by Victoria Seymour
| On 15th April 2011 Canadian Wendy Johnson and I celebrated the anniversary of our first meeting on the Internet; a meeting which changed the course of my life. On 15th April 2001 Wendy emailed the website hastings.uk.net, (now defunct), with an enquiry about the existence of a Lavender Cottage on the Ridge, Hastings. She had a collection of letters written by an English cousin, Emilie Crane, who lived in the cottage, to Wendy’s late Aunt Marion in Canada. The letters, dated between 1942 and 1955, tell a touching and historically interesting story. Wendy and I struck up an email friendship and she sent me photocopies of the letters, an act that eventually started the writing career that has enlivened my retirement years. |
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Wendy, and sometimes her husband Walter, have travelled to Hastings a number of times over the years, but the spring 2011 visit brought a special bonus that needed its own suitcase! Wendy had printed out all the emails we have exchanged over the previous ten years and put them in files; thirty-one to be exact. The story of our friendship, her generosity and kindness to me and my learning how to be a writer are documented in detail. (Could this be a book one day?) Wendy had a hectic schedule during her week-long trip to the UK: but on our anniversary we had time to go for lunch in Hastings Old Town, fish and chips, of course, to chat and exchange gifts with a lavender theme |