Snapshot: I still feel my brother’s hand on my shoulder
When I look at this photograph I see such hope. It was taken on the day we moved from “rooms” to a brand new council house. My mother’s health had been poor and she became crippled with arthritis just after I was born, and was confined to hospital.
She had lost her first baby, and my brother and I were precious – but with few relatives close by, she had to trust a kind neighbour to care for me. My dad had to work and look after my brother, who was three years older than me. Fortunately, my aunt took him each day. At the age of three, he was missing his mum and ran away to find her. Climbing on to a bus he managed to travel five miles before being stopped.
Eventually, my mum came home when I was six months old.
Growing up with my brother was never dull; aged seven, he took his pet mouse to school and was sent home with it. When it was Guy Fawkes night he took my doll’s cot, chopped it up and put it on the bonfire. I cried for weeks. We bickered constantly, and my poor mother spent lots of time refereeing us.
Then, at 17, he left home. I was bereft. We didn’t even have a landline at home so writing a letter a week became a ritual. Years later, I realised he kept some of my letters. Almost 60 years later we still speak at length two or three times a week. Our parents both died before either of us were 30 but the legacy of family is ingrained and I still feel my brother’s hand on my shoulder.
Marian Colyer
Playlist: Car trouble to the rhythm of Gloria
Rhythm Is Gonna Get You by Gloria Estefan
“Rhythm is gonna get ’cha / Rhythm is gonna get ’cha / Rhythm is gonna get you / The rhythm is gonna get you tonight”
Long car journeys to France for holidays when I was a child would be accompanied by three distinct sounds: my parents rowing about directions, Jasper Carrott standup routines and Gloria Estefan’s greatest hits. The only other cassette on board was an early Céline Dion album. It’s a miracle my sister and I survived.
This was never truer than the time, driving through a remote part of the Pyrenees, the car gave an agonised groan and ground to a halt. My dad had just enough time to steer into a ditch. Steam began to emerge from the bonnet, which I thought might serve as a distress signal.
We were stranded, so there was something darkly comic about the song blasting from the car’s still-functioning sound system: Estefan’s Rhythm Is Gonna Get You. What we needed was water for the engine and, mercifully, there was a mountain stream running by the side of the road. With the aid of a friendly Frenchman, who stopped at our frantic waving, we took it in turns to fill bottles with water from the stream and transfer it to the car. Eventually, we turned the car around and got on our way.
Knowing Estefan’s output has served me well during music quizzes down the years, but I can’t hear her most famous track without being taken back to that day. The family is reuniting for a trip to Toulouse this year, and if there’s any car trouble we’ll know what to put on.
Ian Ford
We love to eat: Mum’s traditional Kartoffelpuffer
Ingredients
5 medium potatoes
2 medium onions
1 tablespoon of flour
Salt and pepper
1 egg
Oil for frying
To make these potato pancakes, grate the potatoes and onions into a large bowl. Add the flour, egg and salt and pepper, and mix well. Put oil in a large frying pan and heat until fat is medium hot. You can use two pans on the go if you like. Keep the heat quite high and spoon in the pancake mix in small rounds, which will spread out.
Press the pancakes to help flatten them and also to cook through. It takes about three minutes a side.
Turn the pancakes when they are cooked on one side, being careful not to burn them. Keep them warm in the oven while you continue with the next batches. They go extremely well with all sausages – especially German sausages such as weistwurst. They are also good with pork chops and mustard, though traditionally pork goes with stewed apple.
Our mother, Frieda, was a German Jewish refugee who came to Britain in 1939. She joined the British army where she met our father, Dave. They were married in 1945 and settled in our father’s town, Birkenhead, where we were born soon afterwards.
We had mainly traditional English cooking, which our father preferred, but sometimes got German foods such as black caraway seed bread, sauerkraut and plum kuchen cakes. Our firm favourite, though, was Kartoffelpuffer, which we had to pester our mother to make because it was hard for her to grate the ingredients by hand.
My brother Dave and I still make them regularly. Their popularity has gone transatlantic as he lives in Vancouver and often cooks Kartoffelpuffer for his children and grandchildren. They are a family favourite with us all. It is also a good way to remember our mum and our German Jewish heritage.
Sue Battersby and Dave Kay
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