Snapshot: My mother, captain of our ship and crew
This photograph is of my family in the summer of 1923 in the garden in Locksheath, Hampshire. My step-grandmother, Sarah, was visiting from Yorkshire with her youngest son (far right). For much of the time my mother was an only parent, my father arrived home infrequently and then not at all (he was a chef on the liners sailing from Southampton).
I am sitting on Sarah’s lap with my mother, Jessie, standing behind. My brother Sydney to the left aged seven, Raymond in the sailor top aged five and little Dick aged three.
Mother worked very hard to keep her family fed and clothed. She gave piano lessons, 6d for half an hour, and for a time played for the Magic Lantern cinema. We relied on the 2/6 shillings per week paid for each child until we reached 14 and left school.
Life for Mother was very hard, with no electricity or running water, but we four had a carefree childhood, climbing trees, playing games and helping to pick the local crop of strawberries in the summer.
At 14, Sydney worked at the laundry; he was a pale, undernourished boy, who was often likened to one of the newly washed sheets. He joined the Royal Navy and later wrote a book about his wartime experiences.
At 17, Raymond joined the army and during the second world war became one of the soldiers rescued from Dunkirk. Later, in true family tradition, he wrote about his time in the services. After the war, he worked on the liners and became a steward on the Queen Mary.
At 14, Dick started work for a farming family in nearby Titchfield and then joined the navy in 1938. His ship, HMS Eagle, was sunk by torpedoes on 11 August 1942. Like both his older brothers, he survived the war and still has a remarkable memory of the past 90 years.
I was a nurse during the war in Southampton. I have been a writer and photographer since my 50s and at 93 I don’t intend to stop just yet.
Nora Greenwood
Playlist: How Duran Duran showed me the way
Rio by Duran Duran
“Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand / Just like that river twisting through a dusty land / And when she shines she really shows you all she can / Oh Rio, Rio dance across the Rio Grande”
I had a gut-wrenchingly depressing childhood. It was the early 80s, so I guess a contemporary soundtrack of woe should have included the most melancholic, angst-ridden Smiths’ and Depeche Mode songs.
But one day, again, I found myself banned from watching television, so was made to stand outside the dining room. My body had to be as bolt upright as a soldier trooping the colour (no leaning against the wall) and, as ever, the punishment meant staying in this position for hours on end. I don’t recall what had set off my adoptive “parents” this time, but it didn’t take much to induce an irrational rage.
However, I could still see through the crack in the door. And then, kismet, it happened: I saw five photogenic guys wearing voguish Antony Price suits cavorting on a yacht in the limpid blue waters of the Caribbean. I was hooked, a bona fide Duranie.
It wasn’t just the uplifting tune with its catchy melody and spicy sax; momentarily, the stylish, glossy video whisked me off to another place. And, for sure, I needed a hefty dose of escapism from the regular bouts of mental and physical abuse that were meted out at home. Yet something inside me changed when I first heard Rio, especially because of one particular line: “And I might find her if I’m looking like I can”. I now felt, I can’t really explain why, that there was a way out of my situation, and that somewhere, out there, there was some type of future …
And there was. As an aspiring writer I got to meet Simon Le Bon – the group’s lead singer – a few times and I asked him about Rio and being on that boat. Little did he know that that song helped me, metaphorically, from being chucked overboard.
Xav Judd
We love to eat: Steamed mackerel with ham choi
Ingredients
1 whole mackerel (gutted and cleaned)
Dried cabbage (ham choi), rinsed and chopped (thinly or thickly depending on how salty you want each mouthful to be)
Light soy sauce
1 cup of rice per person
Double the amount of water to rice
Put the whole mackerel into a metal dish and sprinkle with the ham choi. Rinse the rice in a rice cooker bowl, drain and add cold water. Pop the lid on, put the bowl into the cooker and set it to cook. Once the water has boiled and the bubbles have calmed down, insert a metal steamer rack into the middle of the rice and push down so the bottoms of the legs touch the base of the bowl. Place the dish on the rack and put the lid back on. Leave to steam for 15-20 minutes. Using a tea towel, remove the dish and add a splash of soy to taste. Serve with rice.
Every time I hear the Channel 4 News theme tune, it reminds me of this dish. Growing up we would always have dinner at 7pm, hence the association. The music transports me back to many nights of my mum’s steamed mackerel. She used to make a massive pot of rice, and just as the water was starting to evaporate she’d quickly place a steamer rack into the rice and plop a metal dish on it with the mackerel nestling inside.
The mackerel was joined by a mysterious ingredient called ham choi, a brown, unassuming vegetable that had the power to transform a rather bland stroll across the tongue to a rather exciting dance on the tastebuds, depending which bit of it you got. Chinese meals mean communal sharing of dishes so we had to be quick to nab the best bits first. Once out of the rice cooker and doused liberally with soy sauce, it was a free-for-all.
If my mum had timed the cooking just right, the fish would be succulent, yielding to the slightest touch of a chopstick. The brown meat was the most highly prized. If you mixed that with a chunky piece of ham choi – oh, my! The salty, crunchy veg tangled up with the soft and delicate fish was a joy. In second place was the white flesh accompanied by the stringier but slightly sweeter cabbage ends.
Happy days.
Viv Bell
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