Mom and I

My mother, Marjorie Hilda Lloyd lives in Cape Town and is, at 98 years of age, my best source of life in Somerset East in the 1930’s and 1940’s. She learnt to use a computer when she was ninety and wrote up a good deal about her life as a minister’s wife at Hope Manse and as a trained nurse. Mom’s cousin, George Hill, was a noted WWI spy, and Mom would have been an excellent British agent if only she had had the chance as her information would always have been early, accurate and to the point. I have been Dr Taffy Shearing since April 2005 because I thought a PhD was a fine thing to do and I’m no good at sport or bridge. In the picture I’m giving a copy of my thesis to Mom. I am 68 and I reckon I’ve got a good fifteen years ahead of me. I trained as a nurse way back just after Florence Nightingale’s time, was a farmer’s wife for 34 years, became a newspaper correspondent, ran our farm school and discovered a forgotten war memorial to the Irish and Grenadier Guards on top of the Nuweveld Mountains. This led to my present enthusiasm for the SA War which I wrote about mostly from the position of the Cape Rebels point of view because underdogs are always more interesting. Being a late developer, I did my MA and PhD late, since turning fifty. I want to get my project completed by Mom’s centenary.