The Soup Shack

Dear Lisa,
At last I've got your address and coincidentally I've managed to find the old negative of Noel and me, that you wanted a print of. The negative's so old and spotty that the print is the best possible and you'll have to ignore the spots.

In my then-camera I had a delay mechanism that worked by pulling out a thread and as we were up in the hills and I had taken some knitting, the thread Noel held was actually a piece of wool. It looks almost as if he was holding a cigarette, but he wasn't. In those days he smoked a pipe, and ironically I gave him a Loehe pipe as a wedding present, though it was not very long afterwards that he developed asthma and had to give it up.

I was wearing jodhpurs given to me by my best girl friend. No women then wore slacks. It's surprising how clear my memories are of what happened so long ago. That would have been 1938.

The jersey Noel was wearing was a brown one that had been knitted by Aunt Mab and it was far too short—almost just a chest protector—so the knitting I was doing was for him. The girls I was at training college with were always knitting things for current boyfriends and I vowed I wouldn't do that, but in Noel's case his brown jersey was so pathetically short I made an exception.

At the time it was really quite scandalous for us to be off in the hills by ourselves like that, especially looking as giddy as we did in this photo. We took another snap where we both remained very serious, and didn't seem to be enjoying ourselves quite so much. That was the only one I showed anybody for quite some time, and I kept this one hidden in a drawer.

We became engaged that Christmas and were married in the May holidays and Noel applied for married salary.

David was born the next April and a very shy Noel was called up to the stage in assembly to be congratulated. We were on the minimum civil service salary of £203-80 for the rest of that year and the next two years until Noel got a position as Sole Teacher in a Maori School at Parikino, up the Wanganui River. We went there in the May holidays in 1942.

Noel died 3 years ago on June 20. I met two people yesterday who had been pupils of his and he would dearly love to have known about them.

I hope you are enjoying your very different life over there. I hope all is going very well for you and that you are keeping well and happy.

Lots of love,

Grandma