Mum had been diagnosed with some sort of nervous disorder. They could, they said, remove the symptoms but not the cause.
The Doctor had said, “My goodness! Why on earth did you not bring this little girl to us sooner?”
They did not because, whatever it was that was the problem had, to Nan, been a simple thing of ‘she will grow out of it’ or ‘she will just have to pull herself together’. Unless there was blood pouring out of you then, according to Nan, you just needed to ‘snap out of it’.
Then, of course, there was the expense. There was no free health service in those days where people could go because they needed company or a warm place to sit.
They admitted Mum to hospital and strapped her to a bed.
“Will I be out in time for my birthday?” Mum asked them.
“We certainly hope so,” they told her.
Those four weeks became four months and then seven months. All the time strapped down to the bed.
The Queen Mum—that was Queen Mary, then, came to visit the children and gave mum a doll which was only recently misplaced.
They wheeled her out to watch the Christmas festivities and then they wheeled her back into the ward.
She was pronounced cured but every time she became tired, in pain or worried about something she would rock. This continued right up to her death. The specialist here said that the symptoms had been treated but not the cause, thus echoing the original diagnosis.
What was it? We don’t know. We had lots of strange notions like ‘Huntington’s Chorea’ thrown at us but, really, we don’t know and, now, never shall.
Mum became a nurse for a while. After she witnessed a fellow nurse fall from the balcony and break her back she decided to stop that career.
She greeted Matron one morning.
“Good morning, Matron,” she said cheerfully.
“Nurse! You do not speak to me unless I speak to you first. Do we understand each other?” Matron admonished Mum.
“Yes, Matron,” Mum said. Admonished.
She moved to GEC at crystal Palace where they were making radio valves and other associated things.
Nan and Mum’s Aunty told her that she should get a job like Edna. It was a good job with good pay. Edna’s job was sticking labels on beer bottles at the Watney’s brewery just around the corner from the flat where Mum lived. Mum could not conceive of a job more ineffably boring so chose to go to Crystal Palace.
Note: The Watney’s Brewery is at the end of the annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge. I believe it is now ‘Budweiser’ or some similar fizzy weasel piss.
At some point, someone from the research labs asked if she would like to join them. It meant a drop in pay but was a more interesting job.
Nan wasn’t too keen on that but Mum went anyway.
They were developing television. Until that point it was all studio and laboratory work but, one fine day, they were all sitting on the floor in the lab to watch the very first outside broadcast. Mum was the only woman there so she became the first woman ever to see an outside live transmission.
It was the Epsom Derby. It was a tiny screen, which Mum had helped to make, coated by hand with the appropriate chemicals. Glass blowers at the lab had formed it to precise descriptions given by the boffins.
The picture was very snowy, Mum said, but they could see the horses. Mum had money on a horse called ‘Blue Peter’—she saw it win. What a great day.
When she got home she asked Nan for her winnings. Nan was bemused, “How do you know what won, Ducks?” Nan asked.
“Saw it. On the telly,” Mum told her.
There were no winnings. Nan thought that ‘Blue Peter’ was a no-hoper so had put the money on something else.
The war started.
One day Mum just happened to remark that it was possible that German Mum’s might worry about their sons just as much as our Mum’s worry about the British boys.
She was hauled up before a committee.
They were doing important, and secret, work towards the war effort and so a German sympathiser was not really the sort of girl they wanted in the laboratory.
They did offer her a job back in the factory but Mum was crestfallen so she left.
She joined the Royal Air Force.
“Where did you work?” they asked.
“GEC,” she said.
“Oh, good. You can be an electrician,” they smiled.
Mum didn’t know anything about electrics and even less about aeroplanes. But they taught her and she became a Corporal.
One day she was crossing the parade ground carrying a generator. She dropped it—they are heavy! Picking it up quickly she continued on her way but, at last, thought better of it and turned around to take it back to the electrical bay.
When she arrived in the bay the Warrant Officer said that he had seen her drop it and was waiting to see what she would do. He was happy that she had done the right thing and so there was no further action taken.
One day she was soldering a cable on a Lancaster in a hurry to get it ready to go out. The solder dripped onto her arm inside her elbow. I noticed that the scar was still there when they were washing her down for burial.
And then she tested the undercarriage. She had carried out a repair to the undercarriage system so she selected ‘Undercarriage up’.
[Yes, yes, I know. ‘u/c retract’, but not everyone who reads this is an aviation person like us!!]
Sure enough, it worked.
Sadly, there were no jacks underneath the aircraft to support it but there was, however, an LAC (Leading Aircraftman) under it doing a job on the bomb doors.
Happily, somebody got something under the aeroplane to stop it coming down any further and crushing the LAC who escaped with minor injuries and in a foul mood. Mum said the air was blue!
A short while later, Mum had a tooth out. She couldn’t eat because her mouth hurt so much.
That same LAC cycled all the way to the mess hall, collected some bread and soup and brought it back to her. He then proceeded to feed her.
That was the point at which Mum fell in love with Dad.
Dad died in 1999, Mum left us almost exactly eleven years later.
Were they happy together?
Mostly.
But the rest of the war and later life must be saved for another day.
No matter what we authors make up, there will always be something stranger happen in fact.
Everybody’s life has drama; some of it is minor to others but, to that person, it is a major hurdle in their life.
When you describe an emotion try to make it real. Feel it while you are writing it. There is nothing shameful about tears falling on your keyboard just as there is no embarrassment about laughing out loud when you are on your own.
Whatever you feel it will show in your writing.
Try it.
