Mum, Me, Dad |
Before they married my mother was repeatedly told that my father was ‘a
catch’. Having left school at 14 he worked in a factory but owned his own house
bequeathed to him by his father. The first nine years of their marriage (two
before I was born and the remainder as a small family of three) were
‘comfortable’. My dad though, following some time abroad at the end of
World War II, and in possession of a somewhat wandering spirit, was not
satisfied with living and dying in Liverpool, the place of all our births. He
persuaded my mum that an experience
was in order and after selling the house and most of our belongings we left the
area with all we owned in a couple of large suitcases. There followed four
years of travelling – North and South Wales, Blackburn, London, Sheffield,
Edinburgh and The Bahamas – before we settled in Falmouth, Cornwall. It was in
The Bahamas where things started to go off plan. We travelled there with a
friend of my dad’s who was sharing the cost of this part of the adventure with
my parents. For reasons I won’t go into here he cut short his trip with us
and took his share of the money with him leaving my parents, who had already
spent most of theirs, rather short. Although I didn’t know it at the time we
left earlier than planned but not before we had got into arrears with the rent.
I do remember though that our diet became less varied in the last weeks abroad with
the oranges and coconuts from the garden making up a significant part of each
meal. Arriving back in London we had enough money for a few nights' accommodation but then things got difficult again. We only had one night on the streets (or
rather in a railway carriage opened for us by a kind railway guard) during
which my parents decided to ask some old friends on the outskirts of London to
take me in whilst they attempted to ‘get themselves sorted’. The friends
insisted that we all stay and after a few weeks some relatives of theirs, who we
knew a little, helped us out and so we moved to Blackburn for a while until some other
friends of friends in South Wales also took us in. I don’t recall now for how long we were dependent
on the goodwill of others; certainly a good few months. My dad was ‘handy’ and
did odd DIY jobs wherever we stayed – long enough in Blackburn and Cardiff for
me to go to school – and I remember my mum cooking and cleaning alongside the
woman of the house in each location. Although most of his occupations were
blue-collar my dad was a writer too and at this time he earned a little bit of
money writing stories and articles. Following the offer to rent a small cottage
– two up, two down with a loo at the bottom of the garden – and the possibility
of a job for my dad we moved to Sheffield. We lived there, I think, for about
nine months but as autumn became winter and my mum was recovering from her
second bout of pleurisy since moving into the damp accommodation we packed our
cases once more and boarded the train to Cornwall.
We ‘settled’ in Falmouth for the next seven years, largely, I know now, so
that I could have an uninterrupted secondary education. We lived in various
flats in the town and my parents both worked; dad as a hotel night porter and
mum as a shop assistant and two years working together managing a restaurant.
It was in Sheffield, once a regular wage started to come in, that my parents
began to pay back the, not insubstantial amount of, money they owed to the
extremely patient owner of the house in Nassau. Times were lean, especially
during one short period when neither of my parents had a job. My mum was a good
cook and did inventive things with beans before it was fashionable and the
mackerel gifted to her by local fishermen, on average twice weekly when she was working in a newsagents (see below), was always
a highlight. We left Falmouth when I was 19 to move to Coverack, somewhere my
parents had always loved, and mum and dad worked for the summer season in the
restaurant of the village’s largest hotel whilst I attended the county’s
further education college. Sadly, my father died, unexpectedly nine
months later, and my mum continued, for several years, to do two jobs in the
summer and rely on benefits during the winter.
I appreciate that some might think that my father’s, my parents’,
choices were foolhardy and I know that they experienced much anxiety during
much of my childhood. Yet, my memories are bright and full of colour. Mum and dad often went short themselves so that
I could do many of the things my friends did, we did free and inexpensive
things together and we talked and laughed and loved each other. It was indeed an adventure for me. I was never
frightened and always trusted them completely. But, I do remember, as I say,
what it was like to experience poverty (although at the time I never thought of us as poor); through homelessness, lack of food (not constantly but sometimes),
little money at Christmas or for other high-days and holidays. This year, this
summer in particular, I have thought more and more about these aspects of my
childhood (usually I reflect more on the places we saw, the fun we had) and I
share these memories as a possible insight into my personal feelings of distress
with respect to food (and other) poverty in our society today.
I wrote recently about some of the reactions of the Left and the Right
to recent reports about the scale of summer hunger amongst school aged (and
other) children. http://arwenackcerebrals.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/hungry-children-responses-from-left-and.html
Like many others I was incensed by the twitter remarks of Conservative
MP Simon Hoare. Just a brief reminder here of his response to a tweet by the
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn:
@jeremycorbyn: This is a national disgrace. We can't have millions of children going
hungry over the school holidays.
