Mother. Spelled m,o,t,h,e,r. . . M,O,T,H,E,R.

My mother was born in good old England in 1927.  She lived through the war and was a woman to be reckoned with, a Hyacinth Bucket without the funny (although if she let her guard slip, she really could be hilarious.)  Even though she died in 2011, I still feel the grey tendrils of disapproval reaching through the ether as I mention her birth year. . .  because "A lady should never mention her age."   As a family we were insular.  We had to be because her standards were so high as to be unattainable.  She put people into class catagories according to where they lived or what their parents did or how they said "milk."  "Muulk" got you banned!  She constantly corrected pronounciation and spelled out the word as well, often twice. The world almost came to an end one day when my kind-hearted sister, at the age of six, I think, snipped off the flower of an aloe known as a red-hot poker, to give to my dad.  Dad had just come home after a long stint in hospital.  The problem was not so much the picking of the flower, but that it had been snipped off right near the bloom leaving very little stem.  Something most would see as sweet brought out the wrath of mother. She was quite an accomplished seamstress and made us clothing. I will never forget the unlined, proper tartan trousers she made me wear. Hard, itchy fabric, uuurgh. We were dressed identically too. Hygiene was one of her things and we girls were bought boy's white, y-front, cotton airtex underwear.  As children who know no better, we accepted this.  At school however, changing for swimming caused untold hilarity amoung the other children and huge embarrassment for us.  Nothing was ever thrown away and the drawers were full of things like unusably small bits of string, "just in case." In case of what, the great mouse escape? Everything we owned had to be marked in some form, usually with pieces of brightly coloured fabric. From suitcases to violin stands, our belongings always stood out. Food was also kept long beyond its sell by date. When she left for New Zealand in 2000, a frozen turkey was found in the freezer dating from 1984. Bananas were hidden in her scarf drawer to stop us "pigging them down," but often they were forgotten and went off. To make each other laugh, my sister and I roll our eyes at each other and say in a voice a martyr would be proud of, "Oh, I'll have the broken egg." Mother liked to make sure she was known to be sweating the small stuff, but on major issues, she internalised everything. Stiff upper lip and all that. A product of her time I am sure. I have to look back and smile. My mother was an eccentric woman, but one who was a character. Someone who believed in the Victorian adage "spare the rod and spoil the child." I vowed early on not to be like her and so far, so good.