Let me tell you something about my family

My gran made chains and nails. It was piece work, they were paid a pittance for hard work. She had the afternoon off when they got married. She had four children. When they were young they worked the bellows in the forge. There was eighteen years between the eldest and the youngest, my dad. When I was born my grandad was ill, was in hospital and had to have an injection in his arm. My gran was astounded to discover he had a tattoo on his arm. My only conclusion is that he never took his gansy off!

This is a photo of her and my Uncle Wes. He may have started life in a dress, but he grew up to be a pattern maker in an iron foundry. He new how to work metals, worked with heat. Coal dust killed him when he was 64. I was 14. I saw how he had worked and realised that I wanted to spend my life doing something I loved, because once time is spent you can’t get it back. He did. He loved the iron, and his allotment. And a pint. Below is a picture of Uncle Wes and my Grandad.

My dad loved football and cycling. When he grew up he worked at the Austin, but the first time work dropped and he was laid off he looked around for work where this wouldn’t happen again. He thought of being an undertaker, but then joined the police. He was a handsome child, young man and now he is a handsome old man. Below he is on the bottom row, far right.

He would cycle for miles in his youth, 100 mile round trips out from the Black Country into Wales.

My mum was one of four too. Her dad was a soldier, and then he worked at BIP, a chemical factory. Her dad died when she was rising four and still, now, she feels the pain, anger and confusion of his loss. I can see my nephews and my son in the echo of this face from the past.

Talking with her recently she looked so sad when she talked of her mum. Her mum worked at the pen factory, they lived in poverty, there was not much love, but the kids looked after each other and when my uncle won the pools and bought a house she moved in with him.

She got a job at Ackles and Pollock, moved by her mum from the solicitors she enjoyed to earn more money. She met my dad at a dance.

My mum and dad had two children, me and my sister Maxine.

This is the only known photograph of me and my invisible friend Zoonie. I need to find him again.

This was and still is my all time favourite cardigan. And a day I remember, of building snowballs higher than my head. I was happy on that day.

When we were young they were told how lucky they were to have two girls, because it meant they wouldn’t need to educate us. No one in our family had been on to further education. It just wasn’t a ‘thing’. There weren’t many books in the house, but we went to the library, and despite my grandmother’s best efforts to stop me reading and get me doing housework, for when I went into service after school ( she had been placed in a local pub as the skivvy, a kind of indentured labour, where you worked for a few years and your parents were paid) I persisted in seeking the comfort and escape in books. And mum and dad decided that probably a good education would best prepare us for life.

This was one of my very best friends. I mourned so hard when she died that my parents said we could never have another. She is a part of my soul.

My dad would go off sometimes, quietly by himself. He saw such things in his work. Sometimes, when he came in from a terrible accident, he would just sit on the bed and watch us sleeping, fearful for what the future might bring, thankful that we were safe, well. He loved to draw. I loved to watch him. And this was what I wanted to do. To be able to make things appear on paper like this. Below is a pen and ink drawing my dad made. Below that, the same, drawn by me when I was about 15.

My sister became an officer in the Navy. I’m still colouring in. I’ve always thought of my Uncle Wes as an artist/craftsman. This is something about my family, and behind it is a desire to say that ‘ordinary people’ as the working classes are often called, lead extraordinary lives.

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