Dear LPG,

In this Black History month, I would like to say a bit about the history of a very special white lady from my point of view…

Remembering my third Nan

My parents came to England in the early 1950’s, met, got married not long after and then there was me.  I was soon joined by a sibling or three and life was interesting in many ways.   I am sure that there are many West Indians who are now pensioners, and who will tell a similar story although theirs is likely to start with an extra chapter about spending the first few years of their life in the sun being looked after by an aunt, Grandmother or some other trusted relative while their parents accepted the invitation, and made the exodus, to what was then our commonwealth motherland.

The war was not long over when my parents made their separate ways to England, and making the journey was all about better education and work in those days, so my Mum and Dad found us a nanny.  

She was a very special lady who had had eight children of her own, and she was there for us throughout our version of growing up.  She lived down the road and her childminding duties often became extended to the point where we spent much of the week with her and weekends at home because my parents worked quite long hours; so Nanny’s house became our second home. 

I was the first ever black five-year-old to walk through the gates of Stillness Primary School in Honor Oak Park, and people often say that being a black child in a predominately white world must have been hard but, while there were obvious problems, I don’t think that my childhood was any harder than anyone else’s.  That had to be partly due to the protective way in which our Nan was always there for us.  There were many times when she would be ‘up the school’ fighting our corner at a time when my brother and I represented two thirds of the black children that went there.

She looked nothing like her, never wore a hairnet, and had a strong cockney accent but reminded us all of Mrs Sharples from those early Coronation street days inasmuch as she appeared to be a very stern and hard person but, those who knew her could see her softer inner self. 

She was in her fifties and had many stories to tell about what things were like during the war.  She could describe in frightening detail, her memories of being caught, with one of her young daughters, on top of One Tree Hill during an air raid.  She used to tell that the nearest air raid shelter was nowhere to be seen that day while, the two of them crouched low and listened to the devastation happening all around them, only to get up at the end to see a very different hill top view of the neighbourhood.

Over the years, through her marriage’s ups and downs, my mother will tell that she was the ‘go to’ mum that she went to for advice.  She taught my mother and me to knit, in my case, through shear perseverance.  She eventually moved to live with one of her daughters in darkest Kent by the time I got married.  I remember the twice yearly caravan of cars that would transport my parents, myself and each of my brothers and their families to visit her in her purpose built, self-contained garden annex.  I would always be having a problem with something I was trying to knit for one of my children and when I showed her, she would say, ‘Give it here… leave it with me, I’ll do it’. 

Some will say that she has no reason to feature as a part of black history but I beg to differ…

MB, Lewisham.