Livy's death

It is sad to record that my sister Olivia died yesterday in Canberra, Australia, just short of her 86th birthday. We were 22 months apart, and were brought up closely together when we were little. During the war years, too, we spent a lot of the holidays with one another at Wildwood, Shanty Bay with Uncle Doug and Auntie B Woods, our wonderful foster-parents in Canada. Back in England at the end ofthe war, she was in the WRNS and I was at Oxford, so our paths didn't often cross, and then after she married Geoffrey she went to Australia. I saw her only on rare trips to Sydney, and when she visited us a few times in England. But we picked up the threads easily whenever we did meet, and the close bonds of childhood lasted a lifetime. She was a gentle, affectionate person who deserved a better hand than she was dealt by life.