[susie123]

Thanks Garinda but there's nothing more I want to say just now, just add my support.

I do however have one or two things I think should be in a museum, more as archive than for display probably. For intance I have a collection of letters written by my great grandfather to his family in 1930. He owned trotting horses (the ones where the jockey sits in a little cart behind - we did have some cups he won but I think my dad must have sold them). Anyway times were hard and he took some of the horses out to New Zealand to try and sell them. They went on a liner andi think a couple of other men went too. The letters describe going through the Panama Canal and his unsuccessful travels around NZ trying to sell the horses. They are often written in pencil on whatever paper was to hand. He was not a very literate man (he was a fish merchant) but his love for his family and his longing to go home shine through. Sadly he died suddenly on Christmas Eve 1930 aged only in hie early fifties and was buried in NZ but he was later exhumed and taken home.

My father gave me the letters a few years ago before he died and I was very moved when I read them. I had always understood that he went to NZ to buy horses, not sell them but I think that story must have been put about so it did not seem that the family needed money. I think the story would make a good radio programme or short book but I can't do it. Anyway I think the letters might be of interest to a museum.

Cheers

Sue