An extract from my memoir, Son of My Father.
A very different time.
My Brother wrote the service for mam's funeral. He wrote the following.
“... when she was a young lady, it was the simple things like, helping her mam in the house, learning how to cook, wash and most importantly sew. Equally another happy time for her was her schooling, she was clever and bright and always managed to be in the top stream. It has been said that in other times she may have gone on to be a teacher.”
“From school she went into the factories (Freeman, Hardy and Willis) and later after becoming a mum turned to homeworking. The house always had Sewing Machines in it, Overlocks, Scissors, piles of leather, trim and fabric and things in the process of being put together. She was naturally creative and could turn any idea plucked from your imagination into a fully realised costume in hours.
She was soon promoted to sample machinist because basically she was the best in the trade.”
Her schooling was probably typical of that time for someone from her social background. Until her funeral, I was not aware of what she had achieved at school. She would have left school at around fifteen back then.
Going on to higher education and University was not something that was ever part of any plan for her. It was a very different time. In more modern times she probably would have gone on to university and got a degree, but in the 1950s that was not an option for her. It simply wasn’t something that would have been considered for a young girl from her social class.
Not that she felt like she had missed out or had regrets. I doubt she ever thought about higher education, a case of what you don’t have you don’t miss. Even in later life, she never expressed any regrets to me about what she may have missed out on through lack of opportunity. If she had any regrets, she kept them to herself…
Read more reflections like this here.
Image 1 by Pedro Torres from Pixabay
Image 2 by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
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