• Living Between the Lines

    Washington DC and friendship

    USA Part Two After two wonderful weeks in Texas, having said a tearful ‘goodbye, for now’, we board an internal flight to Washington DC. Why are we not flying home to England? Well, many moons ago, when I was eleven years and three months old – February 1968 in fact, I applied for a USA penfriend through my weekly comic, Princess Tina. I begged a fourpenny stamp (pre decimalisation) and an envelope, from my mother without telling her what it was for. I posted the form in the local post box and told no one. Exactly what my mother had thought I was doing I am not sure! I had…

  • Living Between the Lines

    A Right Royal Coup…

    All Because of…Princess Tina… Well, on the scale of things, this bit of news is unimportant but, to me, it is quite remarkable. A while ago, I wrote a post called, ‘All Because of Bunty’, believing that this esteemed comic had been responsible for securing me a Pen Friend in America, when I was eleven years old. Not so! Yesterday, my dear pen friend, Kate, with whom I have kept in touch for not quite 50 years, sent me a photograph of a piece of paper her siblings had unearthed in their mother’s house. Clearly, it is the scribbled submission I sent to the comic all those years ago. Looking…