Mexborough and Swinton Times, March 5, 1937

Best of All
Much Travelled Highgate Stewardess
Prefers Mothers Hot Pot             

“Caviar and chop suey are nothing compared with mothers hot-pot,” declares Miss Florence Vesty, 10 George St, Highgate, Goldthorpe, when she returned on from yet another trip to the other side of the world.

Miss Vesty is a stewardess with the P and O line, and in nine years she has travelled over 200,000 miles. 30 times to America; 18 trips to the west Indies; half a dozen hops to Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania; a few journeys to China and Japan – makes pretty good reading, but to Miss Vesty it is just part of a days work.

“I have always had an ambition to go abroad and be a stewardess,” she told a “Times” representative. “Even when I was working in a Leeds hotel.” There were “ructions” at home when – nine years ago – Miss Vestey signed on with her first ship. She almost had to run away to sea, she declares. And after trip to Amsterdam and four voyages to New York, her mother’s first words, when she met her daughter on Doncaster station were: “Ye’ll not be going back back?”

Nowadays after every 3 ½ months, Miss Vestey manages to visit her home town – usually laden with strange birds, buddhas, sandal, ivory tusks, fans, and with all matter of strange experiences to relate. But there is one thing she looks forward to, and that that is her mother’s hot-pot. After months of frozen vegetables and foreign food, occasional delicacies of snails, chop suey, bamboo shoots and sometimes caviar, Miss Vestey finds fresh Yorkshire turnips, sweets, carrots, and a scrag of mutton the best meal of all.

Miss Vestey holds strong opinions about English travellers, particularly returned Colonials, who, accustomed to ordering about their coloured servants, lose all consideration and feeling for their fellow countrymen when they meet them in an official or an inferior position. Next come the holiday makers. On their first cruise, they are charming and delighted with everything because it is new seven; but when they are seen the returning Colonials behave on board ship and then take their second cruise well – “you’d think they owned the ship ,” she declared.

Putting grouses aside, Miss Vestey as had many wonderful experiences. Each time she passes through the Suez Canal, the golden Sahara is a never failing source of wonder and admiration and for hours (when she gets the chance) she sits and watches the flowing stretches of sand. At dusk two, when the blue shadows deepen, and the beautifully moulded sand gleams ice white beneath the full glory of an Arabian starlit sky, she is particularly impressed.

She has travelled with celebrities too. With Sir Harry Lauder and his niece, with the well-known sculptor Sir Percy Everett, with the famous novelist Francis Brett Young and his wife.

“You must tell Yorkshire folk this,” she cried, and described the famous Tropical Gardens at Havana, where beer in any quantity is free for the asking.

Miss Vesty is off again on Monday – this time to Australia. Coronation day for her will be one of carrying cocktails to Colonials, near Colombo.