MY MUM: MARJORIE MAY HEDGES...

 My Mum: Marjorie May Ray, née Hedges…

‘She wore her heart beneath her sleeve…’

Mum’s early life…

Mum was born on May 9th 1920, hence her middle name, I guess. She was the youngest sibling in her family but was probably closest to sister Ghreta, just two years older than herself. She had a small gap between her two top front teeth, until false teeth replaced them many years later. Her parents are written about elsewhere on this blog, so I won’t repeat general stuff about where the family lived in those early years unless it affects mum directly.

THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE COPY...

I believe that she never left England in the whole of her life…

She grew up loving cats, she attended primary and secondary schools in Washwood Heath and Ward End in Birmingham but she often spoke about Cherrywood Road Secondary School, where she, like older sisters Ivy and Ghreta, played netball for the school’s team and all three were the fastest runners in their particular years. Mum was good at sports, like all of her siblings and in later years she watched a number of Aston Villa matches live. 

MUM IN SMART SANDALS (RIGHT) IN A TYPICAL IMAGE ALONGSIDE GHRETA...

She never learned to swim, having being pushed into a swimming pool during a lesson whilst at school by, er, a teacher… She never recovered from that trauma. The stubborn streak in mum meant that she never went in the sea on holiday as an adult, although neither of her sisters did, to be fair. I didn’t ever see mum in a bathing costume…

KILLER FRINGE, NEXT TO GHRETA, WITH GRAN, GRANDAD, IVY & FRED (BUN) ON THE BACK ROW...

GHRETA & MUM AGAIN...

Sadly she was only 14 when her dad died, leading to the awful episode two years later when her mum married again. Gran had become ‘silly’, mum reckoned, whilst doing a cleaning job at Mr Madeley’s house. She started wearing a lot more make-up… It took but little time for Gran to realise her mistake, for widower Madeley basically needed someone to look after his children… Mum had moved into the house too, being just 16 but she only lasted a very few days. She told me that she ‘couldn’t stand’ Mr Madeley, before going to stay with her brother Clarence and wife Alice, temporarily.

MUM ON IVY'S LEFT & BEHIND HER IS ALICE GRIFFIN, WHO WOULD MARRY SIBLING ALBERT (CLAL)...

MUM, FRONT LEFT BUT NO IDEA WHO THE OTHERS COULD BE...

MUM & GHRETA WITH HATS & CATS...

Mum worked at the ‘Wolseley’ in the offices on Drew’s Lane in those difficult years, before Gran moved out of Madeley’s home, first into a house in Sladefield Road and then round the corner into Bamville Road, where my parents lived too after their marriage on March 27th 1943, a wartime wedding. When he first spotted my mum, dad would apparently wait opposite the Wolseley works entrance and whistle at my shy mum when she left work. She told me once that she had been really embarrassed by that… He lived just round the corner in Bromford Lane at the time.

NO AGRICULTURAL FRINGE HERE...

BRIGHT DAY, HEAVY COAT...

PROBABLY AROUND 14 YEARS OLD, HERE...

When they started going out together, dad hadn’t known what Mum’s surname was and I believe that on their first evening’s ‘date’ they went for a walk. Mum had to be home by 10pm and apparently dad asked what mum’s surname was as they strolled along. She told dad that he had to guess what it was… This left dad incredulous but against his better judgement, he agreed to try to guess. 

THE HANDBAG HAS ARRIVED...

MUM & FRIEND...

AH, COLOUR...

He needed a clue though and mum told him that her surname was “…in the garden…” So, as they began to near mum’s house,  dad began the torturous interlude of suggesting ‘garden’ surnames and I assume that Fence, Tree, Bush, Potts, Plant, Flowers and Shrub might have been mentioned. Following on, the guesses became wilder, like Dirt, Soil, Worm, or Lavatory, etc, but she wouldn’t give him another clue. Eventually, having won neither a hug, nor a goodnight kiss, at 10pm mum turned to go into her house and dad, exasperated, yelled, “What is your name then?” 

INTERESTING BENCH...

COSSACK HAT?

AWKWARD SLEEVES & HANDBAG...

