Polishing the family silver? 25 10 31
I'm not from the kind of family that ever had silver to polish: being of working class origin my father a carpenter, my mother an embroideress. Though according to my maternal grandfather, visiting the town swimming baths on a weekday using a tram to travel the 2 miles into the town centre, its terminus located around Kay Gardens, he once told me aged maybe aged 6 or 7 how John Kay, the inventor of the Flying Shuttle (in 1733) was his Great Uncle, and how we should be proud of this fact, being descended from John Kay's sister, i.e. ppl reputed to be the local gentry as the Industrial Revolution when the ppl left the land in order to work in the factories gathered momentum, John Kay followed some years later by Robert Peel, perhaps the town of Bury's greatest sons? This, on one of the Wednesdays, or Thursdays, he used to visit us principally to meet his wife, who had departed Manchester to escape Germany's Blitz of the City during WW II, retiring aged 65, himself a life long Moulder in heavy industry.
But our mother always had a keen eye for nice things, and was noted for being the Company's most trusted embroidress: as exemplified by being given the job of embroidering the bed spreads for the State Rooms of HMS The Queen Mary, launched from Glasgow Ship Yards in 1936. During WW II, whenever Winston Churchill, Britain's war time leader crossed the Alantic Ocean to visit with President Rosavelt, she would quip how "Whinnie" would once again be sleeping beneath her handiwork, a total of 6 voyages in all!< br /> That she was a gifted person was apparent in other stories she used to relate. For example as a schoolgirl she was once called to the head Mistress's study, thinking she was about to be reprimanded for some misdemeanor, when she was pleasantly surprised instead to receive a shilling for producing something that displayed her exceptional workmanship.
Alice, our mother had a chequered upbringing, as the 4th child in a family of 6 siblings, born in 1913 after 2 elder brothers and an elder sister, something of a neglected child because her younger sister, was always referred to as the pretty one, noted as the most beautiful, and followed by a baby brother, 6 years her junior. She, on the other hand, shone at maths and all her other studies whatever the school work, and even passed the 11 plus examinations to go to her local Grammar-school. But because of what she referred to as a swollen gland in her neck, she spent a good deal of time as an absentee student. She refused to be subjected to her neck being cut, as she described it to us, but instead her Doctor Carol treated her condition with daily doses of castor oil, a drug-store remedy that normally wasn't prescribed by medical practitioners. As a consequence of this medication the once slim young girl, always thought to be much younger than her years, grew into quite a big adolescent, at least for a time, but for me it always impressed me for her determination and single-mindedness, perhaps a feature when one's mother is only one of six siblings each with their particular demands for care and attention?
Anoher thing she could boast about was that she never forgot the lyrics to a popular song, as she claimed how in the first World War, aged between 1 and 5, she would stand aloft the dining table singing the latest popular balad for the family's entertainment. And when our father didn't return from WW II, owing to his premature dying from an acute form of leukemia, in Australia en route to the Japanese theatre of War, in mid 1945, she would pursue the Crown through all the country's lower courts, to have her Appeal heard in the High Court, when at last she was awarded a War Widows' pension in her Test Case, after 2 years of litigation in 1947: buying a stand-up piano as one of her first purchases to facilitate giving her children the opportunity for an education in music.
Alice's musicianship in all probability came from her mother's side of the family: her maternal grandfather whose family name was Hughes was of Welsh extraction, renown for being musical. Her own mother played by ear, never needing sheet music, as did her mother's brother Edward, and Alice's younger brother George, but in general all her siblings could claim to being musical, at least all could hold a tune, for which I too must perhaps have to thank my great grandfather Teddy.
It was related how Teddy Hughes used have his own organ in his home, and how he used to take it to pieces and tune it, until his dying days when he was unable so to do, because of contracting a "stroke that was the beginning of his end. His third child, Edward, after fathering two girls used to play the Piano-Accordian, a life-long player at celebrations and in Public Houses.
What this blog is therefore building up to is how my mother had a penchant for the nicer things in life: like for my morning coffee, once I learned about drinking coffee, as a young man of 18, first visiting Scandinavia, she would introduce me to drinking it from a bone china porcelain coffee cup, such as "Royal Osborne"...as today 67 years on.
Two to five years later when I returned home with my first silver spoon, a souvenir from working in Finland over the winter of 1962, and winning, like many of my colleagues, the dessert spoon with the Company's crest of a Dragon Rampant, she would instruct me further with need to polish it from time to time using "Brasso".
