Chapter Four: Miriam Brenda

Having spoken about our dad in Chapter 3, I wanted to do the same for our dear mum. This has been the most difficult to chapter to write so far. In the last few years of her life, I’d tried to encourage her to write a memoir of her own, but I’d left it too late and her brain had entered the ‘wobbly bookcase’ phase. As each shelf of her memory had filled from the bottom up with a lifetime of experiences, the bookcase grew higher and more unstable. This meant that, though the old memories were secure at the base, new experiences at the top were liable to fall off. She’d start to write things down but would forget where & what she’d set down and even that she’d embarked on the project in the first place. With hindsight, I wish I’d got her to talk about her life and made a recording that I could transcribe now but, alas, I didn’t. In my defence, this was during covid and I was caring for her at a 200 mile distance. On-line technology was not Mother’s strong suit. While keen to keep the narrative as light and entertaining as possible, it’s difficult to do so in Mum’s case without appearing flippant and dismissive. Doubtless there will be light-hearted anecdotes concerning her later on, but for this chapter I’ve just stuck to the facts as I understand them.

Miriam Brenda Woollam was born on 5th February 1929 to Aaron and Miriam (nee Bossons). She had one brother John Michael born 30th November 1933 & a half-brother Paul.

From what I can gather, Mum and John spent much of their early years lodging with various aunts and uncles in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. I believe this was because their mum was unwell (f***ing cancer) and passed away in 1938 when Mum was nine years old.

It can’t have been long after that when their father Aaron was called up into the army to serve in North Africa for the duration of WW2. Coincidentally, he & his brother Frank were both stationed in Cairo at one stage. Grandad came home several months before his brother because there was some kind of administrative error and the army forgot Frank was there.

So, Mum & John continued to have a disrupted childhood being cared for by various relatives in wartime Britain. All her life Mum was protective of John and worried about him all the time. Secretly I always suspected that Mum would outlive him because there was no way she was going anywhere without knowing John was OK. She outlived him by just a year or so.

After 4 years away at war, Grandad eventually arrived home one Thursday afternoon. The very next day, he took the train to London with his brother Harry & arrived back in Burslem on Saturday afternoon with his newly wedded wife, Dorothy on his arm. From that evening, Mum & John were living with a father they hardly knew and a ‘mother’ they’d never met. It wasn’t long before half-brother Paul came along, doubtless making the situation even harder for them to process. Mum and Dorothy never really got on and although by the time I came along they’d reached some kind of an accommodation, even at my young age I could always sense an atmosphere between them.

From the age of 10, Mum went to Brownhills High School for girls. Her guardians (her dad would have still been in the army) were compelled to sign an agreement to keep her there for 4 years. Fun fact: Mum was ambidextrous but not naturally so. She was actually left-handed but every time she was seen to use her left hand to write, her teacher would rap her over the knuckles with a ruler. Apparently in those days anyone not right-handed was considered to be sinister.

Aunt Em & Uncle Charles have already had a mention in these annals. Completing the rota of Mum’s relatives that I knew, were Auntie Nance & Uncle Reg, Auntie Wyn & Uncle Sid, Uncle Frank & Auntie Hilda and last but by no means least Auntie Ethel. More of her later on but suffice to say that if this was a novel by P.G. Wodehouse then, while Aunt Em would have been my Aunt Dalia, Auntie Ethel would have been Aunt Agatha.  She was a spinster and had a career working for the Methodist Church Youth Department, travelling the country training would be Sunday school teachers. It was under the encouragement of Aunt Ethel, not to mention that of Brownhills principle Dr D.N.E. Bright and with a financial grant from the City of Stoke-on-Trent, that Mum enrolled to train as a teacher at Westhill College who pioneered the Froebel method of education. She came away with a teaching certificate and a fiancé.

Life was pretty peachy for Mum for the next few years. A handsome, talented husband, two sturdy boys, a nice house in a nice area and by all accounts a wonderful social life. Sadly, this wasn’t to last. Turns out that Dad’s assertion “I’m going on holiday for a little while” wasn’t entirely true. He was actually leaving us forever to live with a fellow teacher from Mill Hill School called Barbara McMinn. A divorced single parent with a daughter 3 months my junior called Elizabeth - Mum & Dad had taken Barbara under their wing. She and Elizabeth were often included in family activities. I clearly remember the six of us going to visit Chipperfield’s Circus on one occasion. To quote my mum “Your dad would run the two of them home after our days out. I realised something was wrong when the round trips started to take longer & longer”

Naturally, Mum was devastated. Quite apart from the question of love and the fact that they had made solemn vows to each other in the eyes of church and family, attitudes to divorce were very different from today. The divorce rate in 1960 was only 22%. The nuclear family was the ideal, and marriage was often viewed as a gateway to stability and social acceptance. Mum battled on, trying to keep things as normal as possible for Tim & me, but a culmination of the divorce and the immense pressure she was under eventually resulted in her having a major breakdown. For a time, Tim and I lived a somewhat nomadic existence being farmed out to stay with family friends and relatives while Mum had time to convalesce. I don’t recall how long this period lasted. It felt like an eternity.

