My mum died last night at the grand age of 93. She had been in hospital for three weeks, but we had seen a decline in her from just before Christmas and while the hospital was the right place for her treatment, I am sure, as an independent lady, she would have liked to be self sufficient to the end.
She was one of seven children, she had five sisters, Jackie, Betty, Peggy, Norah and Doreen, and a brother John who I never met. She is survived by Jackie. The strangest thing I can remember about them is the only Christmas present I ever got from Uncle John was a set of plastic golf clubs. It was in the early sixties and he clearly saw something in me which nobody else did!!
They were brought up in Wisbech in the Fenlands of Cambridgeshire, and she attended Wisbech High School. The acronym, RHS, was said to stand for 'wandering hands society'. I suspect my mum was not a member of that society as she left home at the age of 16 to join the Army. In her own words she was so naive, she did not even know where babies came from!!
This naivety did not last long apparently as the girl she was billeted with was 'a bit flighty'. It was the height of the second world war and she was posted to Folkstone as one of the girls who moved ships and planes across the map of Europe with roulette type sticks. She was regularly telling the story of how she and some friends were chased back to barracks by an armed sentry on the night of D-Day as all leave was cancelled but nobody had told them!!
I remember visiting the area in my teens when we went to the local pub the soldiers frequented and saw the names of the military signed on the ceiling.
At the end of the war she stayed in the Army and joined the Army Training Service (ATS) as a physical fitness instructor. It was at this time that she met my dad, Paul. She followed him around watching cricket and football and they eventually got married and I appeared on the scene.
We lived in Isleworth in West London in a house owned by my aunt, and my grandparents lived next door with my cousin Mike a few doors further up the road. We stayed there until 1959 when my dad took a new job with Shell Mex and BP and we moved down to Plymouth.
Mum was a typical housewife of the time, and while Dad travelled around the South West buying sites for new petrol stations, my mum was my taxi for school events, and sporting occassions. She would transport me and my mates in her pride and joy of an A40 called 'Noddy'. When I reached the age of 17, Noddy became my pride and joy as well and shared many a boys night out with the S Club and other school chums.
As I was now less demanding on my mum, she branched out, with a friend called Rosemary, into the unheard of area of child care. The pair of them convinced a local church to allow them to run a playgroup in the hall. Dad and I then spent several evenings touring Plymouth buying second hand bikes, slides, prams and swings to go in the hall. Dad built a sandpit and put clothes hooks on the wall, and the playgroup was opened. It cost 50p a session and was hugely popular with professional people, artisans, sportsmen and teachers alike. Mum and Rosemary knew the world, and were never short of Plymouth Argyle tickets as several players dropped their children off in the mornings.
She attended Home Park with dad regularly and it left a big hole in her life when he died prematurely in 1980 just after I had married and presented them with their grandson, Tim. She relocated briefly back to Wisbech but going there did not really work out, so she returned to Plymouth and eventually found a pleasant house a few hundred yards from our original family home.
Mum then turned to volunteer work, especially for the National Trust at Saltram House, she also worked as a ward clerk at the local Greenbank hospital a few days a week. She joined in with walking groups and played badminton regularly, but this combination soon took a toll on her knees and her mobility started to suffer. She lost her walking group days out as she was struggling to keep up, so she turned to her garden and it became her new pride and joy as Noddy Mk3 had been sold when she found it difficult to drive.
As calls for help became more frequent, and the distance between London or Liverpool and Plymouth became a problem, mum moved to an independent living apartment in Hoylake near where we live. She never really got the Liverpool bug though and although she developed a small nucleus of friends in the flats, the wider benefits of an extended family alluded her.
Nonetheless she was always interested in the progress made by the children in their careers and more recently she has been delighted by the way our oldest granddaughters, Ava and Sofia, have been bonding. She truly adored her grandson, Tim, and was always full of support for him when his life course took to choppy waters.
She was a very attractive woman, even to the end, and as a small reminder it is my intention to construct an Andy Warhol, Marilyn Munroe style pop art collage. I hope she would find that appropriate. We hope to scatter her ashes at the memorial garden in Plymouth where my dad was laid to rest all those years ago. They will then once more find happiness in each others company.
Showing posts with label folkstone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label folkstone. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 February 2019
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Windjammer Landing
I was reminded that today is the 25th anniversary of the 1987 hurricane that hit South East England during that particular evening.
I lived in Chiswick in West London at the time, and was fortunate enough to work in the office over the road. I was often to be seen rushing over the road at the slightest hint of rain, to get my washing in from the line. I was also fortunate enough to go home for lunch when the fancy took me and on some occasions I would be accompanied. Those were the days.
