Mum was a giant, perhaps not in the conventional meaning of the word, for at the height of her maturity she only reached a staggering 4’10”, however, in every other sense she was a giant. She was always an up-beat character with a good sense of humour. She would say of anyone who was easily amused that they would laugh to see a pudding roll down the street but in truth that was very much a reflection of her own irrepressible, if perhaps, at times, slightly quirky, sense of humour. She seemed to have a saying or quip for most occasions, for example if someone should say to her “I beg your pardon” her invariable response would be “Don’t beg, you’re old enough to sell matches”, however, if the roles were reversed she still had the last words which were “I’ve run-out”; or if one blew on a hot drink she would say “Don’t blow it, fan it with your hat”. Another one “Pin, pin bring me luck because I bent to pick you up” was over used during the Winter of 1962/3 when Lu at 1 Farmstead was making curtains for our future home, and Mum seemed to exist in a perpetual bent position; whilst the repetition of those words, which became something of a Mantra, must have become tiresome, the physical exercise was probably appreciated, even though she only had a short distance to bend. I can almost hear Mum saying “You’re not too big to put across my knee.” This was an often used expression which bore absolutely no relationship to her very pacific nature. She (no I mustn’t use that word too often because I can hear her saying “Who’s she, something the cat dragged in?”); Mum was using her repertoire of sayings right until the end.
Another indication of her constant good humour was her singing; we thought we would never hear it again after the deaths of Vic and Dad in 1998, however, eventually, after about 2 years, the sun broke through her grief and there, once again, were her little songs. The words would not always have been recognized by their composers or indeed have been allowed to be broadcast by the BBC; although, perhaps, that was truer of the past than of today since Mum’s words were only a little risqué and then only occasionally so, however, they were always gay and light-hearted.
4’10”! Mum always maintained that the reason that she was so short was that she had walked so much when she was younger. As a Girl Guide she paraded between Camberwell and Westminster Abbey and, when a little older, frequently walked the homeward journeys to Camberwell from the City after losing her return tram ticket. All of this proved to be invaluable training for the period, still later, when, often in the company of Mrs Langsdale, Mum would push the pram, laden with one or more of us brood, from Elfrida Crescent, Bellingham to Catford to do the weekly shopping. Some many years later, long after the keenest of walkers would have long since retired their boots to a hikers Valhalla, Mum performed her daily walk to and from Bellingham, via Beckenham Place Park to ‘The George’ at Beckenham where she performed a cleaning job.
However, the most likely reason for her short stature was that she was the last of 13 children, although I think that we children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and perhaps even the great great grandchildren preferred to think that she was made that height in order that each generation would be able to use her as a readily available and good humoured measuring stick and that, ultimately, we all, or at least most of us, Ros, were able to take advantage of the top of her head as a useful leaning post.
Mum’s good humour was reflected even in the constant struggle she had to get us out of bed each morning, especially in the winter time. Our repeated answers of “Yes” to the often shouted question “Are you up yet?” were as little believed by her as her protestations were believed by us that the toast had not been burnt, yet again, when the rhythmic scrape, scrape, scrape each morning seemed to cast at least a semblance of doubt on her denials.
Mum gloried in her family and whilst no doubt more money and less work would have been very reasonable desires, for the great majority of the time one would hardly have thought so. She hardly ever seemed to stop working, which I suppose should not have been a surprise when one considers the size of her family and how many males there were. Long before the days of Mum’s first washing machine, the advent of which made doing the laundry become almost a leisure time activity, wash day was literally just that. Mum would be up and in the scullery at some unearthly hour on a Monday morning to get the old coal burning boiler under way to deal with those items which could be given that treatment; in the days before sanforized cotton sometimes a large white shirt could lose several sizes in the boil. But the bulk of the washing was done at the sink, with Mum slaving, almost literally, over the scrubbing board. I wonder if any of the skiffle groups of the fifties realised that the board they were using to produce music had at one time been an instrument of household torture.
Yet another less than pleasurable task, before Mum acquired a mechanical wringer, was the hand-wringing of articles, particularly sheets. This activity involved two people, one at each end of the sheet, each screwing it in the opposite direction to the other in order to expel as much water as possible prior to hanging it out on the clothes line in the garden. In order to ensure sufficient hands were available for this particular spot of aerobics this exercise took place in the morning before we departed for school. The laundry would continue throughout the day. If it was winter time, the combination of the starch Mum had applied to the wash, and Jack Frost turned everything into very stiff boards.
Once the washing was done Mum could sit back and think on a job well done. Not a chance, for this was only the end of the beginning. For the remainder of the week she would be spending hours ironing everything; in the 1940s and 1950s such luxuries as non-iron articles did not exist and she lived in a society which at that time expected everyone to start the day in well pressed clothing, indeed she would have been horrified to contemplate anything less.