“Hedges…” she laughed and went inside…

To my shock, on closer viewing of the third image below, mum smoked, as was the fashion around the time of WW2. I saw her with a cigarette in her hand a couple of times at family parties, but I had thought that was a recreational thing, as so many others in the room were puffing away and so she had joined in…

STUDIO IMAGE...

FASHIONABLE BROOCH...

CIGARETTE IN HAND...

Mum apparently visited dad when he was training with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment at the start of WW2, travelling by train to Berkhamsted and staying in a boarding house. Having seen a soccer game at Berko, which is next to the railway station, I thought about mum arriving there, alone all those years ago and having to meet dad somewhere… 

WITH IVY & HER MUM-IN-LAW, NAN RAY...

DID SHE OPERATE AS A SPY DURING WW2?

BEING A BRIDESMAID WITH GHRETA.
NOTICE HOW THE HEADGEAR IS WORN DIFFERENTLY...

Incredibly, mum joined, er, the National Fire Service in September 1943 and there is a fine photo of her below in uniform. Meetings were held in Ward End Park but apparently some of the members spent much of the time snogging. Mum didn’t like that much and so after a couple of meetings, she stopped going… The image shows her wearing the uniform and, er, sandals…

NATIONAL FIRE SERVICE IN SANDALS...

I can’t recall any memories spoken by mum about the use of air-raid shelters during WW2 although post-war the shed in the back garden at 63 Bamville Road looked like a recycled shelter. Dave, Derek and Steve, whose mums Ivy and Ghreta spent time at Bamville during those days, can’t add any further information about shelters, although perhaps the Wolseley factory itself provided some security, or maybe the girls used the stinking public shelters as a last resort! Probably not though…

BATTING IN FRONT OF WHAT MUST HAVE ONCE BEEN AN ANDERSON SHELTER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN...

Ivy told me that mum did get herself a small job in a Ward End shop called Hunt’s after the war but dad forced her to give it up rather quickly to be at home when he returned from work. Controlling? No, surely not…

Mum’s wedding had taken place at St Margaret’s Church, opposite Ward End Park in Birmingham but some of the photographs were taken with the rather bizarre backdrop of Sladefield Road School. As mentioned in Ghreta’s family article, she and her husband Doug Heslop also lived at 63 Bamville Road but were asked to leave when Ghreta was expecting my cousin Steve. Doug was in good employment due to his designing talents and they were thus able to purchase a house in Barrows Lane, Sheldon but although my parents were expecting me four months later, dad’s rather shaky ‘profession’ of window cleaning presumably meant that mum and dad were unable to branch out and find somewhere else to live at that time. They stayed on with Gran after I was born, until we moved to Shard End some six years later. 

THE WEDDING, WITH GHRETA & DAD'S SISTERS SHEILA & CONNIE AS BRIDESMAIDS.BEST MAN WAS LES MCSTOCKER...

NICE BACKDROP OF A SCHOOLYARD, COMPLETE WITH LADDER...

DANCING WITH MUM AT MY PARENTS' SILVER WEDDING CELEBRATION IN CASTLE BROMWICH...

 

The Return To St Margaret’s…

Leaning into each other, they lurched forth

Towards the church door,

Then turned

And wandered back towards a lens,

As stomachs churned,

Thoughts of turbulent years

Of strife and tears

Sifting, drifting through ageing minds,

Now deprived of love

But scarred by the intolerance

And disappointments that marriage finds…

Wedded fifty years before, they made that walk forth

From the church door,

Then turned

And smiled hard for a lens,

As stomachs churned,

Thoughts of wartime years,

Of strife and fears

Sifting, drifting through young minds,

Then bewitched by love

But blessed by the reverence

And the familiarity that marriage binds…

Pete Ray

50 YEARS ON & A RETURN TO THE CHURCH...

On their Golden Wedding Day in 1993, I returned my parents to the church where they were married, during the Second World War, 27th March 1943.

GOLDEN WEDDING DAY IN CURDWORTH...

Details of the memories I have of 63 Bamville Road may be found elsewhere on this blog.

TAKEN IN 1950, MY BIRTH YEAR...

