I've been trying to get onto facebook for ages. The Driffield & Wolds weekly posted early this afternoon that The Grand Hotel and surrounding properties had been evacuated and I'm dying to find out what happened. Ah Well.
My mum. She was 36 when she had me. Her labour stopped half-way and the midwife made her a cup of tea to start it again - dad gardened on, oblivious! Turned out the cord was around my neck.
She exposed me to books from birth, I can still remember sitting on her knee and spelling out 'The Cat sat on the mat' in a book, it was a circular mat and I think the cat was grey. I was 18 months old. She inspired me to ensure both my girls were reading well by the time they started school. My elder had a R.Age of 9yrs aged 5, about the same as I had had. Younger one was about 7.5 yrs. R.A..
Education was her watchword, I never felt pressured, but I worked. She herself was the youngest child with 4 older brothers so was kept off school to help with laundry etc. and had to leave school as a part-timer at 12. She was born in 1913 in Govan and the shipyards fed them.
She loved me, I adored her, she later threw things at me (including a carving knife - missed) when a teenage me enraged her and I was enraged in my turn. I loved her, she died in 1992 and my eyes are filling with tears now - I miss her and still talk to her sometimes. A different, difficult and wonderful woman.