China Girl blog 9th January 2019

The cold days of January drift by, the present has washed away the past. These winter days are preparation for the months ahead, which lead to the glory of spring. The seasons are an endless circle, each beautiful in their own way. The glory of winter lies in texture, light and shade with the trees silhouetted against the scudding clouds, and the hope of things to come.

On Sunday the young actress Caroline Willis, who has just written a film script in which she acts, came to shoot some winter scenes at Cothay. Everyone involved including camera man, sound man and all the actors gave their services free. It has been an almost impossible task to gather the crew and actors altogether at the same time. Caroline, who trained at RADA, made all the costumes for the film; she made for her part an amazing Edwardian dress, made from an Indian throw she bought on E Bay. A lovely girl, she looked stunning, corseted in the Edwardian fashion in a tight corset, which she also made. She said she now understood why women of that era sat around doing very little except looking beautiful, unable to move freely being so restricted. Peter Marinker a well known actor, took the part of her father; a delightful man with a lovely craggy face. Somehow during a scene, he lost one of his shoes. We hunted everywhere without success, until Ma remembered that if you said a prayer to Saint Anne asking for her help, she would help you find the missing object. Sure enough, Mother & Peter prayed and within five minutes the missing shoe was found. The film crew will be back in the spring for further shooting.

Mother’s number two son, who lives partly in Greece, has parted from his Greek girlfriend. They have a small three year-old, Aeneas and poor Mathew is distraught at being parted from his son, who is the apple of his eye. Mother says there is usually one of her children is crisis, and that she feels sometimes like President Carter’s mother Lillian, who once famously said “When I look at all my children I say to myself Miss Lillian, why didn’t you remain a virgin!”