep’ brother still knocking around, although I suspect that he is ’as dead as mutton’ by now, as he would have spent most of his eighty something years staggering from pub to pub.

I must say that I got along fine with my mum’s family, although there was one sister who, for some strange reason, I tended to avoid as a child, and who never seemed to quite ’fit in’ with the rest of the family, as she had a rather haughty ‘posh’ voice and a somewhat flamboyant and overbearing manner. Not what you would normally expect from a working class girl from a back street in Brixton.

Sometime ago, when searching through some family documents I came across a postcard written by this aunt during the 1930′s and sent from Budapest. On the front was a picture of the River Danube and on the back she described a luxurious train journey across Europe and the joys of staying in the grandest of hotels: and this at a time when most people could not afford even a couple of days seaside break at Margate. 

In the old family photo album there are a number of pictures, taken during the 1920′s and 1930′s, of my aunt as a beautiful young woman …

 …   showing her in the latest fashions, posing by her car and in the garden of her country cottage. Expensive holidays ? .. Latest fashions ? .. Car ? .. Country cottage ? .. How did a girl who’s mother is recorded in an earlier census as, ”taking in washing”,  afford such things ?

Well the answer may be obvious, but …

… you will have to wait to find out.

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