That said, at the age of six I had little awareness of what was actually going on. It wasn’t something that was ever talked about.  Wasn’t there a sit-com called “Not in Front of the Children”? So, I just went off into a little world of my own, imaging Dad was a spy on a secret mission or an explorer up the Orinoco. For ages I just assumed he’d come back some day.  I recall a boy called Paul Keeling at junior school asking me why I didn’t have a dad and being stumped for an answer. I think that for Tim, then just coming up for nine, things must have been far more difficult. Dad & Barbara eventually married and moved to Harlow in Essex. In the 60s we had no mobile phones, no text messages, no email and, although we had a phone, long distance calls would have been expensive. Tim remembers Dad phoning him from time to time. I don’t.  For many years the only major contact we had with him was three times a year: a visit to us at Christmas usually involving a cinema trip and a meal out on Christmas Eve and a day at Barbara’s parents’ house in Congleton, a trip to stay with Dad wherever he was living at Easter, and in the school summer holidays an extended holiday somewhere abroad either under canvas or latterly in the Cavalier Sprite caravan . The rest of the time Mum had us on her own.

As well as teaching full time for which, in those days, she would have been paid less than a male teacher, Mum continued to run Pittshill Sunday School, serve on various church committees and maintain a high standard of living for her two ungrateful boys. Dad took the car but then, as Mum didn’t drive anyway, everywhere we went now involved a bus journey courtesy of Potteries Motor Traction (PMT). Doubtless she received some maintenance payments from Dad but even so, money was tight. She once told Tim that in those days she knew to the penny how much she had in her purse.

She was always ‘on the go’. Cooking, cleaning, doing the garden, preparing lessons for school, preparing lessons for Sunday School, preparing services for church (she was an occasional Methodist lay preacher), doing piano practise prior playing at Sunday School, shopping, tidying the house prior to the weekly visit of our cleaner Mrs Pass. I suspect we couldn’t really afford Mrs Pass but she was a pensioner who probably relied on the income, so Mum kept her on.  The only thing I ever recall Mum ever doing for herself was her weekly visit to the hairdresser for a perm.

Mum remained single for a very long time. One day, Alan Green, the husband of her then deputy head teacher, called at the house to say that his wife Gill had left him and wouldn’t be back for the Autumn term. As she knew something of what he was going through, Mum kept in touch with Alan & they started to spend more and more time together. A proper old fashioned courtship ensued, resulting in a long and happy marriage. Mum sold up and moved in with Alan (once they were married you understand, not before) in his detached bungalow on Biddulph Moor. It was a mere 5 minute walk from the village school of which Mum was now Head Teacher. Winters could be hard on the moor but in summer they had a view from their kitchen & garden looking out across the valley with Mow Cop Castle in the middle distance and on over the Cheshire plain. Most days you could also see the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank – the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world. On a clear day you could see all the way across to Ellesmere Port some 40 miles away.

Biddulph born and bred, Alan was a grafter. He’d built his own house from scratch, learning new skills where necessary or bartering his labour when he needed to bring in specialist skills. I remember that, years before they got together, Alan and a chum had installed the central heating system at Conway Road. He worked full time for a local company called Horace Barlow, building tiled fireplace surrounds. He also bred German Shepherd dogs partly for love of the breed but mainly to protect his “bank” (property). These were fierce creatures who you didn’t approach unless Alan or Mum were within eyesight.  I slipped up once. My partner Elaine and I had driven up one Sunday with Avril & Sian to take Mum out for a birthday Sunday lunch. We drew up on the drive and I approached the driveway gate, thinking the dogs were secure in their kennel. I reached through to open the gate then realised that “Gulliver” was lurking unseen behind Mum’s parked car. It was at this moment that I realised how much he actually liked me. The way he clung on to my arm with his teeth while emitting a loving snarl brought tears to my eyes. Fortunately, there was a wrought iron gate between me and the hound.  After a brief love in, Gulliver was called off and penned, Alan was mortified and I was in agony. Despite wearing a jacket & a shirt, my skin was pierced. My wrist is scarred to this day. Not wishing to upset Avril & Sian or to spoil Mum’s birthday, I said nothing. It was the longest Sunday lunch ever. And Alan & Mum often remarked on the fact we didn’t take the girls to visit more often. Mmm, I wonder why?

Alan suffered from the fact that, in his mind at least, he was very much Mum’s intellectual inferior. Hardly surprising when he’d been forced to leave school at 14 to be sent out to work and contribute to the family coffers. Mother was having none of this. She encouraged him to think differently about himself and take more of an interest in current affairs. She helped him see that his opinions were valid & that he had the right to express them. Most importantly, she persuaded him to leave his tedious manual labouring to become a supervisor for the Probation Service, working with young offenders on Community Pay Back schemes.  Always firm but fair, Alan would brook no shilly shallying but was always quick to recognise good work and a positive attitude. He went on to spend many happy years working as a highly respected probation officer in Cheshire.

