Another large envelope, vying for size with the flight one, was Helen’s 1937 freight boat trip around the world. In it I found that my uncle had transcribed her journal – which came to 70 typed printed pages – without using a scanner, which must have been painstaking because her handwriting was smaller than the font on a side-effects label (see below) – like she didn’t want anyone reading it at the time. But she did later, when she got older, as she was the one who curated the notes and pictures, as all the envelopes had the same handwriting, but a half a font bigger.

But before heading around the world, let’s look into her early years and what might have set her on such an adventurous path.