6 March 2021 – From Norma Groom

Hi Reg, Hope you and all the family are all well. Chris and I are both fine thank goodness. The weather here has been very hot, wish we could send some of our sunshine to UK in exchange for some rain, we are desperate for rain, water restrictions are just round the corner.

Please do not listen to the media cover on how bad the virus has been here, we are on level 1 our restaurants are open until 10pm every day. We are extremely lucky we have a super neighbour who does all our shopping for us. For some reason the English press has always hated SA I can only assume it stops the English people from knowing that things are much worse in England.

On Monday it is the 22nd anniversary of us coming to SA, it does not seem possible time flies by.

We have our garden boy, Moordays, today. He is over 6 feet tall, strong as an ox and never stops. His wife comes in the afternoon and does the housework for me. So we are both looked after well. Only problem we have here at the moment is our post has virtually disappeared, a Christmas card from Peter Macdonald arrived yesterday afternoon we have only had 4 altogether from UK.

Well Reg please remember me to everyone, lets hope that 2021 will be a better one in all aspects for us all.

Kind regards, Norma and Chris.

 

Hello Norma, Excellent to hear from you, and that you are thriving in the sun! As you suggest, we could do with swapping our wet and cold weather for some of it. All (relatively) well here among most of us, with the inevitable exceptions. Seems a long time since days of Cornwall House, Basildon, even Sovereign. I have been in contact with Peter Macdonald, Sue Whitaker, Isobel Williamson, John Eason, Jon Betts and Alan Cole over recent months. As you can imagine, there is not much travelling being done these days.

Very best wishes to you both, and may this year see the back of it all. Reg.