Today would have been my mother’s 100th birthday (she died at 85).
Her parents were of minor landed-gentry stock, who were both educated in Germany (a thing in the late 19th Century) and who both converted to Catholicism – a step that cost her father his legal career. She was one of seven sisters, who went to Catholic boarding school. No cooking lessons (they assumed everyone had domestic help).
As a girl, she met King Zog of Albania in Paris – by accident (she barged through a crowd of people to see who was there). After World War 2, she married. She was at some point a member of the Young Conservatives, through which she once met (and disliked) Evelyn Waugh. Quite a few years later, she and my father split up. Some of my earliest memories are of books. I remember her telling a shocked neighbour ‘I don’t care what my children read, provided they read’.
Another memory is the play group she started after an extensive battle with county education bureaucrats 40 miles away, doing local TV interviews and losing friends who didn’t want kids from poorer families allowed in. She helped found a – now very established – NGO fighting for single-parent families’ rights. And she got into the nascent feminist movement, attending Women’s Lib conferences, writing for an obscure radical publication and doing voluntary work including pregnancy tests for teenage girls. She would say she didn’t understand why women got married.
There was much more – but you get the picture of her trajectory of awareness and activism. I took it all for granted while a kid, and later put it down to separation from my father, plus eccentricity.
Fast-forward a few more decades, and she shocked her offspring, her array of siblings, nephews and nieces and all her many friends by announcing that she had had a baby in her late teens during the war. Her parents had hushed everything up, refused to let the father marry her (because he was divorced) and sent her off to an elderly aunt in the countryside until the baby was born at a discreet Catholic clinic and whisked away for adoption. For half a century she had constantly been using her first and middle names – as on the birth certificate – and now her daughter had tracked her down.
And it all became clear.
Away for the next two weeks – going to an exotic part of the world I have never been to before. Should put some pix on Twitter, at least.
Bon Voyage to you both.
I trust the resident commentariat will keep the pot boiling while you’re away.
‘I don’t care what my children read, provided they read.’
Wise words that parents in these times may want to consider.
Mothers are amazing. Good mothers are amazingly impactful.
Eccentric, yes
The days of simple rest
Upon her kindly breast
Long over;
The illnesses and fears,
The tantrums and the tears,
Comforted;
The new, the broken toys,
The rebuffs and the noise,
All done:
Then strange to see my mother
Was not like many other
Women,
But firmly always chose
The path where no-one goes
And trod it.
Whirring in my head,
Peculiar things she said
Puzzled me;
Somehow she could not
Be cool, but cold or hot
Always;
Eccentric sometimes, yes,
But sometimes a success,
Sometimes;
And so I came to be
The self-sufficient me,
My Self.
@Knownot: Love the surprise twist at the end. That’s another one that wins a place in your (eventual) book.
Bravo Knownot!
One can assume that our copycat bandwagon jumping legislators did not take into consideration that HK is “prone to “ionospheric scintillation” issues when pushing for speedy intro of a low altitude economy here.
The drone show cancellations will hopefully give the administration a good reason to temper expectations as coordination of hundreds of food delivery drones could be subject to unexpected weather conditions.
Emergency deliveries of blood supplies, transplant organs, etc is one thing.
Speedy delivery of calorie laden snacks quite another.
Most of us still believe that pronouncements from the Observatory are rigorously science-based, and not concocted to cover for government screw-ups.
But how long until we doubt that such fey terms as ‘ionospheric scintillation’ are worth looking up in Wikipedia?
Eggs n Ham – The HKO will be trustworthy to me as long as it uses “Pearl River Estuary” to describe the local region. Once it starts using GBA, the game is over.
‘Kowloon Walled City film good way to promote tourism’
Ah yes! A rat-infested lawless nightmare demolished 30+ years ago – an excellent advertisment for the city and its culture.
@A Poor Man
Alas, some mainlandisms are already creeping into HKO reports, such as using the pinyin “Taibei” and “Gaoxiong” to describe two major cities in Taiwan.
@zatluhcas
Pinyin has been in the HKO lexicon for ever. It’s not a new phenomenon.
The death of nine primates at the disgraceful mini zoo operated at what was originally intended to be an establishment where plants are grown for scientific study and display to the public, the Botanical Gardens, should trigger a review of the operation.
Keeping intelligent animals locked up in small cages to be gawped at is a relic of the 19th century that might have provided some societal benefits before the advent of pervasive real time surveillance, but is now no longer necessary nor justified.
Whatever the cause of their demise, it is time to move on, transfer the remaining animals to a sanctuary and replace the cages with trees and plants.
@Mary – Totally agree. I lived for about 10 years within earshot of the Gardens on old chilly winter mornings I could hear the primates screeching from the cold. The place is barbaric.
Just curious, but did they give the primates covid jabs?