@Simon4NDorset: Go
on Jezza: do your thing with the loaves and the fishes! Best to stop walking on
the water before you do though.
I had already written, and had published (online
and in print), a letter to The Guardian agreeing with Mr
Corbyn’s (and Angela Rayner MPs’) feelings of disgrace at the near Dickensian
levels of food poverty under ‘Tory austerity’. Once I became aware of Mr
Hoare’s attitude and, seemingly, unashamed activity online, I wrote three more
letters. The first; (written and emailed on the 1st August) was
to Mr Hoare himself and other than an automatic note of receipt I have received
no reply. The second; also sent the same day, also online, went as follows:
Dear Mrs May
I have just written to Simon Hoare MP following his response to a tweet
by Jeremy Corbyn last week. Thus:
Dear Mr Hoare
I am writing to express my shock and distress at your response to Jeremy
Corbyn MP's tweet (28th July) concerning child food poverty in the summer
holidays. I am amazed that you think it acceptable to publicly attack a
parliamentary colleague in such a way at a time when online abuse is such a
concern. Furthermore, to make a 'joke' about child hunger which is, as Mr
Corbyn and others have noted, a 'national disgrace' is unbelievably crass and
callous.
Do you not think that an apology to Mr Corbyn, and to all those calling
out the issue of food poverty and working (often voluntarily) to alleviate it,
is in order?
I look forward to your response.
******
I hope that you consider Mr Hoare's behaviour to be as distasteful and offensive as I
do and would be interested to know what YOUR response might be.
Yours sincerely
Gayle Letherby
I did receive a reply from the Office of No 10 to this. Thus: ‘Your
message has been passed to the appropriate body for their attention.’
Increasingly as the days go on I cannot help agree
with a friend who when I told them about this said: ‘That will be the don’t
give a sh*t department then.’ I’ll write again if I do not hear soon. . . .
The third letter, with a bit of a local twist, was
published in the West Briton yesterday (10th August).
(Coincidently, the same day I attended a Labour Party rally (with speakers
including Jon Ashworth MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP) here in Cornwall, but more of
that another day.) I bought my copy of the local newspaper this morning from
the newsagents were my mum worked and above which I lived with my mum and dad
(for about five and a half years; I can’t remember exactly) until May 1978. The shop is less than five minutes walk away from where I live now.
I also bought a Falmouth Packet today.
On my Facebook page I’ve previously noted that it wasn’t until several weeks
after starting work in the newsagents that my mum stopped asking ‘a packet of what?’
when anyone said ‘Can I have a Packet please?’ On the letters page there is a
letter from the local foodbank which includes the following ‘We would like to
thank everyone for their continued support for Penryn and Falmouth Foodbank
which is still constantly needed by our community.’ This, plus the almost daily
reports, shared via twitter, that foodbanks across the UK are urgently in need
of supplies reminds me, not that I need it, of the enormity of the issue.
I was lucky. Despite their financial problems my
parents had the support of each other and of friends and friends of friends. In comparison to the problems that many individuals and families have today ours where much less significant. As
a family our life together was rich and I credit my opportunities and achievements and
my values and appreciations to their influence and sacrifices. Some
families and some children are not so lucky. There is more and more evidence
that, if things stay the same, not only will child poverty continue (it is
currently at its highest since records began), it will increase.
A couple of nights ago I watched the documentary Professor Green:
Living in Poverty (see the link below) which focuses on the experience of two families, and on the impact of living in poverty on one
child within each family in particular. At the end of the programme Professor
Green says ‘It makes me ashamed…’ Me too.
I'd expect the Tory response to be one of disdain and a lack of empathy for child poverty and indeed any kind of poverty, something that does not impinge on their lifestyle and which they have no experience of, and rely on other caricatures of the Little Britain variety to make sense of why the great unwashed remain a threat to their comfortable existence.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed Jack.
DeletePowerful words, Gayle. Thank you for sharing your story. I too experienced a very 'threadbare' childhood which involved lots of moves as my working-class parents tried to find that 'greener grass'. It was full of mixed memories of good and bad times. I totally agree with you and Jack above, that these politicians (it's the same here in NZ too, where rates of child poverty are some of the worst in the OECD), who haven't experienced it only end of adding to the polarised society by their patronising and prejudiced comments.
ReplyDeleteThank you Ursula.The lack of compassion is shocking, really shocking.
Delete