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- Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
B has Alzheimers and so her long and caring life has been lovingly recollected by her husband Zander. From star athlete, B trained as a Nightingale nurse, then as a midwife. She married, had four children, and became a loving mother and creative home-maker. Then she worked as a community midwife in Fife, an AIDS nurse, and a home care nurse for the independent elderly. Brilliant cook and writer of cook books, stylish homemaker, doting grandmother of eight and wonderful friend to many. This is a personal account of her life and includes a number of photographs to accompany the memories.
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B
A Life of Love
Zander Wedderburn
Copyright © 2012 Zander Wedderburn
The right of Zander Wedderburn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
“Always Marry an April Girl” by Ogden Nash is copyright © 1949 by Ogden Nash renewed. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd., and permission of Carlton Books for UK.
Print ISBN 978-1-905916-47-4
eBook ISBN 978-1-905916-48-1
Fledgling Press 2012
Foreword
B has no memory now, but can still recognise faces. So I started to try to capture my own memories of her, and collect memories of her from other people.
She has had a great life, with her spirit, style, love and charm influencing many others.
I hope I have managed to recapture enough of this to act as some kind of inspiration for others.
The gems are hidden in a necessary biography, but I hope you can find many of them.
Zander Wedderburn
May 2012
Acknowledgements
This little book could not have been written without amazing help from our children and B’s friends and family. Some are quoted in the text, and many others talked to me and jogged my own imperfect memory.
Special thanks are due to the staff at Pentland Hill care home, who have looked after B with really loving care for over a year. It is not an easy job, and I really appreciate their skill and intuitive insights, which often go well beyond the call of duty.
The support of my colleagues at Fledgling Press, particularly Clare Cain and Graeme Clarke, has been a huge bonus. They have transformed the presentation and detail of this little book. They multi-task on many fronts all the time, and yet they were willing to apply their skills and pure genius to this little book too.
Thank you all.
Fledgling Press Limited supports the work of Alzheimer Scotland and will donate £1 for each book sold and will make a minimum donation of £100.
Incomplete
I always felt a half
Till I met you.
It seemed like pure grace
When you gave your spirit
Body and all, sweet love,
And I felt whole for the first time.
Now you’re not always there
And I ache at your absence
Half there and mostly not.
So when for moments you
Flit and flicker in
Paradise returns
And I feel complete again
Poem written by Zander 2005
Chapter One
Born
B was born in Sussex Cottage, Blue House Lane, Oxted, Surrey, on 5th April 1935, when her father was working at the War Office in London as a Captain in the Royal Engineers. Her birth was registered as Bridget Mary Johnstone five weeks later on 9th May, (which is the day I was born). Strangely her father had been at the Edinburgh Academy at the same time as mine, and there was a tale of them having a fight, which they both won.
She had a big sister Gillian, who was born on 4 April 1933. In those days, there was a tax allowance for a whole year for a child born in the tax year. The cut-off date was 4 April, so Gillian won her parents a whole year of tax allowance, but B was late and missed it.
At some point, I should write the story of her parents, but Norbert Kunisch has already done this well, and Gillian’s husband, Michael, is going to expand it one day. He probably doesn’t know that a Borders Johnston married a Windram in about 1350, and my mother’s mother was a Windram, so that it is just possible that B and I are distantly related. Perhaps a DNA test would establish this (or spoil a lovely myth). At any rate, I never felt complete until I married B.
Soon the Johnstone family went to Hong Kong, from where there are a few tales. She had an Amah, a Chinese nurse. One family story was that she came back from a swimming pool saying “The boys did touch me and I did like it.”
They lived in Rose Cottage in Middle Levels (which is now a skyscraper).
It was there that she fell off a wall, where her big sister Gillian had put her, with her little doll’s pram, because she thought it was a nice place for her to push it.
They came back to the UK on the last ship through the Suez Canal before it closed during World War 2, with little sister Fenella being born in Hong Kong just before they left. They lived with Granny Wildridge and Auntie Maggie in Henderland Road, Murrayfield, before moving to Bruachan in Broughton as part of wartime evacuation. Little brother Gavin was born in 1941.
About 1946, Mary bought 1 Wester Coates Avenue in an auction: brave woman. B and Gillian and Fenella all went to St Georges School for Girls, where their mother Mary had been Head Girl, and later President of the Old Girls’ Association (OGA). B had also been to Broughton School in the Borders, where Mary’s brother Gilbert had a farm, Cloverhill.
Chapter Two
Meeting B
My younger sister Susan was in the same class as Fenella, and this kept us apart for a long time. She had a long pigtail that she could sit on at one time, but this passport photo has it off.
When we were 16, both families were on holiday in the Highlands, the Johnstones at Rothiemoon farm in Nethybridge, and the Wedderburns probably at Boat of Garten or Grantown, and a joint family picnic was organised at Bridge of Brown. I shyly sneaked away and shot a rabbit, which I gutted and skinned in a burn while still warm, as my friend Patty had taught me was the best way to do it, and B was impressed.
Later that year, our two schools held a joint debate, where B was impressed by my cocky speaking. Soon afterwards, a joint Scottish Country Dancing Club for the Academy and St George’s, called the Reel Club, was started on Saturday nights, and I remember walking B home from it often, pushing my bicycle, or perhaps even giving her a lift in our Morris Minor.