Mum’s household activities did not end with the laundry because, after all, the general cleaning, tidying and cooking still needed to be done. Even when, late in the evening, as she was at long last able to sit down to rest and listen to the radio, or, in later years, watch the television, she would still be occupied knitting for one member of the family or other. This was sight to behold as the needles which, as if by magic had become extensions of Mum’s fingers, would flash to and fro, with Mum’s eyes anywhere but on her work, indeed often with the family she would sit in the dark listening to the radio whilst the knitting almost appeared to do itself.
Whilst we were young and money was particularly tight, the knitted article would range from a simple scarf or sweater, utilising a mere two needles, to a very intricate pair of socks which seemed to use a forest of needles. Once her children were no longer in need of her knitted articles the needles were put away and Mum put her feet up in a well deserved rest …Did she?, no, of course not. Any spare time would still be occupied by the rhythmic click clack of the knitting needles but now the finished article would be a perfect Christening shawl for one or other of the grandchildren or perhaps a rather more complicated and perhaps slightly less perfect sweater than those of former days; I sometimes used to think that some of those beautiful looking articles were knitted using a metric pattern which Mum still thought were in inches. On the very odd occasions when she would be sitting doing nothing Mum would break the spell by stating “Well this won’t buy the baby a new hat” and off she would start again.
As I said earlier, Mum revelled in her children, of whom there were 6, and those of the subsequent generations, grandchildren 15, great grandchildren 24, even unto the fourth generation, great great grandchildren 9, and never failed to remember and commemorate their birthdays and Christmas; for some years now we continued to receive those individual greetings entirely due to Pat’s efforts in buying them on Mum’s behalf and with her infinite patience helping and cajoling Mum to write her ever more feeble looking name on them; they were always received with great joy.
If she was blessed with those of her own blood, she was equally blessed with the wonderful daughters-in-law whom her sons had been particularly lucky to marry; I am sure that the equally magnificent but considerably less decorative sons-in-law will acknowledge the enormous benefit Mum derived from these ladies, particularly in her latter years.
Mum’s response to the question “How are you?” was never a simple “Fine, thanks” but always included such gems as “Pretty and well” or “Deaf in one ear, blind in the other”, however, after the events of 1998 they took on a bleaker turn and sometimes, but by no means always, the answer would be “Up and down like Tower Bridge” or “Like 10 men, all dead”.
Mum enjoyed cooking and for many of us the Sunday lunch with its roast, baked potatoes and Yorkshire Pudding and her apple tart and custard was an event worth travelling to partake in, but despite the enormity of the portions almost before the dishes had cooled from the washing-up we were seated again in an effort to munch our way through the salad which always formed the centre piece of the high tea.
However, it was with her steaming, baking and general cooking and preparations for the Christmas period that Mum excelled herself and in particular with her Christmas Puddings, which would begin their lives sometime around the end of September. Even after we had fled the family home, each year, right up until about three years ago, she would make small puddings for those of us who would otherwise have found ourselves deprived of those wonderful creations.
Her rejoinder to the question “What did you have for breakfast/lunch/dinner was usually either “Kippers and custard” or more likely “Kippers on horseback”. Bizarre? Perhaps but these responses may have been an indication that once in a while she might have preferred a change from the strictly traditional food that Dad enjoyed and which, therefore, was what she always prepared.
For Ken and me, and perhaps for our siblings as well, the soup which followed the November the 5th fireworks remains a highlight of the dishes of our childhood. This soup, which was made from beef bones cooked to extract all the wonderful taste of the bone marrow, contained split peas and carrots and was a light orangey-yellow colour and of a very thick consistency which was made even thicker when, as I did, one added hunks of bread to ones deep soup bowl; the taste was unbelievable – for me, the soup was always infinitely superior to the fireworks which had preceded it.
There is so much more that I could say about Mum. Supplementing the family income by making cardboard boxes at home, or her love of card playing, limited in recent years to ‘Find the black bitch’ and ‘Newmarket’, her Bingo sessions, the tea making circle when supporting Dad and his brother Len when they were playing cricket for Castle Sports and Auntie Lill did the scoring, playing cricket and rounders with us children. Recently I was viewing a video of the parents’ 63rd wedding anniversary and there was Mum, aged 84, and Dad, aged 87, playing and clearly enjoying a lengthy game of ‘Piggy in the middle’ with playmates whose ages ranged upwards from about 6 and covered just about every age group up to the 60s. Her smoking habit, for which she held Ken and me responsible. Garden gnomes, imported from her next door neighbour, one of which changed its nationality to French as the result of giving it to her great granddaughter, Elisa.
The admonition to never speak ill of the dead is very easy to follow in respect of Mum because she was like the three wise monkeys: she saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil to anyone or about anyone.
None of us children ever begrudged doing something for Mum because we hoped by our feeble efforts that we might be able, in some small part, to repay all the hard work, joy and infinite love we had received, unstintingly, during the whole of her life.
Mum, you will forever be in the thoughts of us children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren as we try to live up to the very high standards of love and understanding which you quietly showed us during every day of your life. You will be sadly missed but we shall always think of you with joy and happiness as we know that you are once again united with the love of your life, Dad, and with Vic, in infinite peace and tranquillity.
Thank you for being such a very special person. Our love will be with you always.
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