It was interesting to read the Janus and Sipu takes on working women. It so happens that they are both different to my own experience and beliefs. No less valid but just different.
Janus wrote – ‘Further education for women was extremely elitist’. Not in Jockland it wasn’t. My maternal grandfather was the son of a tenant farmer. On his return from Gallipoli, having served there with the Fife & Forfar Yeomanry, he quarreled irrevocably with his parents because they had nominated his younger brother as the reserved worker rather than him.
Didn’t really matter much because the farm was, by this time, under the tarmac of Leuchars Aerodrome, later to be graced by the one and only Ferret. Great Grandad had retired and younger brother had volunteered anyway and been gassed on the Western Front. It must have been all very messy at the time, family-wise.
Anyhow, Grandad got a job looking after the horses for the Buckhaven & Methil Co-operative Society and sired five children, of whom Mum was Number 2. Academically gifted and able to pursue her ambitions to the fullest extent and for free. For the avoidance of doubt, we have always had a separate and unprivileged educational system up here. Too long a story to go into but interesting that we had four Universities (not including the great Uni of Embra) when England was struggling by on two.
Mum duly got her qualification in the late 30s and became a teacher in darkest Communist West Fife, which was unfortunate as she was a Tory by inclination – didn’t stop the Party from offering her a job as a councillor on the firmly socialist and egalitarian grounds that ‘there were not enough clever, good-looking, young women to go around’.
In 1939 on the sprung dance floor of the Methil Bowling Club, she met and eventually married the young demi-god from the Highlands who was my father. Newly qualified from the aforementioned Uni of Embra and teaching at Buckhaven High School.
Come the war, Dad volunteered whilst teaching was still a reserved occupation and became a Gunner in the Royal Artillery, inter alia manning an anti aircraft gun to defend Wembley Stadium against the Huns. Had he but known what was going to happen in 1966! In due course, his commission came along and he was an officer in the Royal Engineers. Meanwhile, Mum taught through the war.
Victory assured, Dad and Mum took off to occupy Germany where, in good time, I hove (heaved?) onto the scene. Until I made my entrance, Mum was teaching in the BAOR schools. Broke her ankle playing hockey whilst carrying me at an early stage and that put paid to the teaching.
By the time of Dad’s posting to Highland Command in Perth, she was a Major’s wife and unable to carry on full time teaching because she was expected to offer tea and sympathy to the junior officers’ wives and to prepare them for the ordeal of passing inspection by the General’s Wife. My Mum was from the same mould as our own CO so the sympathy was usually in fairly short shrift. ‘Shape up or ship out’, if truth be told. The tea was apparently OK if you liked that strong as well.
The Headie of the local Primary School who lived along the road spotted her talent and persuaded her to go on supply. Having come back to Caledonia (stern and wild) from Singapore, I had missed not only sweet rationing but also all the local epidemics. My mother made it her mission to seek out and expose me to every possible disease, driving me miles to other counties, if necessary. As a result, I spent four weeks off school going through measles and mumps whilst everybody else in my class was forging ahead in the pursuit of knowledge.
Thus it was that I was sitting in class one fine Monday morning, clutching a pencil and trying to copy the letters off the blackboard while all around me were rattling off major works of fiction. Said pencil was in my left hand and the teacher (also supply and well past retirement age) suggested to me that I should switch to my right hand, ‘like everybody else in the class’. Seemed sensible to me and I complied. Mum walked past on a free period, glanced in and came in. A minute later after a terse and very quiet conversation between the two of them, my teacher came across and said that I should try the pencil in my left hand again. I have had rotten handwriting ever since but that was probably the best thing that my mother ever did for me. And she did a lot.
After his next overseas posting to Nigeria, Dad went to Southern Command as a Colonel and I went to a school for young gentlemen in Salisbury. On googling, I find that I was a schoolmate and almost certainly a classmate of Christopher Biggins. Don’t remember him and he probably does not remember me but I do recall that I won maximum points for School House for both Elocution and Recitation so he must have been rubbish even then.
Whatever, Mum still wanted to teach as well as be an Army wife so she signed up at a local grammar school. In 2008, I persuaded Mrs M to holiday in Salisbury to celebrate my 50th anniversary of coming to Wiltshire. The owner of the guest house that we stayed in remembered my Mum as the best teacher that she ever had.
So, Mum worked for most of her life, not because we needed the money but because she wanted to and because she was bloody good at what she did. I do not feel that she neglected either me or Big Sis at any time or in any way.
She was also very good at darning socks.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Completely off-topic, JM, but I am still breathlessly awaiting your no doubt devastating series of articles on the environment, weather and culture that you encountered down under. And your judgement of the bowling fraternity and the greens. 😕
Where in BAOR and Nigeria JM?
This is interesting.