Shard End of course was some way from Ward End in the days of bus travel and mum was probably quite lonely, for dad had become an insurance agent around 1953, on the recommendation of an ex-army friend, Jackie Burton. Clearly, the job began with a poor income, until the agent built up his ‘round’ and dad was out ‘collecting’ at ridiculous hours, using his push-bike to get around, whilst carrying huge amounts of cash in deepened pockets. He was never mugged.… 

BACK GARDEN SHARD END, WITH RICKY THE CAT.
NOTE THE DECKCHAIR, FAR LEFT...

EARLY 1960S & EVEN RICKY HAD A DECKCHAIR...

That bike ended up in Birmingham Museum, for I used it as part of my WW2 sessions there… 

And so we began a new life in a council house in Shard End. Dad couldn’t afford to smoke any longer, which probably improved his health and of course mum was there to cook, clean, wash and receive ‘pocket money’ which she was scrupulously careful with and in doing so she managed to buy a few extra gifts for birthdays and of course at Christmas with what she had saved by scrimping.

Living at home with mum…

She once told me in the kitchen, near the pantry door, following an altercation with my stern and controlling father: 

“I’m leaving. Are you coming?”

As a teenager, having no valid opinion of my own in the eyes of my father, I retorted with all the venom of sour milk: 

“If you go, I’ll never speak to you again…”

I walked off, embarrassed and with blood thumping in my chest. She stayed and the conversation was never again referred to. 

AROUND THE 1970 MARK...

Mum had been trodden down to weak apathy by dad’s ‘head of the family’ control and she was also in awe of her oldest sister Ivy, from Sheldon, Solihull, then Knowle… My father employed one of his insurance policyholders, a retired builder and with a deformity to his back, to erect a front porch when he purchased the house from the council, having acquired a good mortgage rate from Britannic, as one of their employees. However, some members of the family were apparently unimpressed that the work was being done ‘on the cheap’. Later, dad’s mate Eddie Coleman helped him to build a ‘lean-to veranda’ at the rear of the house, totally enclosing the small yard in which I had kicked a ball about during my childhood. Mum would sit in that space either to sunbathe, or doze, or knit and she acquired a decent all year round suntan. 

AROUND 1965...

WE WENT TO CASTLE BROMWICH CHURCH TO SEE MY TEACHER, MISS HANDS MARRY & BECOME MRS ALLDRICK...

Her sister Ivy would reply to folks who remarked that my mum had a fine tan: “Well she sits in ‘that thing’ all day…”

I mentioned mum’s ‘thing’ at her funeral service.

THE THING...

Mum didn’t like her routine altered. Washing and cleaning both house and brass ornaments took place on the same days each week. I hated the stench of the Duraglit she used to polish the brass… I think that someone my dad called on for insurance money gave him several pieces of unwanted brass but of course it was left to mum to keep it all gleaming. She barely spoke if her habitual activities were interrupted by anything unexpected, even visitors. Travelling to meet her sister Ghreta in Birmingham’s city centre on Wednesday mornings was habitual too, as well as shaking off my cat Ricky, which often followed her to the bus-stop. 

Meals were also unvaried. Roasts on Sundays, ‘bubble and squeak’ with beef or lamb leftovers on Mondays, chips with something on Tuesdays, chicken portions from ‘town’ on Wednesdays, mixed grill on Thursdays and fish on Fridays. I don’t recall Saturday meals for some reason, although lamb chops might have been served sometimes. Bacon sandwiches were issued on Saturday mornings though, but I was usually playing rugby or cricket for the school, or travelling to football matches and I only seem to remember pikelets (crumpets) for tea on those evenings.

THE BIRMINGHAM TO PLYMOUTH TRAIN.
ME IN SCHOOL BLAZER & TIE (!), MUM KNITTING...

EARLY 1960S...

Mum’s cabbage was the worst tasting food I have ever consumed. It was dark green and like pulp. I was forced to eat everything on my plate as a kid and I could only really manage that awful green mulch if the meat served with it was lamb and I could flood the plate with mint sauce to hide the unpleasant taste of the vegetable…

Mum’s apple pies, mince pies and cakes (especially fruit and Christmas versions) were legendary, however…

I recall I had clambered into mom’s bed as a child one morning in August 1958 and she had gone downstairs to make a pot of tea, which she brought upstairs along with dad’s Daily Express and mum suddenly exclaimed the headline to us: “Colin’s dead!”

