Snapshot: Mum before her plucky NZ adventure
This is a photo of Mum, Laura Troy, taken in 1954 before she emigrated to New Zealand with my younger sister Rosie. Born in 1909, Laura witnessed the home-front of both world wars in London, experienced the “age of austerity” and, as a result of the smogs, became a widow in 1953.
One of six children, she grew up in Bermondsey in Vine Street buildings, just off Tooley Street and on the site where Boris Johnson now resides as London mayor in City Hall. She remembered her older brothers often swimming across the Thames to the Tower of London and back, before they enlisted as Royal Navy ratings near the outbreak of war in 1939.
My lasting impression of Mum is not like her portrait at all, but as a busy, harassed woman in an apron with her sleeves rolled up, her head in a scarf and curlers as she laboured over the washboard or copper. Always alert for the air-raid warning, she had sandwiches and water placed in the Morrison shelter erected in our living room which would hold all four of us snugly in an emergency.
Arriving in Wellington aboard the RMS Rangitiki in 1955, Laura – like many others – had said a tearful farewell at Tilbury docks to all her friends and family. Many emigrants never really expected to see Britain again as the return fare would have been beyond their means. Laura and Rosie had been sponsored, offered employment as housekeepers by a Mr Coleman on his sheep station, 45 miles east of Wellington.
I was 17 and – with Mum’s blessing – joined the British merchant navy and became a pantry-boy with the New Zealand Shipping Company thus enabling me to make many trips back and forth to see them both in their new home. Mum accepted her time there as a form of convalescence, and a period of healing after the blitz. She and Rosie stayed for three years with Mr Coleman and converted his bleak dwelling into a comfortable home before moving to Christchurch. Cancer took Rosie aged 50, but Mum, although afflicted by dementia from 86, lived until she was 92.
I have related Laura’s story to friends and colleagues over the years and have often been surprised by their astonishment at a widow’s pluck to do as she did. Surprised, but why? Because putting her decision in the context of the times it didn’t seem a particularly courageous action to take, as many of her generation were familiar with anecdotes of far greater bravery by ordinary men and women. Perhaps just another example of what was once referred to – and unfortunately now long forgotten – as the Dunkirk spirit.
Peter Troy
Playlist: Lost a husband and gained a best friend
Fastlove by George Michael
“Looking for some education / I made my way into the night”
There are many reasons for me to remember 1996, not many of them good. It was the year my dad died, a year after my marriage ended. I was a mature student, training to be a primary school teacher, slowly realising that my childish aspirations were indeed just that.
One of the outcomes of marrying too young and then making being married all that matters, is that you miss out on a lot of other things; I had a whole long list of them. When I met Fran in an English class halfway through our first term at university, I realised that in putting everything into the relationship with my husband, I’d stumbled across the biggest missing-out of all – friendship.
It seems crazy now, to think that I’d so willingly dropped all my school friends, that I’d given up on going anywhere with anyone who wasn’t family. Then suddenly, there was Fran. Intelligent, funny, cynical, beautiful, with dark Italian eyes that held a glint of wry amusement and a hint of something more. Francesca Ferrari, my new best friend.
I don’t know now which of us suggested the holiday – we had no money but a reckless charge to my credit card, and we were booked for a week in the Canary Islands.
There are so many things I could write about that week but let me take you instead to a dark nightclub, hidden underground beneath the gaudy shopping centres of Playa del Inglés. The music is loud, its beat echoing around the huge room, pulsating through the dancing crowd.
Leaning against the bar at one side, are two dark-haired women. You can tell by their tanned faces and smiles that they’re having a great holiday. When the music stops, they’ll pause to listen for what comes next, hoping it will be Fastlove, the song they’ve danced to all week. And when it is, there’ll be a quick glance from one to the other, then a wide, shared smile, as they make their way through the crowd to the very middle of the dance floor. George Michael will start to sing. They will dance. And nothing else matters.
It’s just over 15 years since that trip to Gran Canaria. My life has changed so much since then that I’d barely recognise the woman I once was. Throughout that time, Fran has been my friend and for every one of those years, Fast Love has been the soundtrack to the continuing wonder of her friendship.
Sharon Longworth
We love to eat: Cream cracker sandwiches in bed
Ingredients
Cream crackers
Butter
Salt
Spread the crackers with butter and sprinkle them with too much salt. Stick pairs of crackers together, butter-to-butter, and cut the resulting sandwiches in half.
I was a fussy child. My diet majored in sliced bananas (sprinkled with grated chocolate and glacé cherries to fool me into eating them) and lentil soup.
That I got to 18 in resounding good health can probably be attributed to my drinking three pints of milk a day, and the protein content of the salted peanuts I ate by the handful.
This was before everybody had central heating and our little house was cold in winter. Layers of ice crept across the inside of the bedroom windows, and getting up for school was a daunting thought. So my mum turned my favourite of all fussy foods into a day-buffering breakfast in bed.
She woke me each morning with a plate of cream cracker sandwiches, and a mug of hot chocolate, made with a quarter pint of milk and with the spoon still standing in it so I could stir it to stop a skin forming.
I’m less fussy these days, having learned quickly when I left home that people would be kind and invite me round to tea if I’d eat what they gave me. I make my hot chocolate with water now, and just a splash of milk. The first sip always makes me wish for that accompanying salty crackle and the comfort of winter breakfast in bed.
Jane Cooper
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