Remembering my mother on her 21st death day..? 25 5 18
This my yacht she got to sit in if not to sail...
A blog perhaps more for the members of my family who one day in the not-too-distant future will be remembering me on my as yet unknown death day? A day in the last week or 7 days when I got to write two letters of condolences to the loved ones of friends who were once dear to me, as above all others was of course my Mam, aged 90 I like to think of, as 91 years and 13 weeks on Earth.
As I remarked in the wee speech I made at my 60th birthday Bash in Elton Liberal Club, to the gathering of friends and family that attended this occasion, my Mam saw me over the foothills of my life growing up in Bury, after which my wife A-E took over on the bigger peaks, in my case the Munro hills of Scotland: behind every great man there stands a woman goes the saying and in my case I would claim two such people.
Great? Only in your own mind do I here the refrain? But in terms of a mother's love I could not have desired better for she was always there for me. From the days of my childhood I do not remember so many rebukes. On my first day at Elton County Primary School having my first playground run-in when this boy in the year above decided to give me an object lesson of the do's and don'ts of the school yard, and I took exception, to give him my best punch to his stomach, and thereafter ran home to my Mam, she gave me milky tea and tea biscuits I recall and kept the matter simple.
Later in life when she proclaimed to a room full of ppl "Our ***** can live anywhere I cast my gaze around the room to identify ***** only to realise she had meant it was I she was referring to!
When our dad didn't come home from the war and the Minister of War told our Mam there was no War Widow's pension to bring up their 3 children, she disagreed with their decision, and so, with the help of the British Legion, she went through the lower courts, to hear the Lawyer for the Crown proclaim: You can't prove that your husband didn't die from Natural Causes. To which her reply was: And you can't prove that he did. Then in the High Court when her Appeal was heard by Lord Justice Tom Denning, he agreed with her, and said it wasn't her job to prove anything, but that it was incumbent on the Crown, awarding her her pension on a point of law! A test case which had many more war widows writing to our Mam so they could also seek justice...
In this way A, our mother, took over from J, our dad, to become our new War Hero. So when A, accompanied me to seek a job card from Mr Jacks, the Town's Youth Employment Officer for work in a laboratory, he told us he only had a few vacancies for Laboratory jobs, and liked to keep these for the High School and Grammer School Boys, she had to put him right that that was not his job to decide, but the job of the Companies' ppl so engaged in recruiting at the applicants' interviews!
All these years later, after qualifying as a GradRIC (Graduate of the Royal Institute of Chemistry), and thereafter being invited to be a Joint R and D Director to the Finnish Company that brought me here 37 years ago, I think she was right to put Mr Jack in his place.
At that time when I announced the invitation to our mother she simply said "You must accept their offer, your wife A-E has lived for 20 years in your country, now it's your turn to live in hers. I had to obey, never mind that I would be kissing England goodbye forever!
Yeah, that's how I became a great (small "g") man, hahaha!
A blog perhaps more for the members of my family who one day in the not-too-distant future will be remembering me on my as yet unknown death day? A day in the last week or 7 days when I got to write two letters of condolences to the loved ones of friends who were once dear to me, as above all others was of course my Mam, aged 90 I like to think of, as 91 years and 13 weeks on Earth.
As I remarked in the wee speech I made at my 60th birthday Bash in Elton Liberal Club, to the gathering of friends and family that attended this occasion, my Mam saw me over the foothills of my life growing up in Bury, after which my wife A-E took over on the bigger peaks, in my case the Munro hills of Scotland: behind every great man there stands a woman goes the saying and in my case I would claim two such people.
Great? Only in your own mind do I here the refrain? But in terms of a mother's love I could not have desired better for she was always there for me. From the days of my childhood I do not remember so many rebukes. On my first day at Elton County Primary School having my first playground run-in when this boy in the year above decided to give me an object lesson of the do's and don'ts of the school yard, and I took exception, to give him my best punch to his stomach, and thereafter ran home to my Mam, she gave me milky tea and tea biscuits I recall and kept the matter simple.
Later in life when she proclaimed to a room full of ppl "Our ***** can live anywhere I cast my gaze around the room to identify ***** only to realise she had meant it was I she was referring to!
When our dad didn't come home from the war and the Minister of War told our Mam there was no War Widow's pension to bring up their 3 children, she disagreed with their decision, and so, with the help of the British Legion, she went through the lower courts, to hear the Lawyer for the Crown proclaim: You can't prove that your husband didn't die from Natural Causes. To which her reply was: And you can't prove that he did. Then in the High Court when her Appeal was heard by Lord Justice Tom Denning, he agreed with her, and said it wasn't her job to prove anything, but that it was incumbent on the Crown, awarding her her pension on a point of law! A test case which had many more war widows writing to our Mam so they could also seek justice...
In this way A, our mother, took over from J, our dad, to become our new War Hero. So when A, accompanied me to seek a job card from Mr Jacks, the Town's Youth Employment Officer for work in a laboratory, he told us he only had a few vacancies for Laboratory jobs, and liked to keep these for the High School and Grammer School Boys, she had to put him right that that was not his job to decide, but the job of the Companies' ppl so engaged in recruiting at the applicants' interviews!
All these years later, after qualifying as a GradRIC (Graduate of the Royal Institute of Chemistry), and thereafter being invited to be a Joint R and D Director to the Finnish Company that brought me here 37 years ago, I think she was right to put Mr Jack in his place.
At that time when I announced the invitation to our mother she simply said "You must accept their offer, your wife A-E has lived for 20 years in your country, now it's your turn to live in hers. I had to obey, never mind that I would be kissing England goodbye forever!
Yeah, that's how I became a great (small "g") man, hahaha!
This second pic commemorating her family on her father's side and depicting the "Kay Gardens" in Bury, Lancs., town centre, the Kay in question a great great great uncle, John Kay, maybe a few greats too few though I can never recall our Mam claiming any such greatness! lol. Maybe only ever proclaiming whenever PM Winston Churchill crossed the Atlanitic Ocean in one of his 6 WWII crossings that "Whinnie will be sleeping beneath my embroidered bedspreads in HMS The Queen Mary's State Rooms again.."
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