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My mother was a handsome and very intelligent lady; she
had a gift for clairvoyance. Summer holidays were taken at Greylands Hotel,
Margate, where a very happy atmosphere pervaded and all the holiday makers joined
in games on the beach. My mother would read tea leaves with uncanny predictions
for the year ahead. Some were predictable such as a pregnancy to an amorous
couple, but others were totally out of the blue. During one of the games on
the beach a guest lost her wedding ring. Everyone was searching in the sand
for the ring when my mother called a halt. We are going about this wrongly -
let us all concentrate on thinking about the ring - she then walked over and
plucked it from where it was buried in the sand. She had an exceedingly good
eye for fashion; my father always said that somebody in the fashion world was
spotting what she did. If she made a dress with huge buttons in 1936, huge buttons
would be the fashion in 1937.
Early in the war my mother became mentally unstable and was institutionalised for the rest of her life, although her condition was much improved in the later years with the arrival of new drugs.