Natalie Bruckshaw

Without Prejudice My Mother,Natalie Wilsher, as was, was born a middle Sister into a poor working class family in Wakefield,in the West Ridings of Yorkshie, U.K. in the Autumn of 1923. her father, George Wisher, was a miner, who hated Winston Churchill. He hated Churchill because he fired on the striking Welsh miners, (The TonyPandy Riots of 1910-1911) George,who had worked all his life in The Lofthouse Colliery and had the blackened lungs to prove it, sat telling me all this as he smoked and spat into a hankie. The coal dust was embedded in his lungs and he had no bother coughing the grey colored sputum up. Lucy Wilsher his wife, nee Dickinson, was a tiny massive chested lady who was my darling Granny and bought me chips with vinegar whenever she saw me, uptown in Wakefield. I was a twelve year old girl then , who along with my family returned to the U.K. ( our birth place- except for my younger brother, Dave, who was a dyed in the wool Aussie) after emigrating to Australia in the fifties. We were all Aussies as far as we were concerned. Especially as us 4 kids contemplated the stark reality of lashing wind and rain, grey skies and looming and gloomy clouds of The White Cliffs of Dover. Where were we again? Australia? Papua New Guinea? Greece, Port Of Aden? North Africa ? Surfers Paradise? Adelaide, Melbourne? All the places we had stopped at on our five week journey to the U.K. All those places had been warm and sunny. Here we were facing a long and longed for ( by my parents at least ) future that us kids, being kids had had no say in. On the trip across the choppy English Channel, Dad had excitedly bought us all giant blocks of Cadburys Dairy Milk. Which promptly came back up an hour later in stringy arcs of watery vomit, which made us retch even more. I , for one, thought I had died and gone to Hell. Things got darker danker as I gazed balefully out the window of the train that was taking us to Kings Cross Station.I had pictured snow as pretty soft, white with marshmallow softness but what I was looking at was grey, patchy mounds of ice. my immediate thought was " How can people live here?" It was the early hours of the morning and cold, so cold. i wasnt dressed for a U.K. winter. still in my short leather ?? boots, Mum had bought me in Pireaus. the full leather boots turned out to be cardboard soled that disentegrated into pulp the minute I walked on my first tentaive steps from the train. Our journey had not yet come to an end, not by a long chalk. kings Cross was a roiling sea of steam and humanity. A sticky bun and a mug of sweet tea was provided to us all by a Salvation Army lady as we sat on our trunks and watched a window in an office above us as Dad negotiated free tickets on The Royal Flying Scotsman from the Station Master who was probably a Mason like my Dad. A golden handshake would get you many things in those days, the mid sixties. I remember the day, so vividly, ias it was the day of Winston Churchills funeral. it had been on the newsletter we received every day on the Ellenis. Along with the shuffle deck times, what was for morning tea, lunch, dinner menus and any other facts that seemed pertinent to the day. I longed to be back on the boat with its whiteness and heat. I wanted to be back at the neck off the Suez as we made one of the very last sojourns through it. And Pireaus, so hot, Rome the same as we received pinches to our bum, even me with my twelve year old skinny body. Jackie and Mum were black and blue but they had boobs. une were just budding. i remember the Breakfast Captain who Mum and Dad adored, tickling me on the fanny as my little brother, David and I descended down the stairs of the back staircase. I looked sideways at David, thinking he, at 8, had accidently touched me to get my attention. He was oblivious to me and I realised to my horror that the Breakfast Captain had tickled me on the fanny. Reaching his hand back and tickling me over my dress. sight useen by anyone. On my untouched, virginal fanny. " Dirty old man " I thought. I avoided him like plague after that and my parents couldnt understand why. For ours was a family of secrets. Not least our Mums mental illness, or our Dads crookedness. We were stiff upper lips kids. Nothing was stopping our progress forward and upward except for our poorness and denial of anything wrong to others. We couldnt let on what we really were going through. We were little British, Scottish Soldiers. Brave, strong, determined. " Loose lips, sank ships" Everyone knew that.