(no subject)
When she arrived in England from South Africa in 1945 her new family thought she was glamorous and exotic and looked like Dorothy Lamour.
How strange it must have been leaving the warmth of South Africa and coming to a drab, war-wracked Britain where rationing still ruled. For a city girl who had grown up in Pretoria, it must have been stranger still to live on isolated R.A.F. stations miles from anywhere with a husband who was often posted away on unaccompanied trips, leaving her to cope with three children.
She never returned to the country of her birth and as Alzheimer's disease stole away her memory ceased to talk about it at all. I wonder if deep inside she yearned for the warmth and colour she had once known.
She died in January in 1999 on a cold, bleak day. Now, her Jimmy has joined her in death and I like to think of them, lithe and young as they were on the brief honeymoon they snatched in 1942, watching a South African sunset and listening to South of the Border, another of their favourite songs:
Click to viewPatricia Durrant (Flaherty) November 29th, 1916 - January 9th, 1999
Jimmy Durrant January 1st, 1921 -July 4th, 2010