AV News 191 - February 2013
Those of you who knew Mum in her later years, may not know much about her
earlier life. She was born in 1917, while World War I was still raging, and to put
it into perspective, it was just 8 years since Bleriot had been the first person to
cross the English Channel in an aeroplane. She studied History of Art, and art
was to become a major part of her later life. She was 22 when World War II
started and worked in the Ministry of Information, surviving the Blizt in London.
And went on to work for the British Council, as it was called then, where one
of her responsibilities was to promote British artists. So she worked with artists
such as John Piper, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. In fact Dad once told
me he thought Henry Moore had a soft spot for Mum. Well who wouldn't have!
She met Dad because they lived in the same block of flats in Chelsea and
they married in 1951, and of course three bright, breezy and intelligent children
followed over the next 7 years.
Mum was also an accomplished tennis player, competing at the Queens
Championship, and whilst not fully fluent, she spoke good French which came
in very useful for the frequent visits to France that were to happen throughout
her married life.
Now she had a number of letters after her name due to her
accomplishments. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of
the Royal Photographic Society, a Master of the Photographic Alliance of
Great Britain, and an Excellence of the FIAP - the Fédération Internationale de
l'Art Photographique. And she embraced audio-visual production to great
effect, winning the RPS International Audio Visual Festival with her sequence
‘Revelation’, and the UK National AV Festival with the sequence ‘One Brief
Moment’ about the Lake District. In fact I used to joke with her that she was the
British AV Champion that year.
And she enjoyed poetry, often illustrating poems in her AV sequences, and
we'll hear some extracts from some of her favourite poets later in the service
to celebrate the enjoyment she took from them.
So these are just some of her abilities, talents, interests and
accomplishments, but it's her personality, good nature and good humour that
I'd really like you to remember. And if I may I'd just like to illustrate those with
3 brief stories.
Mum and Dad went around the UK and beyond playing their Audio Visual
programmes to groups of people from camera clubs to Women's institutes and
plenty in between. And in that time, mainly the 70's and 80's, they met many
people, and often more than once. So Mum developed a patter to deal with the
situation where you know the face of the person but don't know who they are
or where you'd met them before. She'd ask how they'd been keeping, how was
the family and so on. And she'd use this technique because she didn't want to
offend anyone by admitting she didn't know who they were. Now, one day she
was walking down Dorking High Street and she saw a man coming the other
way who she recognised but didn't know from where, so she launched into the
usual patter, How are you, how's the family keeping, oh how lovely, anyway
nice to see you again, and on she walked. Five yards or so further on, she
realised it was the milkman and she'd only seen him 2 hours earlier!
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