My mother went to London Uni, Goldsmith’s in 1922, read languages, which encompassed Latin, Greek, Anglo Saxon. Old English and modern English, Old French and modern French. All free, on scholarship.
she taught too, in the East End, not that her father approved!
When she married she had to resign which would have been about 1929, she never went back which was a pity as she was absolutely useless at all domestic arts. My sister and I learnt how to sew, knit, cook etc etc from books out of self defence as mother didn’t seem to know how and the old man couldn’t care less either.
There was never any dinner, one came home and found her reading Beowulf! Yeah really useful!!!!
She was at Uni with Lord haw Haw, who was a nutter even then, used to march into lectures, do the heil Hitler salute and wore riding boots and jodhpurs much to the entertainment of the other students. I don’t think there were many women there at the time from what she said.
The downside of this was that all of us siblings (4) were dragooned off to Uni whether we wanted to go or not which was a big mistake, 3 of us had other plans, but through the sausage grinder we had to go!
So somewhere between my mum and yours they abandoned this business of making women resign on marriage.
Clearly the northern and western fringes were the places to be between the wars. But CO, your Mum must have been from a ‘comfortably off’ family to go to Uni?
My grandmother was always, despite her gentle voice and beautiful Alemannic accent, a very difficult person. She would rarely raise her voice, but she was a horrible manipulator, meddler and gossip — one who caused no small number of people a great amount of pain.
Despite this, she had her redeeming features. She insisted that her five children all go through Gymnasium and take their Abitur. (In proper terms, go through the top level of schooling and then pass a comprehensive exam which equates to passing A-levels, when they counted for something, in maths, sciences, languages, and history)
My mother, no great genius in language or history, but gifted in mathematics and sciences, went on to study medicine at university for a time. She didn’t finish it, however. She wound up having a strong-willed, pig-headed, determined, and independent son who did whatever he bloody well pleased and would not listen to reason since the time of his conception. She worked different jobs ranging from a barista (the employers were Italians, so it meant something, not like at the local Costa or Nero’s) to a water safety analyst to a department manager at a hospital and head of her department. She’s content with her life as it is now.
In my generation, I will be the only one to get a university degree, the first in the family’s history.
janus, my Grandfather was in London at that time, he worked for the Prime Minister, yes I would say comfortable but not rich, two live in servants and a large house on Clapham Common when it was still a respectable area! But mother got a free scholarship, open competitive entry. So it didn’t cost him anything.
She never spent her salary, when she got married in 1929 she furnished the house completely out of her bank account. We still have all the accounts. So I guess grandfather never charged his children whilst they were still living at home. He must have been fairly comfortable.
Christina
Thanks for the information. You’ve spoken about your mother before, so it’s nice to get some details. Your comment about your mother reading Beowulf rather than cooking reminds me of the time I went to a parent’s evening and looked at one of my daughter’s ‘busy book’. She was about eight or nine and had drawn a picture of her making her bed – and another one of ‘Mummy reading’…. 🙂
Christopher
Most of my mother’s family and all of my father’s family thought that education was wasted on women. It was with great glee that my mother, who had faced all the arguments in both families to ensure that I had a decent education, made sure that everyone knew when I got my degree! I was the first in my family, too.
Boadicea: my grandmother also insisted that her sons learn how to cook, shop, and clean. She said that she didn’t want any useless sons who couldn’t take care of themselves.
G’day Bearsy.
Long story in brief. I got back to Caledonia on 20th July 2011, intending to go back to work on the morn. Finally went back today after a week in hospital and a lot of time flat on my back at home. Wasn’t a DVT but they thought it was for a while. Enough said about that.
I trickled out a few posts when I was able to bear sitting for any length of time but I have an awful lot about Australia composed in my head and am ready to pour it out into the ether in due course. Plus, I’ve almost got nearly all the photos into some sort of order.
Please watch this space. In re bowling, I will be posting as a Life Member of Noosa Heads Bowling Club which cost me a whole A$1.00.
Hi toc.
BAOR was Hamburg. I was born in the Military Hospital there having been allegedly conceived in Odense. Nigeria was a non-family posting and we stayed in Perth. Dad was based in Lagos. He used to claim that he missed an independence gong by about two months and that his successor got it.
CO, good evening.
Your #6
Interesting indeed. My mother and you would have got on famously, in my opinion.
The William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) anecdote is fascinating. I think that we all knew loonies like him in our time. He just happened to luck out for a while and live the dream until, of course, we quite rightly hanged him.
My Mum used to tell the story of her Mum listening to one of his broadcasts as he crowed about the fact that the U-boats had completely cut off all food supplies to Britain and that the entire country was starving and on the verge of surrender. Gran apparently lost it, took the frying pan with the family breakfast (we are Jocks) off the stove and waved it in front of the radio shouting ‘Smell that, ye lying, torn-faced, havering scunner’.
Sorry about the bad language, Soutie.