I assumed she meant the neighbouring lad Colin Tyler, although why that particular news should appear on the front of the Daily Express, I had no idea. Mrs Tyler, in mom’s famous description, was: “…in and out of Highcroft…”, which was the local asylum. I never discovered why. The article in the newspaper though was about the motor racing driver Peter Collins’ death at Bonn in Germany and read: “Collins Dead!”

JUST COULDN'T GET HER IN THE WATER...

Mum always watched me play football for Hillstone Junior School and for the Saltley District team, although Dad went out to collect insurance money on Saturday mornings. Apparently… He attended a few after-school games though and helped with practices, mostly for his own benefit, racing past the lads and tackling them hard. I hated him being there. I became more timid and just wanted to go home. He was given a penknife as a gift for helping, from the sports teacher Mr Barber and the other players. I was embarrassed. Again.

Mum followed the team with Derek James’ mother, ‘Mrs James’, for Christian names were far too familiar to be used in the late 1950s.

More about Girl Hedges…

My childhood friend, Pauline Lucas from 71 Bamville Road, was mum’s friend’s daughter. I found out much later that she had been adopted and that her real mother had lived in Monk Road, the next road to Bamville Road but Pauline didn’t know this at the time. Despite being mum’s friend, mum was incapable of using Freda’s married name of Lucas, always calling her ‘Freda Dale’, her maiden name, which became one word, ‘Fredadale’.

1971, OR THEREABOUTS...

MUM AT FOWEY...

MOPPET MARJ...

There was a road called St Agatha’s Road nearby too but mum and the locals didn’t speak the word like one would expect, instead putting the accent on the second ‘a’, so it became ‘St Ag-A-tha’s’. Weird…

Mum’s other friends were Doris Saunders and Margaret Stevens. Doris was married to the sensible Eric and they lived in a ‘nice house’ on Bromford Road in Hodge Hill which mum and I walked to several times when I was a child.  Mum insisted on referring to Doris as ‘Girl McKenzie’. I recall running from outside Doris’ house, number 418, to the post-box on the corner of Collingbourne Avenue, as ‘training’, never thinking that I would eventually live close by and walk my dog Chico past 418 many years later. Eric died well before Doris did but mum lost touch with her when we moved to Shard End, like she did with ‘Fredadale’. 

MUM WITH ONE OF THE NICE PEOPLE IN LIFE, RON...
SHE HAD BEEN OUR NEIGHBOUR IN WARD END & HER HUSBAND FRED HAD BEEN AT SCHOOL WITH MY DAD...
THE COUPLE HAD BEEN Aston Villa SEASON TICKET HOLDERS IN THE 1950S...

Margaret lived with a manly Brummie plumber, Ernie. He seemed ‘rough’ but Margaret was certainly more sedate. They shared a pre-fabricated house, sited where Stechford swimming pool’s car-park now lies. I visited there with mum too but again she would lose touch with her friend. Margaret either died, moved on, or was more likely left by Ernie, who married Ivy, a smart, widowed shop assistant from Cat Lane, Shard End, whose plumbing he had no doubt inspected… Ivy used to board my bus towards town as I travelled to school most days, although I doubt that she would have known me. Ernie eventually died from heart trouble but my dad and Jack always joked rudely about him getting to grips with women’s plumbing… I recall Ernie working in our kitchen in Shard End when I was a young lad but the plumbing smell was always unpleasant and the many pipes and tools confused me and I hoped that I would never have to use such things. I haven’t…

 

Although Doris and Margaret vanished from mum’s life, Freda lived on in Bamville Road for many years, although her butcher husband died in the 1970s and I reckon it was cruel of my dad when he acquired a car in 1965, not to take mum to visit any of her friends. Mum simply acquiesced. 

THE THING TAKES SHAPE...

Mum didn’t like change, mess, or alterations to the norm in the home. My friends were not allowed inside either. Pauline and I played in the rear garden in Ward End, my friend John Quinney and I played football on the grass of Combrook Green, or in Nearmoor Road itself in Shard End. Mum wasn’t physical either and I don’t actually recall ever receiving a hug or a kiss from her. Her shyness was embarrassing but her nature in company was generally endearing, despite her appalling lack of conversational repertoire. 

