مؤلف: Pat Kelly

The author was born in Scotland a year before World War II started, but swears she didn”t cause it … In January 1968 she arrived in Australia as a “Ten Pound Tourist” with her, then, husband and four children. After the breakup of her marriage after twenty-five years the author was contacted by a man named Mike Kelly, whom she had known in her teens and had had no contact with for nearly thirty years. Mike”s marriage having broken up around the same time as the author”s. On learning she was “on the loose”, he obtained her phone number by courtesy of his mother – International telephone enquiries – and the author”s mother, so rang to see if she was okay. One thing led to another, they were married in 1988 and returned to the Isle of Man to start a new life. On Mike”s retirement, five years later, they followed the summers and spent half their lives in Australia and the other half in the Isle of Man. In their months on the island each year, they ran a daffodil and plant nursery and were well known throughout the island for their roadside stall, where they sold their daffodils and plants. As age caught up with them, they realised it was time to settle somewhere permanently. Being the warmer country, Australia won, and they moved there in 2014, to live in a retirement village in Lakes Entrance – one of the prettiest spots in Australia. This, they both feel, will suit them until they climb in their boxes (but not for a long time yet) and move on to higher places.