One more Sunday lunchtime story. We had journeyed up to Biddulph with the girls who were around 8 and 10 years old. As was our wont, we spent the drive playing car games and singing along to musical theatre soundtracks. Our favourites being the Elaine Paige, Bernard Cribbins 1989 London production of “Anything Goes” (I once auditioned for this production. See forthcoming chapter entitled “Actors Who Stole My Chuffing Career”) and the original London cast recording of “Les Misérables”. 

On arrival, Mum asked the girls how we had passed the four hour journey time. Upon hearing they’d been singing, Mum & Alan requested a performance. Avril & Sian were eager to oblige. We were then treated to a lusty rendition from Les Misérables:

"Lovely ladies waiting for a bite

Waiting for the customers who only come at night

Lovely ladies, ready for the call

Standing up or lying down or any way at all

Bargain prices up against the wall"

At this point Mother decided she needed to check on the sprouts which had only been on for 4 hours & Alan excused himself to turn his bike around. Mum was not the most accomplished cook & I think this was also the day when, during a lull in the luncheon conversation, Avril, who had been struggling valiantly with her meat, broke the silence by asking, “Has anybody got a chainsaw?”  quickly followed by “Ow, who kicked me?”

There was one more member of Mum & Alan’s family who more than deserves a mention. Arthur, their last German Shepherd. He was the only one of Alan’s many hounds who was treated as a house pet. A beautiful animal who a stranger would be ill advised to mess with, Arthur instinctively knew friend from foe. Mum adored him. Prior to his death from prostate cancer in 2010, Alan had made arrangements for Arthur to be rehomed, fearing he would be too much of a handful for Mum. Shattered by Alan’s passing, Mum declared she couldn’t bear to be parted from Arthur, so he stayed and became Mum’ s faithful companion.  Exercise might have been a problem; he needed lots and he was a powerful beast. But the village rallied round, and Arthur soon became the most walked dog in Christendom. People were queuing to take him out. I swear there were times when he hid behind to settee when he saw his lead being taken from its hook. He was even made an honorary member of the Biddulph Moor Walking Group and every Monday would set off at their head. I will never forget the dreadful anguished call from Mum when Arthur died. She was beside herself as indeed we all were. When neighbours came round to comfort Mum and to deal with Arthur, they struggled to get in through the door because he had lain down stretched across the threshold. His last act of protection?

During Mum’s marriage to Alan, I was lucky enough to enjoy several happy get togethers with them, along with Dad and Barbara. Lush.

Sadly, although younger, both Barbara & Alan passed away before Mum & Dad. They’d always exchanged Christmas cards but in later years, I do remember Dad sending her flowers when she moved to Leek, and on at least one birthday.

I went to visit her soon after Mr. Father passed away in 2021 and she had their wedding album out. She went through all the photographs with me, pointing out who was who and what was what. How much love and affection she still had for Dad made me happy at a very sad time.

Mum had a tough life. To be honest, neither myself nor Tim were perfect sons. On first meeting she could come across as formidable and was certainly not afraid of making her views known in a forthright manner. She didn’t suffer fools and at times she didn’t find it easy to see a joke. But get below her stern exterior and she was as loving, gentle, empathetic a loyal friend as you could wish to have.

In her last years when Moorland life became too much for, she made the difficult decision to move from her beloved home with its magnificent views and into an independent living facility in Leek town centre After a covid-interrupted settling in period she made a new life and new friends. She became a regular at her local pub, The Blue Mugge where she was known as Mrs Six Chips “I’ll have the cheese and onion tart please but I only want six chips”. A family run pub, I will always be grateful to landlords Paul & Shelley and their family and staff who always kept an eye on her and knew the right level of fuss to make.  Mum hated fuss.

In her Leek days she & I would speak on the phone twice daily.  I would visit as often as I could but, in the meantime, having power of attorney, I was able to run her affairs including food shopping via the internet. Eventually it became obvious Mum needed help with personal care and she reluctantly agreed to move just across the road to Hen Cloud House Retirement Home where they were better equipped to deal with her increasing frailty. Memory loss is a terrible thing and Mum would complain that nobody ever went to visit which was sad, as she was one of Hen Cloud’s most visited residents. Whilst distance caring was a bit of a chore at times – I was still working which often involved trips away from home plus my many theatre commitments – these were precious times.  I hope I repaid her love and, in some ways, made up for the times when I wasn’t as present in her life as I ought to have been. At time of writing, it’s been a year since she slipped away but I’m sure in common with most folk, there isn’t a day passes when I don’t think to myself “I must tell Mum when I next speak to her.”  

Miriam Brenda Green. 5th February 1929 – 29th August 2023