Snapshot: My 50s father's priceless gift
The photograph is of my christening, in 1953. That's me with my mum and dad, Ruth and Norman Brearey, and my brother Brian.
Nearly eight years later, in April 1961, Dad and I are standing in the backyard of our house in County Durham, looking up at the night sky. Yuri Gagarin is up there somewhere; the first man in space. Dad has brought me outside to look and to wonder at how incredible it is. We laugh as we think maybe Gagarin is looking down at us. "You know," Dad says, "you could be the first woman astronaut if you wanted to be and you worked hard enough at school."
Another time, I ask Dad how I can get a cardboard model aeroplane to fly under its own steam. I was thinking that lollipop sticks and elastic bands might work if I could get them to twist round and then twist back on themselves. Dad said it sounded like I might be on to something, perhaps I could be an inventor and discover the secret of perpetual motion.
These conversations went on throughout my childhood and teenage years. They got more realistic as I got older, but what never wavered was the message that I should do whatever I wanted to do and he would support it. It was taken for granted that I would leave home and have a career. A two-day school trip to Stratford-upon-Avon when I was 13 was described as my "first trial fliggie [flight]".
For a father to be like this with a daughter born in the early 1950s seems more amazing the older I get. Dad came from a mining family in west Durham. Like his father, grandfather and older brothers he became a miner when he left school, but he escaped (his words) a couple of years later for a job at the Co-op, where he worked all his life except for joining the Royal Navy during the war.
His mother never learned to read or write. His sisters went into domestic service from leaving school at 14 until they married.
Dad himself was always the family breadwinner. Mum had worked in shops between leaving school and having a family and returned to shop work when I was a teenager. The women in Dad's life were clever, strong and capable but they didn't leave home and have careers.
Of course, he wasn't the only dad to do what he did. Some of my school and university friends had fathers from similar backgrounds who championed their daughters' independence with just the same enthusiasm. And there must have been thousands more nationally, cheering on their daughters to take advantage of the chances their mothers, sisters and wives had never had.
What I admire is not just the decision to grasp those chances for his child but then having the imagination to know how to bring up his daughter in a completely different way – to fire her imagination with the idea that life could be very different from the lives lived by the women around her. How did they know how to do that?
Dad died 25 years ago, long before I thought to ask him. Knowing Dad, he would just have said it was easy, and came naturally. Still, I am ever grateful for my amazing 1950s father.
He was the best.
Vera Brearey
Playlist How James got me to gran's bedside
Vervaceous by James
"Drifting through the atmosphere / floating through this land / sifting through one thousand years / of sand, all sand"
The phone call came as we were settling down to washing up, telly, homework – the usual family pastimes of a Saturday evening. Dad told me that my grandmother was close to the end (not unexpected) and he wanted me to come and see her before she died. I said I'd set off first thing in the morning, but he insisted that might be too late – could I leave straight away?
So I hopped into the car, with my 10 year old beside me (my husband was uncertain about this, but I was glad that my son had offered to come along and it would be a chance for him to see his relatives dealing with a situation most of us will face at some point). We set off on the 90-mile journey to Nottingham, wondering if we'd be in time to say goodbye.
Though I'd made the journey plenty of times before, I'd usually been the passenger and armed with a map; this time I managed to get us lost.
We roamed the Nottingham suburbs playing CDs, and found we couldn't stop listening to the album Millionaires by James, which seemed to fit the mood perfectly. We must have listened to it about three times as we drove along the seemingly endless dual carriageways and ring roads, seeing the same landmarks go by in that orange-tinted darkness. Almost every song seemed apt in the circumstances but the eerie, mesmerising track Vervaceous is the one that takes me back to that strange night of circling Nottingham on the empty night roads.
Finally, we found our way, and made it to sit by my grandmother's bedside with the rest of the family, talking to her as she faded, surrounding her with love. We were tearful but ultimately happy to have said goodbye to a woman who'd lived a very long and eventful life and was ready to move on.
As it turned out, my grandmother lived another week, but I am very glad to have made the long and musical journey to see her that last time. KC
We love to eat: Mum's frugal Boston beans
Ingredients
400g potatoes, parboiled
1 medium onion, sliced and softened
A few rashers of bacon, chopped
400g tin of baked beans
Mixed herbs, salt and pepper, to taste
Fry the onions to soften, add the chopped bacon and fry with them. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for five minutes. Served up, it should look like my photograph, above.
In the 60s, towards the end of each month, my mother would announce that we were "on frugals" – cue a delicious selection of cheap and cheerful meals, cobbled together with whatever was in the larder. One such frugal treat was Boston beans, quick and easy, but very tasty, especially with a splash of brown sauce and bread and butter to mop up the juices.
We lived comfortably in a brand new house set in woodland, down an unmade road. The nearest village had everything we needed: a bank, a butcher, baker, chemist, newsagent, greengrocer and a small, newly established supermarket, with shelves stacked high with convenience groceries and cleaning products.
This was a far cry from the way we lived in post-independence Ghana, where my father had been seconded to work in the power industry. There we had staff, including a cook and gardener. In England, my mother struggled to settle back into domestic life.
Until we could be integrated back into the British state education system, my brother continued at boarding school and I was sent to a convent. There were school fees to pay and, with a new house too, money was tight. But having grown up during the second world war, my mother could make a little go a long way.
Our modern house had an early version of a fitted kitchen and it was here that I learned to cook, to the accompaniment of the Home Service on the wireless. I took on board the concept of frugals for when times are hard and comfort food is needed, searching to the back of the food shelves for inspiration. So Boston beans, a family favourite from the 60s, continued into my cooking repertoire as a student in the 70s, but lapsed due to one of my own children having a strong aversion to baked beans. Now that he has left home, Boston beans has made a welcome return to the table. Let's face it, times are hard again and everyone is watching their pennies.
Fiona Neame
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