Topic: Who is your greatest hero
This started me thinking of the women in my family and so I’d like to nominate four women as heroes:
Ninny – my great grandmother had a horrible life living in a two up and two down house, which backed onto the railway shunting area so there was always the taste of smoke from trains.
Her husband was nasty. When a bad mood he would throw his food against the wall. He would tap his spoon against the cup and expect her to drop everything and give him another cup of tea.
She also brought up my father. My grandfather, who was also an unpleasant character, ordered my grand mother to dump him or her her mother or he’d leave her. It was Ninny who helped my father more than anybody else.
She was also always cheerful and worked very hard washing clothes in an old boiler and drying them with a mechanical mangle. She supported her neighbours and always have a good word to say to children.
Aunt Pat: Another hero is my wife’s aunt Pat, who between the wars was a teacher in the poorest part of the East End of London. She used to teach classes of over 60 and used to help families who will often living 10 or more to a two-bedroom house. She remembered the time of the cable Street riots where fascists beat up men, women and children. Her later life but devoted to running adult education courses.
Caroline: My last hero is my older daughter, Caroline, who has a handicapped child of 14, who has a mental age of just over one year. He cannot talk, has difficulty walking and has an attention span of less than one minute.
Despite this she has gained a university degree, helped start a magazine, now works as a freelance editor and is a life coach. I do not know where she gets the energy to keep going. She manages to keep on even when her son almost died over the Christmas period.
My mother: it’s hard for me to comprehend my mother’s war. She was on an aircraft traffic controller on a bomber station. She had the job of controlling the flights going out and the more harrowing task of helping planes, often damaged and with injured and dying crew, get back safely.
She has seen enemy aircraft machine gun a park. She, herself, narrowly escaped death when a bomb landed very close to the cinema she was attending.
The aerodrome she was stationed at was often bombed and machine-gunned. She tells me of a time she went back to the barracks where she had to pass a number of unexploded bombs.
The worst job was waiting up through the night as the bombers returned. She would learn that people she knew had been killed or shot down. She had to wait until it was too late for a plane to return as its fuel would have run out. So she would go back to her barracks and have to break the news to other women that their boyfriend was dead or missing.
Fictional heroes
In fiction I like the historical heroes Sharpe and Hornblower, both fought in the war against Napoleon.
Villains
For villains I tend to despise politicians who seem to be in the business only all themselves. There seems to be more of them about these days.