Leaving Their Mark.

Winnie on her wedding day

My mother in law, Winnie Green, would have been a hundred years old a few days ago. Sadly she never made it – she died about six or seven years ago – but she still lives on every day in our minds and in our house. I don’t mean that we still morbidly think of her passing or weep tears – no, we laugh at her well remembered sayings and at her “obsession” with getting a bargain. No day was complete for Winnie unless she had managed to get a bargain on one of her many trips to the shops! We chuckle at all the events remembered – like the New Year’s Eve when we came home late after a night spent in London at the theatre (a family tradition for many years) and we ended up pushing her for a short distance in a supermarket trolley - to the huge embarrassment of one of her daughters and her granddaughters. Mother was not drunk – she  never touched a drop of alcohol but she simply liked a bit of fun. We remember her love of brightly coloured flowers, her love of and skill at ballroom dancing and the wonderful Sunday dinners that she cooked for us. Her steak and kidney puddings were the stuff of legend and when Pat cooks one on some dark winter’s day I am most appreciative but always say “Delicious dear.......but not as good as your mum’s!”  Mum could be frustrating and stubborn – indeed she often drove Pat and her sister to distraction in her quest for a bargain – but her enthusiasm for life and interest in everyone was a lesson to us all. Each time Pat and I returned from our annual holiday one of the joys was telling Winnie all about it – she wanted to know all the details, see all the photographs, know where we had been and what we had seen – she was simply massively interested in people and things - and that interest made others feel important and valuable.  We always had something to say to her and she to us.

Four generations - Winnie, daughter
 Pat, granddaughter Kate and
great granddaughter Sophie

What you saw was what you got. She could not abide pomposity, self righteousness or ‘putting on airs’ . She had the common touch without being common and  could spot hubris and pomposity a mile off – hence her great ‘put down’ line: ‘Oh,  he used to chew  bread for my ducks’ when someone was being pompous, self righteous or big headed. She was absolutely right!   Winnie was filled with a simple common sense and humility and at the same time was a woman of huge compassion and great wisdom.  She often said (and especially as she approached her 90th year) that no other generation could have lived through so much change as her generation. She was right – horse drawn carriages to computers, a world ever smaller as travel became easier, corner shops becoming great supermarkets. But she retained her interest in life to the end  - only a few days before she died (and we knew the end was near)  I was sorting out her lap top so that she could continue to play a game of cards on it! She had grown up in humble circumstances and like the rest of her generation had to cope with the depression of the 1930s and the second World War and so for much of her life had to watch the pennies.  But hard work and careful management meant that later in life she had a nice house and was "comfortable" – but despite that she never lost the drive to find a bargain! And although she was amazed at what youngsters spent money on and how much money people seemed to have in the modern world I never heard her once moan or begrudge them their success or good fortune – she was simply pleased for them.

Winnie's ninetieth birthday  family gathering

So, although Winnie has been dead for several years she is still very much alive for us. When we go on holiday Pat carries a small picture of her in her purse and at some point we will say “Are you enjoying this holiday mum”..........and I swear we somewhere hear a tiny voice replying “Oh yes – lovely – when are we having an ice cream!”. When we look out of the window and see a robin on the tree we both say  “Mum’s on the tree” – it was a family joke that she would leave in her will  two rather “tatty” Christmas robins to our son – and she did. Since then, to all in the family, Winnie has become the garden robin – bright and cheerful even on the darkest winter’s day. When we sit and enjoy a nice Sunday joint one of us will sooner or later remark “Where are you Winnie - you'd enjoy this”? And when I occasionally I go into one of the kitchen cupboard drawers I will say “Oh Patricia” (as Mum always called Pat) “look at the state of this drawer” – and we will both laugh remembering how when mum came to stay it wouldn’t be long before she was tidying out a drawer or furiously polishing the door knocker and saying “Oh Patricia, how could you let it get in this state”!  The worrying thing is that both Pat and I know only too well that as we get older just as I am changing into my dad, Pat is becoming her mother – I frequently now refer to her as Winnie!

Winnie gave unconditional love to everyone – not sloppy overwhelming love but sincere quiet love. She was not hugely demonstrative nor did she wear her heart on her sleeve but she was always interested in you and your views. She had the capacity to make you feel good and to feel in some way secure and valued in her presence. Even though generations divided us - and I have absolutely no doubt that she occasionally disapproved of our life or spending habits or way of bringing up children - she was always interested in us and what we were doing. Whenever we saw her it would not be long before she would say to me “What do you think about [some item of news] it, Tony”  She included everyone in her world and we loved her for it.

I was thinking about this the other day – partly because it was her birthday – but also because of a couple of other events. 

