My Mum

My Mum

My Mum was not really made from mum material.
She tried her best but she just wasn’t like the rest. She had other, more important, things always on her mind. Like where her next Guinness was coming from because the Offie wouldn’t let her have it on the slate. And then there was the matter of the Cocktail Cabinet and the Champagne Bucket complete with Ice Tongs!

All essential items when you live in a Pre-fab with no refrigeration if you don’t count that you were freezing. But Mum had to find a way of getting these things so we did metal work in the evenings huddled round the meagre, coke burning, fire…Mum, my brother and me. Oh, and my sister too. She went to the Grammar…so not really cut out for this metalwork lark. Although she knew how to shift hops when the time came because she had her own bin, well, half a bin, and thought she could earn enough to go on a school trip to Paris, France. Well, that’s what comes of going to the Grammar. But for me brother and me, Southend, if we were lucky, with a bottle of tea and some of those delicious Spam sandwiches, all the while looking wistfully at all the other kids with their ice creams!

Then, one day, it was suddenly there and I don’t know where it came from. Oh, wait a mo’ yes I do, it came from the Guardian Angel. No, not THE Guardian Angel…He didn’t mix with the likes of us. No, the Catholic Club where me Mum went dancing. Though I don’t know how she managed to get it home. Something like that is not easy to shift…though when me Gran died Mum hired a horse and cart. No, not for Gran, silly…for her stuff! I wonder if that’s how she got it home. But I’m still wondering because when I asked her “Keep that out “was all she said, tapping her nose.

You see we’re a talented family…well everybody ‘cept me! ‘Cos me brother is musical but only had a mouth organ. Pinched, I think from Woolworths but you won’t tell, will you? Anyway, that was the reason it was there when I came home from school. Couldn’t miss it! Took up nearly all the room and to fit it in it had to go on the diagonal. “How you gonna get to the other side Mum?” I said, because the thing cut the room in half with the window on one side and the door on the other. She just gave me a withering look and said “I don’t need to…you can crawl underneath when I want something.”

Well, while it lived with us me Mum was never again on close acquaintance with her curtains. In fact, we lived in semi darkness for the duration of its stay. Though I must admit we missed it when it was time for it to go. By then it was pretty obvious that me brother preferred his mouth organ, more portable, see. Well it could be kept in his pocket not like…The Grand Piano! But we all missed it just the same and the tunes me brother played with just his one, very talented, finger. “Remarkable!” said me mother “Them concert pianists have to use all of their fingers not like your brother and him entirely self taught. She was proud see… of every small achievement!

And then there were her stories, the ones she read to us each night, you know, Tom Brown and all the others that went to them posh schools.
It was then that it hit me and for a while I was inconsolable because I had always entertained the idea that I would go to a school like the ones in Mum’s stories. So it came as a nasty shock to come to the realization that I was…poor! Not for me a “First Term at Mallory Towers” No, Cardinal Griffin was to be my lot. Not for me friends called Alicia, Darrell or Felicity. No, it was Maureens, Pats and Barbaras for such as the likes of me. No offence… And as for Penelopes, well, they were in very short supply. In fact, now I come to think of it there wasn’t one to be had anywhere in our locality. I know…sad but true!

But still we had our days out ‘cos Mum took us to Parks, Gardens and Museums and the like. In fact anywhere that was free. And Mum was a strong swimmer so the local open air Lido featured large but don’t run away with the idea that these were halcyon days. No, ‘cos the memory of those days is blighted by the memory of me Mum’s swimsuit. A hand knitted red creation complete with collar and buttons, unfortunately, knitted in what can only be described as heavy gauge wool. A swimsuit from a bygone era…if only Mum had been familiar with the proverb Let Bygones BE Bygones but no, alas, because when Mum dived into the pool the swimsuit almost entirely absorbed the Deep End, which was bad enough but when she attempted the stairway to exit the pool the resulting cascade of water made her seem more like a surfacing submarine! It was then, I think, that I learned to DIVE! DIVE DIVE!

But when it comes to life’s little tribulations
You have to play the cards you’re dealt
And I look back at those times with fondness
Because they toughened me up. They made me strong. And Mum not being made of the proper material… Well, I can’t believe she was wrong!