BACK: BROTHERS BUN, CLAL & CLAUDE (ACTUALLY FRED, ALBERT & SAMUEL- DON'T ASK...);
FRONT: SISTERS GHRETA & IVY, WITH MUM ON THE RIGHT...

She had no job and no real communication with anybody except maybe Ghreta and watched ‘Compact’ and ‘Crossroads’ on television. If she was given Mills and Boon books, or suchlike to read, she would read the last two or three pages first, so that she didn’t have to deal with the tensions of the plot… Her general congeniality and agreeability made her an ideal guest though, generally laughing in the right places, despite not understanding any joke, ever. In fact, the only humorous comment I recall her making was a complete accident but it became one of the most memorable moments I spent in her company. I think Uncle Jack had been having trouble growing certain bulbs in his garden and in a packed room mum suddenly remarked: “Jack can’t get his bulbs to come out…” Everyone went silent for a second and then roared with laughter. Mum had no clue what had happened and never did find out why her words had caused such mirth…

Oddly though, she looked forward to Britannic Assurance events, like one at Trentham Gardens, which she talked about for weeks afterwards and of course she impressed everyone present with her dancing abilities, which apparently enabled her to ‘follow’ even the elephants of the dance floor.

A TYPICAL EXPRESSION...

She was naïve, certainly and it was no wonder that she conceived only one child. September 17^th 1950 suggests that I might have been conceived around Christmas time, 1949. It fits… 

She didn’t sing either, barely humming ‘Happy Birthday’ at parties and she simply refused to refer to dad by his name. I never heard her call him Vic… She simply began talking towards him with a series of statements. Really weird. She referred to him when speaking about him as ‘Old Victor’, or ‘Pete’s dad’. My paternal grandmother was described as ‘Victor’s mom’.

On holidays at a corner shop in Edith Street, Plymouth, she fitted in brilliantly. Ivy ran the show, mum took the orders, dad was a joker-card, Jack sniggered and I was largely, for once, mentally and physically unrestrained. Alice Perkins, Uncle Jack’s sister, liked me and I was always happy to do chores in and around the shop. Ivy was always good to me there too and my own mum just smiled…

LATE IN LIFE, OUT WALKING WITH DAD'S SISTER CONNIE...

My dad reckoned that his ‘hay fever’ meant that mowing the lawns he had nurtured at Nearmoor Road was a chore he couldn’t manage and so mum was expected to take it on and she did a fine job too. The double-width ‘lines’ on both lawns always looked smart and I believe the front garden once won third prize in the road’s council garden competition in the 1960s… 

ABOVE & BELOW: MUM ATTENDING THE LAWNS...
I WAS CONFINED THE STRIP OF GRASS TO THE RIGHT OF THE IMAGES...

She won twice on the ‘Catholic Tote’ too, her ticket having been sold to her by my friend John Quinney’s mum and out of the £100 she won the first time, she bought me my first record player when I was about eleven years old. Soon afterwards she won £50 and out of that I was bought a small transistor radio…

Mum liked my school-friends Cliff Hickman and Brian Kensit from King Edward’s Grammar School in Aston, however. Odd, really but Brian enjoyed being mothered because his brother, who was to become a doctor, was probably favoured by his own mum. Cliff’s girlfriend, two years his senior, lived nearby in Shard End and so visiting us gave him somewhere to go with Angela, whose mother would do some insurance business with my dad. Both lads, you see, were ‘clean and decent’, in my mum’s words…

Mum was once asked, in jest, whether she had dropped me on my head when I was a baby, causing a mental problem, which might have produced my rather left-field behaviour when I was older. Quite seriously, she replied: “No. But I fell down the stairs when I was having him…”

That accounts for it then.