Blogger Leann posted a blog a few days ago and in it she mentioned that she had recently lost her Nana – a lady who clearly meant much to her and was much missed. See Leann’s blog (Medical Monday) at  http://crazyworld-leann.blogspot.co.uk/ . From what Leann said in her blog I recognised many of the things that we valued in our Winnie. I’m sure that Leann will allow me to quote a few lines from her blog: “Her sayings still play out in my mind everyday - when I want to throw in the towel I hear her tell me I have had my self-pity and it is time to move on; or when I didn't understand why my life had taken a turn I didn't expect she would tell me everything happens for a reason and I will understand it someday if I take the time to look back. More often than I want to admit she was right. There was always a place at her kitchen table and a cup of tea ready if you needed it. She taught me about opening my door to others even if I don't think I have enough for me. She taught me about faith and hope and strength and understanding. She was my idol and my moral compass. I will miss her more than I can even think about and not a day has gone by that I have not thought of her and the hope that wherever she is, she is happy and proud”.

I’m sure that many have experienced and known people of the type that Leann describes and the impact that they can have upon our lives. By coincidence, in the past week or two, I have been involved in another venture which has caused me to reflect upon another person whose life impacted upon mine and who is still very much alive despite having left this world forty years ago.

John Derbyshire just before
the Great War

A week or two ago I posted some old family photographs on a web site called the Preston Digital Archive. It is just that - a web site which records old photographs of people, places, events and items concerned with the town of Preston where I was born and grew up. I felt this was the right thing to do so that others might enjoy them rather than them simply sit unseen in a plastic box in my office. They caused quite a stir! I had a lot of feedback from Preston residents who could remember the people and places depicted in the photographs and it was good to have contact again with the town of my birth and which I have not visited since my father died a few years ago. I was contacted by the local newspaper who were especially interested in some World War 1 photographs and items relating to my grandfather, grandmother and my great uncle  - photographs of young men proudly standing in their uniforms or wrapped in bandages recovering from their wounds, a number of postcards that my grandmother had sent to my grandfather as he fought in the trenches of France and a letter - written by my grandfather - begging for an increase in his war pension (see my blog Touching the Past -  http://www.arbeale.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/back-to-blogging-weve-been-away-to.html ). In short, the local newspaper was interested in doing an article about local men like my relations who were caught up in the Great War – “a bit of local interest, human side of the Great War”  the journalist wrote to me -  to coincide with the centenary in 2014 of that tragic event. So, I spent a few days scanning old pictures and writing up notes on the story of my grandfather Joseph and his younger brother John. All that will be the subject of a future blog!

My great uncle, John Derbyshire, was “my hero”. I had always liked him, even as a young child and the fact that he was by then well into his middle age was irrelevant – I suppose that you can say we “clicked”. To me, a youngster, he seemed exciting and a bit different. A lifelong bachelor he was a bit of a “man about town” and although he dressed in his working clothes whilst he tended the garden and did other jobs, when he went out in the evening for a quiet pint of beer he would look, to my young eyes, rather smart and dashing in an old fashioned sort of way – stiff collar, tightly knotted tie, highly polished brown shoes, gold watch chain on his waistcoat. But best of all was what I knew of him. He had run away to war when he was still a youngster. His older brother Joe had joined up and John six years younger and still only 16 broke all the rules and without permission had joined up. I can remember my great grandmother telling me, as a very old lady, that she had no idea where her son John had gone – except that he had gone off to war. By the time John was 18 he was lying wounded in France  and had lost the use of his eye when it was struck by shrapnel. At last word  came to his mother in Preston that he was in hospital somewhere in London and his brother Joe, who happened to be on leave  recuperating from his own injuries, set off to the capital to find his younger brother. I can still remember both my grandfather and great uncle relating the story of how Joe searched the London hospitals for his injured brother – of course the problem was that John had his face bandaged up so was not easily recognisable! Eventually, however, he was found and sometime later returned to Preston, his war service over - and, I suspect, a severe reprimand from his mother and father!

Ready to go to the trenches - John stands back row extreme left.
Click to enlarge and you will see how very young some of the "boys"
look . I find the whole thing impossible to comprehend but it seems
to me that John was not alone in going off to war at a very young age.

For me as a nine or ten year old this was the stuff of dreams and high adventure and it gave this quiet, gentle elderly man an air of mystery and excitement! It was further regularly heightened to me when, whenever we went to visit him he would take out what he called his “war souvenir” - his glass eye - and lay it on the mantelpiece! It was his party trick!

