Myrtle Cynthia Tiley 1921-2000; Motherhood and beyond, 1961-2000.

I never really had the gall to quiz my parents how it came to be that despite the fact they had known each other since the mid 1930's, they didn't marry until 1960. The twin brother of a friend who shared her early morning Underground commutes, Walter Henry Gambrell (1920- 1991) aka my Dad, and Mum came to parenthood late in life. They married in 1960; I was born in 1961, my brother two years later. We were the children of parents who were in their forties; before I went to school this didn’t worry me at all, but in the first year of school I realised how much older my mother was than any of the other mums at the school gate; convinced we would imminently be left as orphans, I cried myself to sleep for months, until caught by Mum one night and given a healthy dose of her common sense.

Motherhood, I suspect, took Mum by surprise, but she gave it a good go. Initially they lived in Twickenham, a minute’s walk from the Thames, where I was born; however Dad worked night shift and one night left alone in the house, the servant’s bells all started ringing at once and terrified Mum, who insisted they move. For a while we lived with Auntie Iris and her husband in Tooting, but before Tony was born, when I was 18 months old, we moved to a flat above a shop spread over 4 floors, in Battersea, London. Moving there is my earliest memory. Thankfully I can’t remember the incident when Mum took me in my pram as a newborn to the local launderette in Twickenham, did the washing, took the washing home, only to be unpacking the nappies before realising the baby associated with the nappies had been left in her Silver Cross pram outside the launderette on a busy corner. I only learned this story in my 20’s when by huge coincidence I moved into a flat directly opposite the launderette!

Despite everything, we had fun childhoods. Life before interrupted by school was regimented in the sense the days were the same, except for Sunday: shopping in the morning, cooked dinner, if the weather was good, a walk to the Common and swings and Fresh Air (Mum was big on the benefits of fresh air) in the afternoon, cooked tea, early bed. Sundays Tony and I would go with Dad to visit my Morden grandparents. We saw lots of our aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents; indeed, my maternal grandmother, by then widowed for the third time, seemed to spend her life moving between her different children, staying with each for a predetermined length of time. Then when Auntie Eileen and her family left their idyllic life in Kenya following declaration of a Republic in 1964, they too came to stay with us. The flat must have been full to bursting, but I don’t remember any of it; just how much fun life was. Every Wednesday afternoon we would 'walk' to Balham to see Auntie Kath. At least I would walk; little brother had the benefit of the pushchair. Not owning a car, we walked a lot of places. The rules were always the same; don’t push, don't cross the road without an adult, if we met someone with whom Mum became engaged in conversation, never interrupt. ever. Impatience even displayed by a little tug at a coat was ignored, and reprimanded later. Manners maketh man, and we were schooled in every manner ever known to any man! Tedious at the time, the wisdom of such knowledge became obvious later in life.

Our parents may have been older, but their stamina would have put many younger people to shame. We were walked around London so often I could still do it blindfold. We breathed in the history of the places we saw, more through the conversations my parents had as they reminisced about events, places, people associated with them. They had a lot of 'absent friends', many of whom died in the war. Not many 10 year olds are escorted round the Palace of Westminster by their parents, get to touch the spur marks made in an oak table by the spurs of Oliver Cromwell, see the Library and the thrones, the Commons and the Lords', and then have their Dad stand outside the Gents’ loos whilst they use it because in those days there were hardly any facilities for Ladies!

We were, I see now, dirt poor, but their trick was that we never knew. The now grown up cousins, the aunts and uncles, all returned the benevolence shown to them in earlier years, and then some. One cousin was a butcher, and tipped us off about the flat which was to become our home for the next 20 years. My grandmothers taught me to sew and cook, my grandfather taught me the rudiments of gardening, my aunts and uncles took us on holidays and day trips with their families.Mum went back to work when I was about 10, just part time; eventually she worked for the Post Office as a typist,and from her 13th floor window overlooking the Thames had the best view in the house the day the pink pig from the Pink Floyd 'Animals' album photoshoot broke free from it's moorings at Battersea Power Station, and a pig literally flew past the window!

By the time they retired, both my brother and I had left home, and my parents moved back into Dad’s childhood home in Morden to look after a recently widowed Grandad. At long last she had a huge garden again; and if motherhood had been an unexpected call, by the time grandmotherhood arrived, Mum was well into this. My brother's children arrived first, and were regularly deposited at Nan’s house for playtimes whilst the parents went shopping. My children saw far less of her as they lived 500 miles away, but their memories are always recounted with smiles. Just the other day I was informed their Nanna used to tie balloons to their ankles with pieces of string, and set them to run around the garden trying to pop the balloons- genius. If only I had known. As she grew increasingly frail, she became a Great Grandmother twice over and adored those babies unreservedly, although by then her health had declined to the point that all she could really do was sit and cuddle them. I once watched her wipe away a tear as she handed one sleeping baby back.

One of the arguments my children had when we were en route to visit was 'who will push Nanny's shopping trolley for her?' In her widowhood, still displaying her fierce independence, she had proudly bought a four wheeled shopping trolley with which to transport home her daily shopping, and take the weekly wash to the launderette. All of the grandchildren would fight for the privilege of being allowed to go to the supermarket with her and push the trolley for her. (My son once woke her at 6am to ask if it was time to go to the shops yet, in an attempt to stake his claim!) After her death, I couldn't bring myself to throw it out, so hauled it back to Scotland on the train. When my kids got paper rounds, they used it to transport the papers each week. When my husband left us, and took the car with him, I used it to bring the family weekly shopping home each Saturday morning. Ten years have passed since she died, so last week when clearing out a cupboard I wondered if the time had come. Interrupted in my task by a visit from my own grandson, what did he do but head straight for the trolley (which he had never seen before) exclaim with pleasure, then proceed to push it up and down the hall for hours. ‘Nan’s shopping trolley’ will apparently feature in the lives of the fourth generation, as does she.