of Vat it was essential to have ones office run smoothly. But she needed an assistant and every single one we got, within a week or two she would so infuriate them with her violent and unpredictable temper, that they would leave. I was in a predicament, as good book-keepers were hard to find, and she was excellent at her work, and charming in manner normally until she had one of her unpredictable tantrums. One last time I advertised for an assistant, and I had an applicant who was fair haired good looking in her forties. She had just arrived back in England after years spent in Iran and south Africa where her husband had been a professor of Veterinary Science. I explained the problem that I had, and the unpredictable nature of her senior, and she assured me that she could handle the situation. It also turned out amazingly that they lived in a rented house only a few hundred yards from us in Newdigate. So began at that interview a long standing friendship with Brenda and Bill Jordan that has continued right up to the present day. Her even quiet and yet forceful temperament was ideal in calming things down. She loved sport and together, we would play really hard games of squash for a hour at a time at least three days a week until I was well into my mid fifties and I feared for my heart. Bill who was an Ulsterman had a brilliant brain and had gone to Edinburgh University at the age of only 16. He had been in practice, and then had a series of senior posts with Chester Zoo, as vet to the Shah of Iran, and then at Witwatersvand University. He had come back to be on the board of the RSPCA and later founded the very successful charity “ Care fof the Wild”. I found in him at last a fellow soul, a man with a wide ranging intellect, always ever eager to probe into the unusual, and forever curious of the world around. He was also a keen gardener with a natural great love of trees and plants, and in this hobby I was able to help him, and expand his knowledge and he in his turn with his wisdom, would be a great help in advising me over the years in the care and nuturing of my many dogs and other animals. Jill and Brenda also got on well, both with experience of living abroad, and both with a practical no nonsense nature that was to prove invaluable in the stormy years ahead. When we came back from our last holiday in Turkey everything seemed to be going along as though we were on the crest of a wave. The new shop at Cobham was well on the way to being completed, Horsham was doing well, with its little satellite at Cranleigh. Both Paul and Peter were at Bradfield, Paul in his first year and Peter in his last. Jill was still working during the term time as a teacher in a near by primary school. Mother for her part was also well in her flat in London and there seemed at that time to be no cloud on the horizon, and the glorious life would go on forever. And yet all was to suddenly change over the next year as national politics came to dominate events and caused us such anxiety that we almost went bankrupt. We were soon to become like a small craft tossed around in a vast stormy sea, and all ones energy and wit would be needed just to survive. One final tragic thing happened in the summer of 1973 whilst I was in the midst of all the building works at Cobham and that was a visit of Sister Helen from New Zealand with her 10 year old daughter Anna and David who was 6. Mother was full of excitement at the thought of her arrival and all the things that she wanted to do together,but I was very apprehensive, knowing well how moody Helen was with her parents. I drove to Heathrow and collected her and my fears were absolutely confirmed when she said that under no circumstances was I to drive her to London, but instead to go to our home to unwind after the long trip. Two days later she arrived at Mother’s at the same time as three friends from New Zealand and Mother could not get a word in to talk to her daughter whom she had not seen for eight years. They all stayed together in the flat, Helen Anna and David all sleeping in one bed which they had put together. She was trying to make the point that she was different, a Bohemian Hippy and rejoicing in making as much discord in the house as possible. I think partly her antics were probably brought about and worsened by symptoms of menopause, after all she was 48 years of age, but it finally ended by my having to order her out of the flat back to Stoneways as otherwise Mother who was 76 years old and had such a trying life would have died from a brain haemorrage with all the screaming going on. I was totally and utterly sickened, and it took me some 25 years to come to terms with her behaviour, but now like all things after time passes one looks on troubles in a softer light. But last year, whilst in New Zealand Anna told me that her Mother had said to her: “Anna you are just like my Mother in character, and I hated her from my earliest days”. Poor Anna who is so devoted to her Mother, and looks after her as only a child from God could do, is continually denigrated and yet she is all that Helen has out there in the lonely outback. And yet Helen in the next breath would speak to me in glowing terms of Mother’s intellect, education and love of art and all what she had learnt from her. Helen’s feud with Mother sowed the seeds of her own destruction and a life of unhappiness and loneliness and utter desolation. She settled to life in the small village of Manapouri in the Southern tip of New Zealand about as far away from the family as she could get. Later she was to marry a builder and have two children, finally having to divorce him , which was hardly surprising the way she had lashed him with her tongue over the years. Then tragically her son David died at home in the night aged 17 years and that broke her heart, with no family close by to turn to. Hugh and I have both been to visit her, but it is a tremendous strain, as she is so violent and tiger like in temperament, and yet now so pathetic, frail and helpless. And all because she loved to take up cudgels with her Mother and Father, whilst she was young and strong and they were old and weak. A great sad tragedy, and a living example of “The Law of Cause and Consequence” at work.

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