She loved my cat Ricky, named after a boy character from the children’s TV series ‘Champion the Wonder Horse’. She grieved when he was eventually poisoned, probably by neighbours Tom and Floss Phillips’ rather harsh methods of keeping cats away from their budgerigar breeding aviary at the bottom of their back garden. Dad attempted to bring the ailing cat back to health with touches of brandy on his finger. This was the same man who had previously and seriously attempted to give my goldfish the ‘kiss of life’…

Pip was my goldfish, which had already survived a fright, when Ricky knocked its bowl down from the top of the china cabinet. The cat fled and left Pip wriggling on the carpet, broken glass surrounding it in very damp conditions. Mum returned from the Co-op shop (dividend number 225250) and panicked, then filled the washing-up bowl with some cold water, before scooping up the fish, still alive, with a coal shovel. It lived. Mum’s explanation: 

“I just couldn’t pick it up…”  

Mum walked with a decided meander and when one was out with her, one was often forced off the edge of a kerb into the road, or into people’s privet hedges, unless one swerved behind her and slipped back alongside her when a space appeared. Later in life, she walked to the newsagent’s each Saturday morning, paid dad’s newspaper bill and also bought neighbour Frank Griffiths’ ‘Sun’ for him. I was always rather confused by that… 

Mum’s hair went grey prematurely but she had her hair ‘done’, or set, with a slightly blue tint. The local Shard End hairdresser’s shop was used, then later a new neighbour would go to mum’s house and do the job, amidst a total glut of gossip… Mum had to wear a hair-net at night too, which gave her rather a strange and not particularly attractive appearance… 

MY FAVOURITE IMAGE OF MY MUM...

Mum always looked uncomfortable when she held my children, so it was rather surprising that she hadn’t actually dropped me when I was a baby. She was horrified when Lucy, Wendy or Jamie disobeyed instructions, or displayed poor manners, yet she said nothing. A frown and then a flick of her eyes in my direction were all she could manage. She loved them, however, despite her inability to show it overtly. The last time she was active, she had been skipping with my daughters in her back garden, despite being in her early seventies. 

AT THE BRITANNIC OFFICES, PROBABLY 1985 WHEN DAD RETIRED...

My dad, pathetic, rang me that evening, helplessly saying that mum was in bed with agonising pain in her feet. I called a locum doctor in and he diagnosed gout… Of all things to tell my mother, a model of temperance! She was already hurting but then felt worse when she was told it was gout, so I conjectured aloud whether she had been a secret gin drinker… She, er, wasn’t amused…

She was diagnosed with osteoarthritis, which worsened quite quickly, despite steroids and wrist splints. Her skin became tissue thin and every knock looked like she had been beaten-up by dad. Minor scratches became major abrasions, her life with dad became more miserable and although he supported her, his distaste was palpable. Mum strove to complete as much housework as she could but she looked vacant at times and was terribly, worryingly distant. Her hearing was going, too… She was probably having minor strokes but dad simply told her that it was arthritic pain and basically to shut up. He frowned rather well too and moped around the house like Mr Mean, leaving mom sitting in her armchair.

MUM WITH LUCY & WENDY...

MUM WITH MOHICAN JAMIE...

My daughter Lucy spent a year regularly popping in to see mom before attending university in Leicester but mum died in 2000. I recall one visit I made, when mom asked me to cut her toenails because dad “…would only moan…” But I couldn’t find the smallest toe upon her left foot. 

I exclaimed rather stupidly, “Where’s your little toe, mum?”

She replied: “It’s under the others…” It was too. She had been walking on it, for it was at a ninety-degree angle to the others. She explained that dad would have been annoyed if she had told him about it. It was amputated. She died with nine toes.

ME WITH MUM & HER WRIST SUPPORTS...

A short period of company with dad’s sister Connie was good for mum, going out on the bus, shopping and generally having a fun time. Dad was in hospital having a hip replacement (mum had one too…) but when he returned home, he would not take mom to the shops, or even out in his car, in case someone’s bag ripped her skin, he said. Too much trouble for him, I guess and so mum simply faded… 

She collapsed in the kitchen. Dad told her the pain in her shoulder was due to her arthritis. A doctor had recently told her that she had a chest infection. She was however taken to Heartlands Hospital in an ambulance. Dad was quaking. Mum wanted to go in clean underpants. She was cold in the hospital. She was kept there. 

I was called from work during the next morning, to attend the hospital and I guessed that mum was in real danger. She died with a badly damaged heart that very day. Dad shook her dead body, demanding: 

“Don’t you die on me… I’m supposed to go first…”

I dragged him away. He never recovered.   

