[I sense by now mum is losing enthusiasm for the task I set her as her narrative somewhat peters out]
“In 1972 Colin’s mother died and his dad came over & spent a month with us, interrupted by a cruise up the coast of Norway, where he met the awful Marilyn, his second wife. We had a lovely time with him & showed him a lot of the S. East of England. He particularly liked the Brighton Pavilion (when a few years later we took Marilyn there she was very unimpressed). It was lovely to really get to know him & for the kids to at least meet one grandparent.
So Ric wouldn’t have to share a bedroom with Michael, Colin extended the cupboard at the top of the stairs into a very compact cabin style bedroom for him. We had another run-in with the librarian neighbours as they thought the building noise would only last two days, not the two weeks it actually took. They really didn’t approve of us, but didn’t think about their own actions – practising scales (badly) on the piano at 6am wasn’t exactly neighbour friendly either.
There was a very large field diagonally across from our house. At the top of this led onto a wide path to the next housing estate. Our kids were allowed to play on the field but not go onto the path. They always wondered how I knew when they’d done this but as I could see the whole field from Michael’s bedroom window and I also dressed them in bright red jumpers, it was easy to check up on them while I was doing the housework.”
Apart from a paragraph about my first teacher, this is where mum’s autobiography ends. I’ve lived in Portsmouth for over forty years now but I’ll do my best to summarise the rest of mum’s story.
Late in 1972 [I think, the 8th December rings a bell] we moved from Rayleigh to Maylandsea on the Dengie peninsular and a branch of the Blackwater River, still in Essex. It was a largish chalet style house down a pot-holed road (that would occasionally take delivery of a lorry of tarmac for everyone on the street to muck in and fill. A temporary fix that would last a few months before all the holes reappeared). Being so far out in the countryside meant we had to bus into school, first to Latchingdon CofE Primary a few miles away where mum also took a job as a dinner lady, having more than one run-in with the eccentric headmaster, Mr Brown, and Mrs Brown his deputy and wife. After about 21 months there I moved on to senior school which meant bussing to Chelmsford, some 18 miles away, because mum could not countenance the idea of us going to the much, much nearer Burnham on Crouch comprehensive. This, for me, involved taking the 11+ exam and acing it to get a choice of schools. It also meant that after-school and other extra-curricular activities were virtually impossible as mum didn’t yet drive and dad was away working a lot. On the other hand we did get involved in 1st Maylandsea Sea Scouts and had many adventures on the water and camping around the county and further afield; from Derbyshire to Andorra and the Black Forest (in winter!).
When I was eighteen and eventually found a place at Portsmouth Polytechnic and moved to the south coast; my family moved to Norfolk (rude). They found a nice house in Hemsby village and proceeded to make it very nice and lived comfortably there for a number of years before they fell victim to the endowment mortgage crisis and had to downsize considerably. They found a small, prefab style bungalow nearby and again made the best of it. Mum’s gardening skills adapted from a large lawned affair to one of principally containers and after losing both Trudi and Domino found great joy in a rescued Irish Terrier called Simpson who slept in an outside kennel and was as daft as the proverbial brush. They became firm Norwich City fans and held season tickets for many years enjoying the many highs and lows of supporting a team that would often yo-yo between divisions and the occasional “club night” in Delia’s restaurant. By now both Michael and I had children and grandparenthood was something they both loved too. Something else they enjoyed immensely was cruising, visiting many places around the world; from Alaska to Argentina, China to the Caribbean, and also closer to home. Consequently we have many photos of “Nana on a bench” from all corners of the globe!
In the late 1980s, before they took to the cruise ship life, they bought a dilapidated old farmhouse in the Mayenne (south of Normandy) in France and spent many years, often going out at Easter, summer and autumn half term, slowly fixing it up with a view eventually to letting it out. It didn’t quite work out that way but we had several free holidays in return for our labour and many adventures in the bricolage before it was eventually finished and they decided to sell up instead of letting as planned. Quite what the new owners made of all the English electrics we’ll never know.
In 1996 mum planned a surprise trip to the relatively new Disneyland Paris to treat the big kid that was my dad for his sixtieth birthday. In return, a year later he tried to outdo mum and took us all to Lapland for the day – the day before Christmas Eve – for her sixtieth, leaving her intricate plans for us all to stay for Christmas in disarray. It was quite the experience though.
In 2015 a surprise revelation from dad during a conversation with friends ended up with them moving to the Isle of Wight that September. Mum remained convinced that he initiated the move so they could be closer to Sarah & me in Portsmouth, as he knew his prostate cancer was slowly bringing his days to an end (he died in April 2018). Mum had ten years on the island altogether and enjoyed it very much, making new friends and being far more active than she had been latterly in Norfolk.
Natalie Ann Robinson 1937 – 2025