Singing one's mother's praises and why not my grandfather Kay's as well, growing up in England from aged 5 1/2 without a father figure, but with not a few traits from my prematurely deceased father: two of whose Grandfather's hailed from the Emerald Isle that is Eire, or Ireland, as they sought pastures new in England, at least one relative, maybe a cousin or son of a cousin, emigrating further to the great US of A whilst I chose Finland for my migration. After traveling round most of Finland and at least 25 of the states of the US Union, I would put my money on my making the best choice of where best to spend the rest of one's life..!?
But our mother always had a keen eye for nice things, and was noted for being the Company's most trusted embroidress: as exemplified by being given the job of embroidering the bed spreads for the State Rooms of HMS The Queen Mary, launched from Glasgow Ship Yards in 1936. During WW II, whenever Winston Churchill, Britain's war time leader crossed the Alantic Ocean to visit with President Rosavelt, she would quip how "Whinnie" would once again be sleeping beneath her handiwork, a total of 6 voyages in all!< br /> That she was a gifted person was apparent in other stories she used to relate. For example as a schoolgirl she was once called to the head Mistress's study, thinking she was about to be reprimanded for some misdemeanor, when she was pleasantly surprised instead to receive a shilling for producing something that displayed her exceptional workmanship.
Alice, our mother had a chequered upbringing, as the 4th child in a family of 6 siblings, born in 1913 after 2 elder brothers and an elder sister, something of a neglected child because her younger sister, was always referred to as the pretty one, noted as the most beautiful, and followed by a baby brother, 6 years her junior. She, on the other hand, shone at maths and all her other studies whatever the school work, and even passed the 11 plus examinations to go to her local Grammar-school. But because of what she referred to as a swollen gland in her neck, she spent a good deal of time as an absentee student. She refused to be subjected to her neck being cut, as she described it to us, but instead her Doctor Carol treated her condition with daily doses of castor oil, a drug-store remedy that normally wasn't prescribed by medical practitioners. As a consequence of this medication the once slim young girl, always thought to be much younger than her years, grew into quite a big adolescent, at least for a time, but for me it always impressed me for her determination and single-mindedness, perhaps a feature when one's mother is only one of six siblings each with their particular demands for care and attention?
Anoher thing she could boast about was that she never forgot the lyrics to a popular song, as she claimed how in the first World War, aged between 1 and 5, she would stand aloft the dining table singing the latest popular balad for the family's entertainment. And when our father didn't return from WW II, owing to his premature dying from an acute form of leukemia, in Australia en route to the Japanese theatre of War, in mid 1945, she would pursue the Crown through all the country's lower courts, to have her Appeal heard in the High Court, when at last she was awarded a War Widows' pension in her Test Case, after 2 years of litigation in 1947: buying a stand-up piano as one of her first purchases to facilitate giving her children the opportunity for an education in music.
Alice's musicianship in all probability came from her mother's side of the family: her maternal grandfather whose family name was Hughes was of Welsh extraction, renown for being musical. Her own mother played by ear, never needing sheet music, as did her mother's brother Edward, and Alice's younger brother George, but in general all her siblings could claim to being musical, at least all could hold a tune, for which I too must perhaps have to thank my great grandfather Teddy.
It was related how Teddy Hughes used have his own organ in his home, and how he used to take it to pieces and tune it, until his dying days when he was unable so to do, because of contracting a "stroke that was the beginning of his end. His third child, Edward, after fathering two girls used to play the Piano-Accordian, a life-long player at celebrations and in Public Houses.
What this blog is therefore building up to is how my mother had a penchant for the nicer things in life: like for my morning coffee, once I learned about drinking coffee, as a young man of 18, first visiting Scandinavia, she would introduce me to drinking it from a bone china porcelain coffee cup, such as "Royal Osborne"...as today 67 years on.
Two to five years later when I returned home with my first silver spoon, a souvenir from working in Finland over the winter of 1962, and winning, like many of my colleagues, the dessert spoon with the Company's crest of a Dragon Rampant, she would instruct me further with need to polish it from time to time using "Brasso".
Singing one's mother's praises and why not my grandfather Kay's as well, growing up in England from aged 5 1/2 without a father figure, but with not a few traits from my prematurely deceased father: two of whose Grandfather's hailed from the Emerald Isle that is Eire, or Ireland, as they sought pastures new in England, at least one relative, maybe a cousin or son of a cousin, emigrating further to the great US of A whilst I chose Finland for my migration. After traveling round most of Finland and at least 25 of the states of the US Union, I would put my money on my making the best choice of where best to spend the rest of one's life..!?
Comments
Post a Comment