TIM’S MEMORIES as related at the Thanksgiving Service.

It is many years since I was here, at Forest Road, every week, attending Sunday School, the youth club, called the Youth Circle, I recall and various other services. It was through a Youth Circle camping holiday that I met Cheryl in Wales. I never imagined then that one day I would be standing here, talking to you all. But I guess it was inevitable that this day would come, after a life of 104 years.

A few years ago, my parents gave me copy of a newspaper. The News Chronicle. You have to be of a certain age to remember the News Chronicle. It was dated 30th June 1949 and had been saved to commemorate my birth on the previous day, 29th June. I guess that my father may have been too busy to buy a copy on the actual date.

So what was life like for my mother in 1949? The newspaper adverts give us some clues.
Stergene – Science in Cleansing. A safer way to wash baby’s clothes.
Build up your child now with Vimaltol – The delicious vitamin food for sturdy growth.
And Mr Mercury, complete with winged helmet, says that National Benzole Mixture will give your car more miles per gallon.

The big news story of the day was that town councils were being urged to pass by-laws to prohibit the sale of food from dirty shops and market stalls.

With the newspaper came a few other papers, one being an advert for ‘a substantially built and exceptionally well-maintained modern house with many valuable refinements. Also a very pretty garden with crazy paving and rose beds.’ This was an advertisement for the sale of 114 Moore Road, which my parents purchased and was the house where they lived when I was born.
The ‘very pretty garden’ was actually on the other side of the road. My parents loved home grown raspberries and had some raspberry canes at the bottom of the garden. My first memory is walking down the garden with my mother to see my father who was picking raspberries.

But this is jumping ahead a bit, because some other papers with the newspaper were receipts from Porchester Maternity Nursing Home. One from 1947 for Stephen for £20-9s-6d and another from 1949 for me for £26-4s-6d. It is interesting to note that I was an altogether more expensive baby, even taking into account the 1 guinea additional fee for my mother’s false alarm with Stephen. My invoice did include 2 weeks convalescence for my mother. Not like today when mothers are out on the same day.

Time passed quickly and we moved to live on Breckhill Road. By this time my mother had returned to teaching at the local school, Mapperley Plains Primary. She taught the reception class, so for my first few months at school, my mother was my first teacher. I think this was a more difficult situation for me than she realised. What should I call her? Miss, Mrs Gretton or Mummy? None of the options seemed right. How could I call my mother Miss or Mrs Gretton? And I couldn’t call her Mummy in front of other children, when she was our teacher. So I decided not to use any of the options and that seemed to work.

Just down the road from our house was Woodthorpe Park. My mother and I were walking round the gardens there one day, before a game of pitch and putt and an ice cream between wafers. We saw a beautiful bed of white roses. I ran over the grass to find out what they were called. The label read OMO. Strange, we thought. It was only a little later that we realised that this was a practical joke. Again, those of a certain age will remember that OMO washing powder adds brightness to whiteness.

I can’t really go any further without making some reference to custard.
My father was a great lover of puddings and obviously that required lashings of custard. It was my job to make the custard every Sunday. Maybe concerned for his waistline, I remember hearing my mother say, in her very best primary school head mistress voice ‘Frank, you don’t want any more pudding do you?’ I was never sure that this was actually a question. These little family moments of portion control are important and my kids have always wondered where my love of custard comes from.

From custard to stick insects. A natural progression.
By this time my mother was head teacher at Tollerton County Primary School. She was the first head teacher there, with 22 pupils when the school opened. It had over 200 when she left. She was always looking for ways to interest and engage the children and had different animals at school over the years. She even took my cat to work with her for at one time. But stick insects were a favourite, so I guess, like many teaching families, the animals came home every holiday. Stick insects love to eat privet and we had privet hedges around the house. I don’t think the cage, or vivarium to give it its proper name, can have been too secure because I can remember my mother and me scooping up stick insects, their babies and eggs from many unexpected places. There is probably still a colony of feral stick insect living in the privet hedges on Breckhill Road. Is this my mother’s real legacy?

Jumping ahead to 1973. Cheryl and I married and my parents, although I’m sure the decision was my mother’s, bought us a dishwasher as a wedding present. She said that she had always hated washing up and didn’t want us to face the same lifetime chore. I’m not sure why she didn’t buy one for herself, but she came from a frugal, make do and mend generation, married during the war and probably considered such a purchase for herself to be outrageously extravagant. While I’m talking about my mother’s frugality, Jake and Charlotte hoped that I would include the Lyons Individual fruit pie story. They were a holiday picnic regular. The clue is in the name. Lyons INDIVIDUAL fruit pie. But my mother thought that this was far too large a portion and would insist on cutting them in half. As a young child I was confused and distraught and still to this day yearn for a Lyons Individual fruit pie all of my own. Even now you can see how my memories revolve around my mother’s puddings and custard.

Moving on to my mother’s life at Larch House, on Mansfield Road. Keep fit was important to her and she established an exercise class which was well attended for many years, until her departure. On one occasion she fell, which resulted in a hospital admission and she needed a period of recovery and recuperation. ‘What is going to happen to the exercise class?’ I asked. ‘Oh, I’m starting it again tomorrow!’ she said and she did.

By the time she moved on from Larch House, I think some of the people she was still helping to keep fit were 30 years younger than herself. Before leaving Larch House my mother was given a national Abbeyfield award for ‘Resident to Resident Support’. This was, in part, for her work with the keep fit group.

The countryside and nature were always a love of my mother’s. When Cheryl, Jake, Charlotte and I went on holiday, she loved to come over to our house in the country, to look after the cats and she always said that it was like a holiday for her too. A few years later we were puzzled to come across a series of photos of groups of people we didn’t know, sitting in our garden and conservatory, drinking tea and eating cake. Little did we know that she had invited a coach load of her friends round too for a day out in the country.

At Larch House she had her own area to garden and enjoyed many a discussion with the gardener. At Eden House she had pots of bulbs and flowers outside her patio door.

I would like to thank the staff at Larch House and Eden House for all the support, care and friendship that they provided to my mother over recent years. Thankyou.

When Cheryl and I first moved to live in the country, in a house with a wood-burning stove, my mother recollected a poem that used to be one of her favourites. ‘The Firewood Poem’. On one of my last visits to Eden House to see her, I read this poem to her three times … and she fell asleep before the final verse, three times. That says a lot about my poetry delivery. Let’s see how I get on with you lot:

The Firewood Poem

Beechwood fires are bright and clear

If the logs are kept a year,

Chestnut's only good they say,

If for logs 'tis laid away.

Make a fire of Elder tree,

Death within your house will be;

But Ash new or Ash old,

Is fit for a queen with crown of gold

Birch and fir logs burn too fast

Blaze up bright and do not last,

It is by the Irish said

Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,

E'en the very flames are cold

But Ash green or Ash brown

Is fit for a queen with golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke,

Apple wood will scent your room

Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom

Oaken logs, if dry and old

keep away the winter's cold

But Ash wet or Ash dry

a king shall warm his slippers by.

May my mother’s slippers always be warm.