90 Years Young!

My mother, Jean, was born 90 years ago today a week before Christmas in 1925.   George V was on the throne and Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister.   There have been 17 individuals in Number 10 since.

Gerald Durrell, Peter Brook, George MacDonald Fraser, Tony Benn, George Cole, Thomas Winning, John Stonehouse, Norris and Ross McWhirter, Nat Lofthouse, Peter Sellers, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Lansbury, Harry Carpenter, Harry H Corbett, Richard Burton, June Whitfiled, Ernie Wise, Paul Newman and BB King were also born that year.   Only about three are still going strong, including Mum!

A pint of beer cost 5d (73p now), the average wage was 5 pounds, couples went to the cinema twice a week on average and also to the dance hall, knee length skirts were worn by women for the first time.   Kit Kats, Mars Bars and Crunchies began to be marketed in the following decade.  The war to end all wars was just 7 years behind and mum went to school with a gas mask as her home town of Paisley was frequently bombed being close to Glasgow and Clydebank in the Second World War.

She was born a stone's throw from Paisley Cross in an ancient attic that was suddenly too small for the family.   Her father wrapped her in a blanket and then put her onto a horse and cart along with her mother and elder sister to travel a mile up Causeyside Street through the snow to the south end and larger lodgings.  It would be twelve years before she got that close to the Cross again on a special outing. She left school  at fourteen and worked in the lab of Coats Mill.  

Youth hosteling was her passion and in 1947 she met my father in Brodick Youth Hostel.   She was having trouble getting her custard to be smooth and Dad stepped in to help.   Of the ten people around the the lunch table today, seven of them owe their existence to lumpy custard!

After Dad was taken away from us at the age of 53, before her three children were fully fledged, Mum stepped into a man's world and ran our butcher shop for ten years before running her own B&B for 16 years in Pitlochry retiring only fourteen years ago at the age of 76.   

She crossed war-torn Europe in 1949, made a maiden vista to her emigrée family members in North America in 1983 before, over the years, visiting her immediate family in Colombia, Vietnam, Spain, Brazil and Hungary.

She has a business acumen that could have led her to run a large enterprise given other educational opportunities, is unstoppable in offering her views on how the world should be run and generous in her advice to all generations of her family as we tread our individual paths.   She was well looked after by a raft of maiden aunts as she grew up and took up that mantle of support for the whole extended family.   Many appreciated her wise guidance but also weekly deliveries of bags of butcher meat to their homes late at night on her way home on dark, snowy winter's evenings.

We had a lovely day together.

Some tartan in the extra shot!