Dear friends. Welcome to this month's Tell Us About challenge, where 8 global bloggers interpret a prompt in their own way.
This time it's Legacy, chosen by Leslie from Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After. It seems to have most of the group scratching their heads.
I was a little perplexed too, because as someone who's child-free, I don't have anyone to inspire with my legacy, although my life and memory will live on via three different blogs which have existed since 2006.
I have a precious legacy of my own from someone who inspired me: my late maternal grandmother, Kathleen Lovis.
I asked her to write her memoir for me, which she did; she also penned all her recipes in a separate ring binder. Some of the pages are grubby: you can tell she was using the recipes as she cooked, which brings them to life.
Kathleen died in 1991, aged 84. I wrote about her 1930 wedding in my old blog in 2010. It was very much done on a shoestring. Her husband Jack worked in what was known as "the tar works" (tar distillery) in Plymouth, and money was tight. They never owned their house, or had a car. Kathleen didn't go abroad until near the end of her life, when, as a widow, she went to visit relatives in Canada.
Today I'm sharing another excerpt from her memoir and one of her most celebrated recipes.
STARTING WORK AT THE AGE OF 14
Kathleen was just 14 when her sister Win secured her a job at one of Newquay's biggest hotels, The Headland, as a cleaner. She recalls: "They put my age as 16 on the form. It was the first time I had left home, in Plymouth, and I went off to work with my sister.
"I was put in a room at the top with three others sharing. There was a knock on the door at 6am every morning. I had to be washed and dressed in a black dress with white apron, and my hair done up in a bun, ready to start work at 6.30.
"There was a lot to do before breakfast at 8.30. In that time, I had to clean two large sitting or lounge rooms, a large billiards room with two snooker tables and a long corridor with a huge umbrella stand in the middle of it.
"All I has to work with was an old fashioned Eubank carpet cleaner, a tin of Ronuk polish and dusters. I was on my knees every day to rub up the sides of the lino, which also had to be polished twice a week. One time I was pulled out of breakfast because I hadn't cleaned up some cigarette ash from the fireplace, and told to clear it up right away."
"Every afternoon I'd have a different job to do, such as cleaning all the brass door knobs. Believe me, there were a lot.
"We had a nice evening meal around 6.30pm, and after that I had to help the chambermaids. We'd have beds to make or tidy."
Kathleen never saw a penny of her pay and believed it went straight to her mother via Win. She had enough to buy herself some mints, which were her treat. "I'd walk to the nearest sweet shop, buy some humbugs, then go back and lay on the bed for an hour before supper, or dinner time. Before that though, I had quite a large corridor to clean, in the same way I'd done downstairs. Then I had several bedrooms and toilets to clean each day."
As a lot of her work was done on hands and knees, Kathleen's legs became very sore. After three or four weeks, Win told her mother, and she said they should give in Kathleen's notice. Ironically, in her last week, Kathleen was given "lovely big mops" to use, and wouldn't have minded staying on.
Below: my grandmother in later life
No comments
Post a Comment