On the night of the hurricane, I have no recollection of the famous weather forecast presented by Michael Fish when he assured everybody there would only be strong winds and it would be nothing to worry about. I sleep through most things, although I do recall waking in the night to the rattle of the window in the bedroom.
For some reason I was sleeping in the spare room that night. Now whether that was because I was decorating I really cannot recall, but when the alarm went off, and the radio came on I do remember the radio announcer saying there was wide spread devastation over South East England. I got washed and dressed and then looked out of the window to see somebody else's shed roof in the garden, and a couple of fences down further up the road, but it was not until i got outside that I saw there had, indeed, been some stormy weather.
One tree down the road was leaning against the front of a house, and there were branches and boughs strewn all over the place. Car bonnets had been caved in, and tiles lay all over the road. I was lucky to avoid any property damage and after a brief inspection I walked over the road to work.
This is where the fun started. 'How did you get here?' asked the security guard. 'I don't know how I am going to get home , or when' he said, as it was apparent already that his relief was marooned at home.
Two or three other people who lived local made it in over the next hour or so, and we spent the rest of the day listening to tales of woe from people who had been badly affected or stranded away from home.
Two stories stick in my head. The first involved a work colleague who left addington near Croydon at 6am to drive to our office in Warwick. He drove around a fallen tree at the end of his road but thought nothing of it. He arrived in Warwick at 08:30 to be greeted by incredulity from his work colleagues that he had arrived there at all. He was totally unaware of what had happened. It took him nine hours to drive home that evening.
The second concerned the cross channel ferry chaos. A friend of mine was on a Calais to Dover ship which was diverted to Folkstone as they could not navigate the harbour entrance at Dover. They arrived outside Folkstone to see another ship already tied to the quay and unloading. There was a queue of ambulances waiting to ferry the injured to hospital as people were flying across the decks with the size of the swell, breaking limbs and knocking themselves out.
Eventually the ship finished unloading, and she was then cut from her moorings and allowed to drift away from the quay, that being the only way they could quickly free up the space for my friends ship to dock. Apparently they could not unload any cars from either ferry as they too had been tossed around in the hold, and blocked the exit ramps. Ouch!
It's a bit breezy here on the Wirral today, but nothing has compared since. 25 years eh!, a lot has happened in that time.
I lived in Chiswick in West London at the time, and was fortunate enough to work in the office over the road. I was often to be seen rushing over the road at the slightest hint of rain, to get my washing in from the line. I was also fortunate enough to go home for lunch when the fancy took me and on some occasions I would be accompanied. Those were the days.
On the night of the hurricane, I have no recollection of the famous weather forecast presented by Michael Fish when he assured everybody there would only be strong winds and it would be nothing to worry about. I sleep through most things, although I do recall waking in the night to the rattle of the window in the bedroom.
For some reason I was sleeping in the spare room that night. Now whether that was because I was decorating I really cannot recall, but when the alarm went off, and the radio came on I do remember the radio announcer saying there was wide spread devastation over South East England. I got washed and dressed and then looked out of the window to see somebody else's shed roof in the garden, and a couple of fences down further up the road, but it was not until i got outside that I saw there had, indeed, been some stormy weather.
One tree down the road was leaning against the front of a house, and there were branches and boughs strewn all over the place. Car bonnets had been caved in, and tiles lay all over the road. I was lucky to avoid any property damage and after a brief inspection I walked over the road to work.
This is where the fun started. 'How did you get here?' asked the security guard. 'I don't know how I am going to get home , or when' he said, as it was apparent already that his relief was marooned at home.
Two or three other people who lived local made it in over the next hour or so, and we spent the rest of the day listening to tales of woe from people who had been badly affected or stranded away from home.
Two stories stick in my head. The first involved a work colleague who left addington near Croydon at 6am to drive to our office in Warwick. He drove around a fallen tree at the end of his road but thought nothing of it. He arrived in Warwick at 08:30 to be greeted by incredulity from his work colleagues that he had arrived there at all. He was totally unaware of what had happened. It took him nine hours to drive home that evening.
The second concerned the cross channel ferry chaos. A friend of mine was on a Calais to Dover ship which was diverted to Folkstone as they could not navigate the harbour entrance at Dover. They arrived outside Folkstone to see another ship already tied to the quay and unloading. There was a queue of ambulances waiting to ferry the injured to hospital as people were flying across the decks with the size of the swell, breaking limbs and knocking themselves out.
Eventually the ship finished unloading, and she was then cut from her moorings and allowed to drift away from the quay, that being the only way they could quickly free up the space for my friends ship to dock. Apparently they could not unload any cars from either ferry as they too had been tossed around in the hold, and blocked the exit ramps. Ouch!
It's a bit breezy here on the Wirral today, but nothing has compared since. 25 years eh!, a lot has happened in that time.
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