My mother, Margaret Mckenzie, who has died aged 83, led a varied life during which she worked on the development of Hinkley Point nuclear power station, taught in a one-room US schoolhouse and acted as a tour guide at Cardiff castle.
Margaret Iveson (known to family and friends as “M”) was born in Whitworth, Lancashire, the youngest of four children of George, a police sergeant, and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Dinsdale). When her father was promoted to inspector in Urmston, she attended a grammar school in the town.
Sheltering from wartime air-raids in the basement of the local power station stimulated an interest that led to her studying mathematics and physics at Manchester University.
After completing her degree, she took a job with English Electric in Whetstone, Leicestershire, working on research and development for Hinkley Point. Here, where her Deuce computer filled a large room but had only a fraction of the processing power of a smartphone, she met a young engineer called William (known as “B”), whom she married in 1960.
In 1964, B became a lecturer at the School of Mines in Pontypridd (now part of the University of South Wales). They moved to the hilltop village of Llantrisant, to their first and only house; it is now filled with her artwork, his wood-turning and their vast library of books.
My brother, Colin, and I arrived in the late 1960s. In 1976 the family exchanged lives with a lecturer from Vermont for a year. During this time, M managed six months of snowy winter in a 100-year-old wooden house heated by wood-burning stoves, while working as a teaching assistant in an experimental multi-age, one-room schoolhouse where we children could choose our own subjects to study.
The year was capped with a six-week trip around the US in an old Toyota Corolla with no air-conditioning and two bickering children in the back seat.
Back in Britain M worked as a guide at Cardiff castle and in the gallery at the Model House art centre in Llantrisant, where she discovered a passion for art. An honours degree with the Open University followed and she took great joy in painting and drawing.
In the 90s M went off to a local aikido group, thinking it was a form of yoga, but discovered it was actually a Japanese martial art. She loved the philosophy and mental discipline involved and persevered, eventually achieving her black belt.
M loved poetry and nature, using her stare to discourage local cats from harming the thriving bird population fed in the back garden.
She is survived by B, Colin and me, and her grandchildren, James, Emily and Finlay.