Puffing and Blowing

(Words written about Mum’s final moments…)

Body irritation:

Cold, dry,

In need of warmth

And irrigation.

Short intakes of breath,

Eyes darting for reaction,

But all effect.

Tiresome being unfit.

Joint inflammation.

Body reformation:

Comfort, hydrated,

In need of peace

And rehabilitation.

Short smiles, “Yes… All right…”

Eyes brighter, reassuring,

But for effect?

Last wave preceding

Overnight deterioration.

Body capitulation:

Cold, dry,

In need of life

And emancipation.

Short gasps of breath,

Eyes hurting, strained:

The pain’s effect.

Vocally rasping…

Coherence evaporation.

Body deceleration:

Cold, awry,

In need of death

And resurrection.

Short murmurs of life,

Eyes wincing,

But to little effect.

Wrestling oxygen mask,

Her final declaration.

Body exhalation:

Cold, still,

In need of no-one,

Just isolation.

Short flickering of lids,

Eyes then quiet:

Heart no effect.

Twisted joints painless, then.

Soul’s dislocation.

Pete Ray 

Sundries about Mum...

Mum had catchphrases, apart from ‘St AgAtha’s’… When playing guessing games, like having to ask questions of the rest of us about a celebrity she had to try to identify, she would always say, “No hard ones…” Yet, in one brilliant game, my dad went out into the hall while we decided who we could choose for him. Mum would usually suggest Cilla Black (dad hated her and when she spoke on TV, he would yell at her image, “Aaaah, get off home and do the washing-up…”) or perhaps an Aston Villa player but this time she came up with a pearler. There had been an article on the front page of the local newspaper about a family which had confronted a burglar and I believe that the perpetrator had been rebuffed. Now, the family was one dad had called on for insurance for many years and he still visited them following his retirement.

Mum said: “How about the burglar who tried to rob that family?” My kids and I stared at her and agreed, readily… Dad was called back into the lounge and he was totally stumped. He hated losing. But this time he was unable to find the answer, whatever questions he asked. He actually gave up… When he asked who the ‘celebrity’ was and mum told him it was the burglar, he went crazy, complaining that the bloke wasn’t a celebrity but we simply retorted that the offender had actually been mentioned in a newspaper…

Dad sulked. Mum smiled…

Playing the card game ‘Whot’, if my daughter Wendy won a hand, mum would come out with, “Good old Wend…” Mum was actually good at spelling and we would ask her to spell words as she got older and if it began with an ‘h’, she would say: “Haitch…” and then add the remaining letters…

Odd that she was so prepared to play with my kids, for never had she played with me, or even read to me when I was a young lad. I have to put that down to her lack of confidence and shyness… I played very much alone as a youngster.

If dad complained about something, she would quietly say to us, “He likes it, really…” and I remember her calling me ‘Peanut’ when I was a young boy.

If someone was a bit self-important or arrogant on TV, or in company with us, mum would say: “She’s got a bob on herself…” We liked that one…

Calling the milkman or baker in the street was mum’s nightmare and she would stand on the doorstep and meekly call: “Ooh-ooh…” I would echo that. The delivery men never heard her…

So, how did mum exercise when she was riddled with arthritis? Well, dad was her personal fitness guide and one evening when I had popped in to see them, I became privy to some rather unusual exercises. Dad asked mum if she would like some fruit, which she agreed to. Dad retired to the kitchen. I was sitting on the right end of the sofa, dad had been on my left. Mum sat in her well-pillowed armchair to my right, so that the three of us formed a kind of triangle. Dad returned with two plates, one with slices of orange upon it, the other with slices of apple. He gave neither to mum but sat down. 

Suddenly, dad called to mum and she looked up as a slice of apple flew past my head for her to catch. She snaffled it like a slip fielder in a cricket team. I was too shocked to speak and then a slice of orange followed, which mum caught just above her head… I said: “What the hell are you doing, dad?” He replied: “Keeping her reactions keen…” 

He continued to chuck fruit across in front front of me until all the slices had been used up and mum had eaten them. She then wiped juice from her hands, her wrist supports and her trousers… Bizarre.

