I found this picture on the web. It is a print which was for sale on ebay. It depicts a garden party at Osterley in 1908, a few years before Uncle Jack (John Simmonds, my mother’s uncle) was born. Some seventy five years later I met him in Brisbane and he told me about the garden parties he had been to at Osterley with his mum when he was a little boy. Could she have been an invited guest? Seems far-fetched, but truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. The caption under the picture reads “A meeting place of all society: Lady Jersey’s garden party.” More likely that Mabel was a servant, but why would she have taken Jack there? Questions without answers.