He had only had a very ordinary job – working at the local creamery but as I grew up to teenage years it increasingly seemed to me that he had more to him. He was well read and seemed to have important things to say. He seemed to me to “know things”. As I grew up I can remember increasingly having serious conversations with him about world events – he was articulate and understanding and even to my teenage ears it was clear that John was no fool about politics, literature or current events. He was an astute gentleman. Each night I remember he would listen to the nine o'clock news on the radio – an old crackly machine that looked as if it came from the Great War! - and he would always comment on the news saying things which seemed to my young ears to be very “clever” and thoughtful. I can remember talking about the Kennedy assassination with him and although  by then he was in his late sixties I was thrilled that he wanted to know what I, a mere teenager, thought. I remember him talking about previous American Presidents like Roosevelt and at the same time awakening an interest in me. When I talked to him it seemed  to me that he always listened intently and responded – not always agreeing, sometimes gently contradicting me,  but always recognising my opinions as worthy of consideration.  And as I grew he became a firm friend – in the last year or two before I went off to teacher training college I would enjoy sharing a beer with him and my dad on Saturday night – a nineteen year old and a seventy year old enjoying each other’s company. Even though  the  years separated us he could always “connect”. Despite his 60 or 70 years he seemed to me to be a modern man and still young at heart. He had the capacity to talk to you and not at you.  I remember him once asking me “Now come on Tony tell me about these Rolling Stones (this was in the early 60s!) why do you youngsters like them?”   I can also remember him talking of the first great Liverpool football team created by Bill Shankley as they succeeded in Europe and telling me “that’s the way that football is going to be played from now on – none of this kick and rush stuff that we've been used to”. To me, as a teenager, used to parents and older people putting teenagers down this was music to my young ears. And I still vividly remember, when I was about to go off to college and (much to my mother’s disapproval) I had opened a bank account complete with a cheque book (an unknown item in my family in those days) he spoke up for me when my mother expressed her concerns about me having a cheque book“Now I’ve been reading in the papers”, he said to my mother “that in a few years time we will all be paying for things with bits of plastic. Tony’s a young man now he has to be modern and move with the world”.   Paying with plastic! – I wonder if even Uncle John could have comprehended how the world would change! John seemed to me at the time – and indeed still does, to have had his finger on the pulse – he seemed to have thought things out and was his own man.

Recuperating from the loss of an eye - John marked with a cross

The boy who ran off to war remained a young man at heart up until he died in the early 70s and I have often reflected, over the years, that it was through him that I learned much about growing up. He wasn’t loud or brash or talkative – indeed, if we sat in the pub, him enjoying his half pint he often would say little, but what came out was always worth listening to.  Like my mother in law and, I suspect, like Leann’s  Nana,  he had no agenda he just quietly got on with life. I have no idea why he never married but lived with his mother until she died.  But whatever the reason for his bachelorhood he was a lovely and much loved man.  And his love was unconditional. He was what you saw and you learned not only from what he said but from what he did. He had a quiet authority and I loved and respected him not because he demanded it but because of what he did, how he did it, his interest in me - and the obvious value that he placed upon me and my young beliefs and feelings. He listened to me and such advice as he might have wanted to impart he did without expectation or insistence. I don’t know whether he saw himself as older and therefore wiser (although he clearly was)  but he never thrust that experience down my throat.  Whatever experiences and wisdom he had gleaned from his life was passed on without it being a lesson or a homily – I  learned from the man he was and not what he said.

John as I largely remember him.

When my own son was born in 1974 there was only ever going to be one name for him – John. And even today, all these years after my great uncle’s death I still think of him and those quiet conversations and those half pints we shared in the village pub. I still imagine him as a young boy running off to war and being involved in the terror of the trenches – a thing that I cannot begin to comprehend but which he just took in his stride – never boasting of his involvement or complaining about the injury that changed his life. Like others of his generation, including my mother in law – he just got on with things. Sometimes it seems a far cry from today when so many appear to wear their hearts on their sleeves and want to shout from the rooftops of their disadvantage and problems, or vent their spleen against society and its unfairness. I'm sure that both John and Winnie had many things that they could have complained about - the hardships of their lives, the impact of war upon them, their broken dreams great sadnesses and all the other things that go into being human - but I rarely, if ever, heard them do it – they simply got on with it. Maybe there's a lesson for all of us there.

I've often reflect that John could have had no inkling that he would have so much effect and importance to me - and indeed still does. I don't know how he would have reacted to that - probably just quietly smiled and nodded. But I'd like to think that deep down he would have had some quiet satisfaction that although he had no children of his own he had made such an impression on me and my life. And when I think of uncle John – and of Winnie - who would have been a hundred this week - I am reminded of the poem by Brian Patten that we put on the front of the Order of Service for Winnie’s funeral. I don’t think that we could have comprehended how true it would be in her case – that despite her death in 2006 (and despite John’s death so many years previously) they would still very much live on - not as vague distant memories but as people who are still very much part of our lives and who still in their way speak to us..

SO MANY DIFFERENT LENGTHS OF TIME

by Brian Patten

How long does a man live after all?
A thousand days or only one?
One week or a few centuries?
How long does a man spend living or dying
and what do we mean when we say gone forever?

Adrift in such preoccupations, we seek clarification.
We can go to the philosophers
but they will weary of our questions.
We can go to the priests and rabbis
but they might be busy with administrations.
So, how long does a man live after all?
And how much does he live while he lives?

We fret and ask so many questions -
then when it comes to us
the answer is so simple after all.
A man lives for as long as we carry him inside us,
for as long as we carry the harvest of his dreams,
for as long as we ourselves live,
holding memories in common, a man lives.

His lover will carry his man's scent, his touch:
his children will carry the weight of his love.
One friend will carry his arguments,
another will hum his favourite tunes,
another will still share his terrors.

And the days will pass with baffled faces,
then the weeks, then the months,
then there will be a day when no question is asked,
and the knots of grief will loosen in the stomach
and the puffed faces will calm.
And on that day he will not have ceased
but will have ceased to be separated by death.

So, how long does a man live after all?
A man lives so many different lengths of time.