Aunty Mary

The story of my Aunty Mary is a sad one.

She was my father's only living sibling. In her parents' eyes she was second-class compared with the older, blue eye'd Ted. When the war started she wanted to join the land army, but her parents said she should be a nanny and so a nanny she became even though she didn't particularly like children. She fell in love with a dutch man who promptly got killed in the war and she never got over that loss. Apart from times when she lived in as a nanny, she lived with her parents and, after her father died, ended up nursing her mother through neglected breast cancer to her death. It seems that, all through her life, she thought that other people made decisions for her or circumstances dictated her actions at variance with her own desires and she allowed this to make her bitter.

The top picture is the earliest I have of Mary, as a bridesmaid at my parents wedding.  In the next picture, taken at Longleat, she is the one looking sideways at my mum, my mum being the one holding onto the good-looking chap in the front.

She was at one time a heavy smoker but successfully gave it up - I remember tales of how she gorged on chocolate to thwart the withdrawal.

After her nanny years she tried various low grade jobs (I remember being taken to a Rubbolite factory where her job was to file off molding flash, and gratefully taking away seconds in various colours), but she could never hold a job down for more than a few months. I was too young at the time to ask exactly why she so often got sacked, but I imagine it was because she was so hard to work with. It was not that she was not willing to help: just that she had to do it her way. This used to drive my mother to distraction when they came to stay at 16 Broad Street. There is truth in the adage that "if you want a job done properly, do it yourself".

Mind you, there were some things she excelled in. She was very capable at flower arranging and, I think, at gardening generally.

Us children have vibrant memories of her intolerance of noise or vibration - like being snapped at for merely allowing one's shoe to touch a leg of the chair she was sitting on in church. Those were the days when children were to be seen and not heard!

In the back garden at 10 Weir Gardens

It wasn't all bad, though. I think Mary took this picture, and I think it was she who found the set of wheels at my request. Giving me a set of wheels to make a go-cart was on a par with giving a modern child an i-Pad.

My own children have similar memories of when Mary would visit us in Ireland, though I think that they were more able to dismiss Mary's antics for what they were than we were able.

She would bring presents for our children and, just the same as she did with us when we were children, she would often choose totally unsuitable things.  Like a join-the-dots book for a 15 year old. These presents would be selected from a vast stock she had acquired when, long ago, she worked for Woolworths. On one occasion I remember opening a present to find a box on which the manufacturer had boldly claimed "3 men's handkerchiefs" of which she had crossed out the "3" and written beside it "2".

I took this picture on my first camera. Mary is in blue and Nana is adoring, I suppose, my son Jonathan, and the location is the front room at 16 Broad Street. Behind Mary you can see the map of Narnia I drew, which picture has become a family icon. I hate knitted dresses.

Ginty died suddenly of a heart attack. In contrast Nana suffered from cancer for many years. Nana's death must have been a great anticlimax for Mary after she had given all those last years to caring for her and then - nothing. She remained at 10 Weir Gardens until she was no longer able to look after herself.

Mary played organ at the Grange Free Church and insisted that I try my hand

Mary tended the garden outside the 'Grange church'

We occasionally visited Mary during this time. On the occasion of the pictures above she took us to see the church she had taken possession of. She could be very possessive of things and people. So at the time this was "her" church and "her" organ and I had to play it. I am not sure what Jonathan and Chris made of it (I regret I am not much of an organist).

Mary greeting me with bags of useful things

Mary liked to collect "useful things" and would present me with bags of same whenever I visited. In her eyes, moulded by her upbringing, men needed such things and could work wonders with them. She was just a woman and would never understand how. The bags contained rusty nuts and bolts, bent bits of metal, and such like: mostly picked up off the street. The vast majority went straight in the bin after I left Mary, and I am not one for throwing anything away that might possibly have some future use.

The contents of Ginty's workshop (a garden shed made by my father) were sacrosanct, especially his tools, although towards the end she weakened and allowed me to take some of his stuff as I have recollected elsewhere.

10 Weir Gardens

At Thorpe Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea, 
possibly on an outing  from the nursing home

As time went on 10 Weir Gardens went from bad to worse. When our parents died we children agreed to spend some of our inheritance to replace the roof and to have the piano overhauled. The latter because Mary has always loved music so we figured she would enjoy "tinkling the ivories" in her dotage. But from that time on she never once even touched the piano. She was ruled by horribly restrictive laws entirely of her own making.

On one occasion my older son and I manfully agreed to do a makeover in her kitchen. We spend a week and did a very passable job (sorry, no photographs were taken). She really did appreciate this at the time. Amazingly we even ate from her "table" (eating at 10 Weir Gardens was always somewhat hazardous, but verged on being dangerous towards the end).  The sleeping arrangements were more akin to camping than accommodation and there were no washing facilities apart from a bowl of water and a cold tap, so we took off to the local swimming pool at the end of each day for a shower (and a swim).

But the new kitchen soon deteriorated. Mary apparently did not believe in washing up, or cleaning the cooker or, indeed, anything else. She would buy things impulsively and then not know what to do with them, and never threw anything away, so the house gradually became a refuse bin.  Before people started noticing and there came a time when she had to be admitted to a nursing home.

My last picture of Mary, taken in the nursing home

Once it was clear that Mary would never return to 10 Weir Gardens my older sister and I had the job of clearing it out and disposing of anything of any value.  Towards the end Mary lived in the kitchen and slept I know not where. All other rooms were dumping grounds, so much so that in some rooms we had to use shovels to remove well over a foot deep of rotting papers and material. Let's hope somebody keeps me in check in my later life and prevents anything similar happening!

The one-time sacrosanct music room:
the unplayed piano is under wraps on the left

'Miss Knight's room' 
Mary's former bedroom, stuff up to 2ft deep in places

Another view of 'Miss Knight's room'

The living room.

The living room seemed so small when filled up with junk like this. To think that in better times my parents, sisters and I, Nana, Ginty and Mary would have sat around the table to eat Christmas dinner in this room. With two armchairs either side of the fireplace you can see. Ginty's chair on the left (no-one else sat there: he had a gadget that clipped to the right arm of the chair on which could be placed his ginormous mug of tea and a small plate). There were two polished brass shells from WW1 on the fireplace one about 1" diameter, the other about 2". They used to tell me that at least one of them was live. And father Clovis. Clovis was a small pottery figure of a monk. There was a real Clovis but what the connection I know not...