1. Naturally slim, totally elfin teen - very cute!
Mum was born in 1957 so was a teen just as the 70s were born; there is one picture of her (now resides in a photo album I made for my grandma) where she has the perfect pixie hair, a brown top, slim, but not anorexic and the cheekiest little smile EVAR!
2. Incredibly intelligent and member of a formidable pub quiz team
An absolute oracle (it seemed) of facts; she was no Vincent Nigel Murray, but the stuff she used to retain made her an invaluable member of a quiz team with Mrs Thomas, Mr Bloor and....someone else whose name I can't remember - prob Mr Sears (all teachers - that's why they don't have first names).
3. Had tantrums like a child - caused me much embarrassment!
I can remember one in particular after my brother and I had cleaned the kitchen on a Sunday, she must have been pissed off at something else because her reaction at us pushing the mixer tap to the side was to lay on the floor and beat her fists. I also remember being glad that she ws face down, because I know that seeing my face of suppressed laughter would have only fanned the flames!
4. Taught me how to read using flashcards when I was 3; I read better than any child at infants school for the duration
I remember this most distinctly; mum would be in the passenger seat of dad's car and would have a little rectangular box of flash cards - two levels, one for me, one for Rob. Whatever method she used worked bloody well as we got through those rather quickly and by the time I was in Infants (I am told the following as I don't remember it clearly) I read The Enormous Crocodile to my friend Beth.
5. Superbly imaginative when it came to creating fancy dress; used to win at Brownies every time
One pack holiday we were staying in a cottage on the Badminton estate and the theme was a teddy bears' picnic. a brownie by the name of Tracey (tiny girl, laugh like Barbara Windsor) had a full Winnie The Pooh costume that she said had been made for her. It was very much a strict CosPlay ethic when it came to fancy dress - no "bought" costumes were allowed. I was Mother Bear from goldilocks and I had a paisley blue dress with a little white apron, a pink bonnet that had fluffy ears stuck to the outside and a nose made out of one of those polystyrene egg cartons with an elastic string. I was shocked to win after seeing the Pooh bear costume, but hey!
6. Married a child-abusing tosser who fought with her mum and screamed in the middle of the road - on Gloucester Road
You may be shocked at that bit - it was my step dad, not my dad. The floor of the front room was unusable as we were having polished floorboards put in, but they were all up for some reason - we had no floor. Sunday lunch was a weird affair - it was cooked and we all ate upstairs in the master bedroom. For some reason - I was probably being rude about eating broccoli or cabbage, (it was definitely a green); my step dad picked up my plate, grabbed me by the wrist dragged me along the hallway and my feet barely touched the stairs as I was hoisted down them. We went into the kitchen whereby he put my plate on the floor and told me that I would not be going anywhere until I had eaten the entire meal. Mum was NOT a good cook, so this was not "ooh yum, Sunday roast"; it was dry chicken, watery gravy, rock hard veg. Just because you don't report it, doesn't mean it's not child abuse. Fucking idiot.
7. She painted the hand-made stained glass window at the rear of Horfield Methodist church hall
8. She wanted to call me Cleo
Dad wanted to call me Joyce (both my grandmas are Joyces) and mum wanted to call me Cleo. Thank goodness I wasn't called Joyce - it's a grandma's name! For whatever reason, mum ended up naming me after one of her friends from school and the compromise was that my middle names is Jay (Joyce, Joyce, Jeff (granddad) and Graham John (Pampa)) ALL THE Js!
9. She never ever heard of Twitter or Facebook
I think she would have hated Facebook, but liked Twitter; she would have been very funny on Twitter.
10. She could touch type
Mum worked for the Civil Service when she was a teen / early twenties and did a lot of clerical work; this involved touch typing, but it also involved a few trips a week to the wholly uninviting Council archives in The Guildhall; a haunted building in the 70s, she was petrified every time she set foot in the door.
11. She would interrupt my half finished sentences with songs "If I..." "ruuuuled the world!"
This is a fun game to play if you are not the person trying to finish a sentence; try it yourself.
12. She wasn't especially good at cooking!
I mentioned the roasts before, but one thing mum made that I LOVED was "stuff"; it was based on bolognaise but eaten with other carbs - we were crap at eating spaghetti, so was often potatoes or pasta shapes. That's still something I do, ha ha.
13. She would draw little pics on her Gang Show words to help her remember lyrics
More proof that mum was not only very intelligent but that her brain was artistic and responded better to imagery than to just remembering words from the page. I tried this myself at rehearsals, but barely got words right even up until the show.
14. She christened the second husband's new partner "The Dumpy Mushroom" and it's still classically accurate.
Ha ha ha Thinking about it, I think it was her friend who christened her that, but I do remember the mushroom getting hugely upset and puffed up (somehow) about it when I called her that at Guides. Pffft, if I had to put up with seeing her face once a week, I think it was a small price to pay. It was only once, anyway. I blame Beth ;)
15. She had a temper shorter than any I've ever known and hotter than Hell-Fire
I'm 29 and the feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach still runs riot when I think something awful is about to happen; this is the feeling borne of fearing the wrath of my mother when I had (or more accurately) hadn't done something! It's that feeling when you go over a bump in the road, but your blood turns cold and it's prolonged. It's not like she was going to beat us or anything, but being shouted at is scary!!!