Whenever the TV picture was malfunctioning, mum and I knew that all hell was to break loose, for dad would have to carry in his wooden steps, take them upstairs and climb into the loft to adjust the aerial. He simply didn’t realise how ridiculous the situation became, with me standing at the foot of the stairs and mum having to judge, in abject fear, whether the picture was better, or worse, as dad moved the aerial… I wrote a poem about the interlude, which would have been a fine sketch in a sitcom…

Vertical Hold

“Hell’s Bells…”

From the loft

As he adjusted an aerial,

Tickled me

Actually,

Though I knew he was mad…

The bellowing 

Continued

As he enquired, demanded;

Scared me,

Certainly, 

Though I knew he was my dad…

I stood in fear

At the foot of the stair,

Nervous eyes on the mirror,

Mom reclined on her chair.

She was uncertain what she should say,

As vertical hold lost control,

So she muttered, “That’s better…”

As images continued to roll.

The go-between took the collective flack

From indecision and vexation,

To my father’s impatience and temper,

Aligned to his vicious frustration.

“By jingo…”

His distant aggression

Rasped from the rafters,

Worried me,

Truthfully,

Though I knew his mistake…

The reliance

Burdened 

My mother, timid,

Saddened me,

Definitely,

Though I refereed for her sake…

Pete Ray

If the television picture was poor and rolling and not fixed by dad’s leaning across the set to adjust, it was a climb into a loft, a difficult stretch and communicating with the lesser lights downstairs. 

Mum was torn between not getting it right and annoying him by delaying his sojourn there. 

I was on the stairs, attempting to see a reflection of the TV in a mirror but basically reliant upon mom’s hesitancy. 

Crazy days…

Mum took ‘Stitchcraft’ magazine each month, she knitted a lot when I was younger, as my parents were unable to afford school jumpers and she kept a box of odd buttons, a container of various knitting needles of varying sizes and a pile of knitting patterns.

WEDDING PIC IN COLOUR BUT NOTE THAT MUM HAS HER MOUTH SHUT, LIKELY TO HIDE THE GAP BETWEEN HER TWO FRONT TEETH...

Mum would attempt the Daily Express ‘Target’ puzzle each day, which was effectively an anagram of a word but there was also an opportunity to find other smaller words, containing no less than four letters, with a target of a certain number of words for ‘good’, ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’, but each of those words had to include one particular central letter. She would work on that puzzle during the day and often worked out the anagram before dad managed to get it, which really annoyed him. A similar puzzle appears in The Times these days and I try to unravel the main anagram every morning.

Playing ‘Rings’ on Boxing Days at my house, mum perhaps didn’t like being watched and yet even when just taking part in the game, she really irritated dad because he was so damned good at it and felt that concentration was the key. Mum would throw a ring and if it didn’t attach to a hook on the board, she couldn’t help but watch it fall and roll across the carpet until it stopped and that’s what infuriated dad… Did she do that on purpose, perhaps? Hmm…

One of the saddest memories I have of my mum was when I still lived with them until my marriage in 1976, for dad would be out virtually every evening ‘collecting’ he reckoned. He wasn’t, although he didn’t reveal that until after mum had died, but more of that when I write about him…

COURTING DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR...

He would return to the house, perhaps between 9.45 and 10.15pm, mum would be waiting for him to enter the lounge but say nothing. He would simply change the TV channel from whatever mum had been watching because he reckoned that he had been out at work all day, so had earned the right to watch what he wanted when he got home.

Mum would get up, go to the kitchen, make dad a sandwich and a cup of tea, place them on the coffee table next to him and disappear to bed without a word. Days could go by without a word being spoken between them, until mum had been given some gossip by Ghreta perhaps, or by a neighbour and she would tell dad. A shocking existence…

A telephone wasn’t installed at 121 Nearmoor Road until dad had retired because, so he said, he didn’t want insurance clients ringing the house, yet when he did have one installed, he made sure it was ex-directory… All slightly sinister… Mum though, never got used to answering the phone and her nervous, hesitant “Ha-llo..?” whilst holding the receiver like it was about to explode like a firework was a sight to behold… 

Mum was, in a word, ‘nice’…

She wore her heart beneath her sleeve…