Tribute to my mum
My mum was an independent, enterprising woman – it took courage to leave Manchester, and the steady job she had at the university to leave all that behind and head off to Switzerland. It turned out to have been a great step – not only did she get a good job in the ITU (part of the United Nations), but she also had the time of her life in Geneva, meeting some great friends such as Mary Anne, Elsbeth, Sylvia and others. She always spoke of those times with great fondness and clearly treasured the days she spent socialising with her best friends near the shore of Lake Geneva. I think the sunny days spent there were some of the happiest of mum’s life.
That strength of will was evident in many other areas as well. Having relatively recently returned from France to live in the UK with her husband, Roland, and having a small child (me) in tow, she fought hard to preserve a beautiful park in Guildford – Stoke Park – from redevelopment as council offices. She was one of the main movers of that campaign, and was even mentioned in the Observer magazine in relation to it. That was, perhaps, one of her greatest triumphs. The fact that Stoke Park still exists today is due in no small part to my mum’s determination and her care for the quality of the public environment.
This was something that mum continued through her life, with her having been one of the board of the Dartmoor Preservation Association and also one of the main movers in the Denbrook Valley Action Group regarding a windfarm development near North Tawton in Devon. Her determination and energy meant she could be quite a force to be reckoned with!
As well as turning that enterprising spirit to campaigning, she also used it to set up a very successful small business – Surrey Secretarial (later Surrey Business Centre) – from nothing. She put in extremely long hours and worked hard to achieve something, with some of her clients being quite prestigious, such as Anita Roddick in the early days of her running The Body Shop.
One of her favourite memories from this time is when she’d been working very hard – even on her birthday – and I’d prepared (at the age of 17 or so) a beautifully laid out Italian salad for her (complete with Italian mozzarella, Italian tomatoes and fresh basil and more) for her when she got back as a birthday gift.
But determination alone is perhaps not enough to do some of what mum did – one also needs to be bright – and mum was! To land a job in the UN from overseas would no doubt have required that too! Her sister Tricia once described mum to me as having “got the brains” amongst her sisters and she was able to turn that intelligence to great use in one of her hobbies – investing in the stock market. Back around 2000 or just before, I gave mum a gift of “The Dummies Guide to the Stock Market”. I never dreamed how quickly she’d become interested in it, nor how proficient she’d become! Even when the market was suffering a downturn, she was able to reliably make a profit, frequently beating professional investors and fund managers. Sometimes, when I came over to her farm at Westacott, I’d find her focussed on the stock prices on Ceefax and keenly analysing the business news in the Financial Times.
She valued intelligence, and said she was very proud of me for getting by degree and a master’s, but the anecdote in which she took some of her greatest pride regarding me was in relation to my early command of the French language when a toddler. Mum and dad were in a very fancy restaurant in France and I had apparently very much enjoyed my dessert – an orange sorbet inside a hollowed-out orange – as I stood up on the table and announced, very loudly, that I wanted more “orange givreé” in French. A smartly dressed waiter, of course, dashed over, and asked “monsieur” if he’d like another helping! Mum took great pride in this despite me cringing a little every time she told me the story…which she absolutely loved to do! She always smiled and looked very happy when recounting that incident.
In her early life, I don’t think she’d initially thought of herself as “bright” or the like – another story she told me was of the time she was in her preparatory school and they were announcing which students had won scholarships for academic ability to go to “The Hollies” convent school in Manchester (one of the old direct-grant grammar schools) and to come up to the front of the class. Mum’s name was read out…but she said she didn’t really take it in – and it wasn’t till one of mum’s classmates nudged her in the ribs and whispered “Go on! It’s you!” that it finally sank in that she’d won a scholarship! Mum’s family wasn’t wealthy – so much so that she and her sisters had to share beds when young – so the scholarship allowed mum to get a good education.
She was also kind, and devoted to friends and family members. Her sister Tricia tells me that mum used to give financial help to other members of the family – sometimes along with some delicious chocolates from Switzerland as a treat!
I also remember the time I broke several bones in one of my feet, which put me completely out of action. Mum lived approx. 20 miles away at her farm near North Tawton, but that didn’t stop her driving over almost every day to lift my spirits and to see if I needed anything – heading over to Waitrose after that and picking up some food for me.
I cared for her a great deal too, and still remember one of the most memorable Christmases we ever had – I think it was the winter of 2010. The snow had fallen thick and heavy – so thick and heavy that the steeply sloping entrance lane to Westacott was too hazardous due to the ice…it would have been quite an advanced ski slope...but there was no other entrance to the farm! So I ended up loading turkey, Christmas pudding, bread sauce, sprouts, brandy butter and crackers amongst other things into my backpack and trekking from a neighbour’s farm across the fields deep in snow, a couple of sets of barbed wire and even a couple of streams to get to the farm!
Paul and Muriel, mum’s neighbours at Westacott, tell the tale of how they’ll always remember, having just arrived in the area, how supportive mum and my dad were to them. Paul still remembers the first time he met Maureen, who was surrounded by a small gaggle of geese at the time!
After mum left the farm and had settled in Exeter, she and I used to love going out for “coffee and a snack” as she’d call it – which usually meant heading down to the Waitrose in Exeter for a long lingering coffee or two along with soup, and perhaps a Marlborough bun. She and I became real regulars there, with the staff recognising us with a cheery smile as I helped mum to her seat.
I’ll always remember mum’s kindness, determination and focus with great fondness. Her passion for causes that she believed in was quite inspiring – to me, and I think also to others.
I’ll miss you, mum.