16.NEVER alienated me & bro from our father despite her own feelings for him; let us make our own minds up like a good mum
Good parents, honest parents, parents who care about their children rather than using them in some emotional blackmail plan will go through their own painful battle when their partner leaves them and while they aren't always obligated to hide their hurt and anger, they always put the interest of the children first. Mum was really pissed off that Dad left and in later life - I was too! When we were kids, however, she never told us awful things about Dad or his new partner Some women are emotionally retarded in that they cannot achieve this, and try every trick they can think of to destroy the bond between a child and their estranged partner; mum - however angry she was with dad managed to do the best for us in every way.
17. She always told me that I could do better than half the little bits of art we would see at craft fairs
The Watershed in Bristol used to have a Christmas Craft fair every year - it was AMAZING! It was like Etsy in two exhibition halls. Whenever I yearned to having some of the tiny illustrations and framed pictures, mum always persuaded me that if I drew and practised every day, then I could do the same, if not better. The tiny image in question was one of some titchy sheep in a field, I can remember it so clearly! I saved my money and bought Banana split toffee instead!
18. She could eat potato salad from the tub
Ha ha yeah on shitty days I do that; total comfort food.
19. She called our cat pudding because she was tortoiseshell and looked like a Christmas Pudding
This cat was odd, I was so sad when she died but I'd never ever really had a connection with her at all!
20. She went back to college to re-take her A'Levels and to study to become a teacher. She aced them
Mum loved reading and I think we eventually (heartbreaking in some ways) got rid of all her old study books apart fro the ones I loved like "Poetry From The Thirties"; she was studying at UWE to be a Primary school teacher and I have a Dictaphone that she owned for the purpose of recording her placements and I treasure it because it's one of the only things I have that has her voice on it.
21. PHYSICALLY threw the methodist minister out of our house by his collar after he gave her an ultimatum re: Sunday School
Ha ha without going into it, he basically came to our house, told her to stop being friends with someone because people thought they were having an affair! The most ironic thing about this, and I think one of the reasons it made mum furious was the fact that everyone knew about the two other affairs that were going on in the church at the time. It put me off Christianity for a long long time as the place was rife with hypocrisy.
22. She could un-Feck ANY mistake I made when creating anything / wrapping presents / writing things - magic!
I once said to mum "I hope I have inherited your "unbodging"", meaning that the mistakes I made on pictures or written cards or anything like that, mum could easily transform into something that looked deliberate.
23. She corrected spelling, grammar, punctuation, idiom and annunciation - even of NewsbReaders "Almost unique???"
There are no grades of being unique - you're either unique or you're not. I've definitely inherited that.
24. She could write letters to make your eyes bleed; especially to Dr's receptionists who wrote shitty letters to her :)
When mum was referred to hospital it was after the 6th or 7th Doctor's appointment - she had been told that she had put on weight which would explain the swelling around her abdomen and middle and would also explain why she was out of breath. The nurse practitioner referred her to hospital and they drained 4 litres of pleural fluid from around her lungs. FOUR LITRES. It was a reaction or a cause of the cancerous cells in her body. We brought her post in and amongst it was a letter from the self same Doctors' surgery that had referred her. The shitty letter advised that she had missed an appointment and should have called to let them know so that someone who actually *needed* to see a GP could have made use of it. If you never met mum, you won't know the look of calm fury that was etched on her face - let me illustrate somehow, if you went to a Wolf's lair, stole one of her cubs and dangled it in front of her, it would be the last second of fear you felt as you witnessed her leap, jaws agape, for your throat. That.
25. She kept a little, red notebook with ALL present lists in so she knew what she bought in years past
I picked this up once, not knowing what it was, and being the nosey bint I am , opened it up to find pages and pages of past gifts mum had bought - Bike, Fashion Wheel all sorts. I never opened it again because I would have felt huge guilt if I had seen anything for the forthcoming years.
26. She would always giggle when moving furniture - stupidly infectious; what should have taken minutes took hours
Mainly a cabinet in my grandma's kitchen. The pair of them were hopeless together; nothing funny actually had to happen, they just had to catch one another's eye and they'd be gone for about 20 minutes, neither of them knowing why they were laughing. Muppets.
27. She took her driving test and failed, then never took it again - we walked & bussed everywhere!
Mum said that her main problem with driving is that she would look into the mirror, but not actually see what was there and factor it into her behaviour, she would just go through the motions. I'm pretty glad they didn't let her pass!
28. She never qualified as a teacher, she never read the end of Harry Potter, she didn't see me get married
Stupidly, the last of the three makes me saddest.
29. She had always wanted to ice skate outside Rockerfeller Centre, we were going to take her for her 50th birthday
Well I was anyway; it was just a plan formed from when she had mentioned it years before. Way before she was diagnosed, way before she went into remission, way before I could ever hope of affording it.
30. In 2002 she apologised to me and my brother through tears because she knew she wasn't going to beat cancer
Why? Because she felt guilty? Because she would miss the rest of our lives? I have no idea; we were left in a fortunate position housing-wise, we were both over 18 and had both had the privileged experience of living with mum. Not that it was a fairy tale from day to day, but she showed me how to deal with things, how NOT to deal with things and loved us!
Mum's birthday is never going to be the easiest day to pass by and there are hundreds of other moments that I have in my head that aren't listed here; decorating my bedroom midnight blue with gold stars, dancing to Birdhouse In Your Soul in the kitchen, going to Disneyland Paris; hundreds.
Thanks for reading xx
