Snapshot: Auntie Loo Loo and the Belgian refugees
This posed studio portrait dates back to the first world war. Here is Auntie Loo Loo with her friends – refugees from Belgium. Auntie is positioned seated at the centre, the lady with the long chain round her neck.
Louisa Edwards was my great-great-aunt on my mother’s side. Born in 1873, she came to live with our family in the mid 1950s until she died in 1966, when I was 12. Auntie was quite a character, strong and independent, and she never married. She was a staunch member of the Welsh Methodist chapel and a fluent Welsh speaker. I remember her thick hair and even thicker stockings, her long white winceyette nightdresses and the fact that she had no teeth at all, not even false ones. Memories, also, of her great age – children can be very aware of that.
As a young woman, Auntie moved for work from Rhyl to Liverpool. There she was employed at public houses called the Pansy and the Cattle Market. She then went into service and moved with her employer to Coventry where she became friends with refugees from Belgium. Nearly a quarter of a million refugees arrived in Britain from Belgium after the Germans invaded their country in 1914. Most returned home after the war.
This photo, printed as a postcard, has the name of a Rhyl photographer on the back. I can very well imagine the pride that Auntie would have felt in bringing her new friends to visit her family in Rhyl, north Wales. A studio photograph is puzzling as presumably they were expensive. Auntie certainly wasn’t well off and under the circumstances would the refugees have had enough money for such things? Nevertheless, their prescience and sense of occasion has left us with this little slice of history.
A postcard from Brussels was rediscovered along with the photo. It was addressed to Auntie and dated January 1919. It was from the Belgian family, reporting that they had arrived safely back in Brussels. They wrote that their home was not as they had left it, but added stoically that things would soon “settle down again”.
Ruth Pritchard
Playlist: A divine song – and maybe inspiration too
Angels by Robbie Williams
“I sit and wait / does an angel contemplate my fate?”
My lovely niece has learning disabilities and mobility problems. She was increasingly struggling at mainstream school with a growing workload and sporadic bullying. The family moved to a town that had an amazing special school with encouraging staff, inclusive activities and a beautifully designed site, all on one level. Within a year, my niece was enjoying her studies, and had regained her confidence and sense of humour.
As it was her final year, however, she had to look round colleges with a view to further education, but had been so traumatised by her mainstream experience that she felt unable to cope at that time in her life, and became increasingly anxious about her future.
Her new school was proposing to start a sixth form in September, but initially with just a very small group of students who had to fit very defined criteria.
One dark, rainy afternoon I went to collect her from school. I’d had to book a taxi as she’d sprained her ankle. As we got into the car, one of her teachers waved, and said not to give up hope. As we sank into the seats and rain battered the windows, the warm strains of Robbie Williams’ song about angels offering love and protection surrounded us, and inexplicably I felt tears fill my eyes.
Over the following weeks, my niece’s application was deferred by the panel, and her case worker replaced by another. After an amazing campaign by my niece’s mother, staff at the school and a brilliant and tenacious headteacher, my niece was offered a precious place.
She faces challenges but will have support and help with furthering her life skills. I still smile when I hear the lyrics to Angels and wonder if as well as a concerted effort on the ground there was a possible cosmic influence operating elsewhere.
Elaine Hatton
We love to eat: Suzie’s mother’s egg in a cup
Ingredients
1 soft-boiled egg (slightly too soft to eat from its shell)
Half a slice of white bread torn into rough cubes
Butter (to taste)
A generous dash of Bovril (or less generous of Marmite)
From the age of 10, I was plagued by tonsillitis. Mum used to give me jacket potatoes running with butter and Bovril, the only food I could eat without the sensation of swallowing razor blades. When I left home for university, the chronic throat problem followed me but there was no Mum to soothe it.
Then my American flatmate, Suzie, took control and produced her mother’s sick-room recipe. She warmed a cup in hot water and put the egg on to boil. In the meantime, she tore up the bread and had a teaspoon of butter prepared. As soon as the egg was ready, she dried the cup, popped in the bread and butter, added a pinch of salt and cracked open the runny egg over the mixture. Stirred bliss – even seen by the dawn’s early light.
Egg in a cup is still my standard meal for any member of the family who’s feeling fragile, whatever the reason – broken heart, failed exams, flu, tired tummy. And like all good things in life, it always leaves you feeling you can manage a little more. It invites variations on its basic theme – interesting bread, if you insist, but I still feel nothing can beat white sliced factory-wrapped.
We have adapted Suzie’s recipe (remedy) by adding Bovril to the bread and butter mix to give our egg in a cup more bite.
We are talking busy families here and for many children, egg in a cup is more palatable than a naked egg. Another of its advantages is that if you forget to time a boiled egg to a satisfactory hardness for fussy eaters, it can be transformed into an egg in a cup with a bit of fast working.
As my mother grew frail, she lost her healthy appetite. When I stayed with her, she often pushed her plate away. But the one cooked dish she usually finished – to its last soft, salty golden crumb – was Suzie’s mother’s egg in a cup, my version of Mum’s buttery potato comfort.
Sheila Crawford
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