Celebrating My Mum

This year, and from now on, Mothering Sunday will be very different for me. No choosing a card and present, sending flowers and occasionally a tin of Biscuiteers biscuits, and no driving up the M1 and A46 armed with a homemade broccoli and walnut quiche, and heart-shaped chocolate sponge cake for our Mother’s Day lunch. My mum’s death at the end of January truly is the end of an era but I feel I want to celebrate her incredibly long and eventful life with you all so, buckle up!

Mum was born in August 1926 to Marjorie Millership. I love this picture of her aged about three taking her teddy for a walk in his pushchair. She was never particularly fond of dolls much preferring cuddly toys including a very well-loved Humpty Dumpty that I knitted for her about fifty years ago which has now been claimed as a keepsake by my daughter because she remembered it from her childhood.

Mum had already started having tap dancing lessons by the age of seven, probably due to the popularity of child star, Shirley Temple. Her love of dance started then and never left her – a love she passed on to me.

This photograph of Mum with her mother and her Auntie Agnes was taken when they were on holiday in Scarborough in 1937. They all look so happy with no idea of what was heading their way just two years later. Although World War 2 was a traumatic period to live through, Mum often made reference to it in her later years, particularly the sense of duty and community. After leaving school towards the end of the war, she worked in the telegram office and was often responsible for typing out the worst of all news that a son or husband or daughter or wife had been killed in action.

One of Mum’s favourite stories to recount in that period was appearing as a dancer in pantomime at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. The star of the show was ukelele strumming George Formby, of ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ and ‘Leaning on a Lamppost’ fame. At the end of the pantomime run, Mum was offered a job touring with George Formby’s show, but her mother wouldn’t give her the permission she needed because of her age. Isn’t it funny how decisions like that can change the path of our lives. Had she gone on tour, she might not have been at the Palais de Dance in Nottingham on the night she met a handsome Royal Air Force Officer… my dad!

Mum’s love of the theatre was still very much in evidence and this photograph of her where she looks like a 1940s movie star was taken around the time that she and my dad joined the Nottingham Operatic Society.

They were married in 1949 and although there are other more posed wedding photographs, I particularly love this one of them getting into the bridal car – they both look so happy!

Mum and Dad appeared in many Nottingham Operatic Society productions together, both before and after Mum had three productions of her own, my sister in 1951, my brother in 1954 and me in 1956. The picture above of me in my mum’s arms was taken before I contracted polio in the summer of 1957. In fact, one of my earliest memories of Mum is sitting with her on the flowery carpet in our lounge at home doing the daily physiotherapy exercises which she’d learnt at the Nottingham City Hospital where I’d spent four and a half months of my early life after contracting polio. 

Most people thank their mother for giving them life, but I have even more reason to thank her. Mum took me to the doctor on our return from a family holiday where I had become ill, or ‘poorly’ as my mum would say. His words, ‘If you think it’s polio, it’s not!’ probably saved my life. It hadn’t crossed Mum’s mind that it could be polio, but once the seed was planted, she insisted on a second opinion, and the disease was confirmed.  I was immediately rushed into an isolation ward at Nottingham City Hospital. I’ve always thought about how traumatic it must have been for Mum and Dad waiting to hear the news from the hospital in an era where most people didn’t even have house phones let alone mobiles! What I’d never previously considered was the effect being wrenched from the heart of a loving family might have had on fourteen-month-old me until my physiotherapist pointed it out. Separation anxiety, as we would call it these days explains a lot about the emotional human being that I am!

Along with the daily physiotherapy at home and regular visits to the hospital, she also took me on the bus to weekly swimming sessions at the Victoria Baths in Nottingham, run by the IPF, now British Polio, and at the age of three to dancing lessons because she’d heard ballet was good for strengthening the wasted muscles. 

I have to say that there isn’t an obvious discrepancy between my two legs on this photo when I was aged around three. That was the start of my lifelong love of dancing.

I attended ballet class for four years but had a two-year break when Mum lost her own mother and needed time to recover from a major operation. She and my dad started ballroom dancing around this time and were pretty good at it as you can see from the trophy they are holding in the photo. I was asked if I would like to return to ballet or try ballroom. Ballet won hands down, but I was moved to a new dancing school as my previous teacher was very strict about the RAD rules which didn’t allow disabled people to take exams. Mum didn’t lie to my new teacher, Nora Morrison per se, she just wasn’t completely honest about my polio. I took my first RAD exam nine months later and passed with Highly Commended.

A year or so later at the age of forty-one, Mum made two huge life decisions. She learnt to drive, and she opened her own dancing school. She started with a ‘baby’ class at the Methodist Church Hall off Musters Road in West Bridgford, which was attached to the church where she and Dad were married. I was enlisted to help, even though I was only eleven and continued to help her teach throughout my senior school years. 

Mum’s dancing school grew exponentially and was the first of four that she was principal of, starting a new one in each location they moved to. I think she hoped that I would go into teaching dancing with her when I left school, but the lure of the spotlight was too great. 

I auditioned for my first summer season in 1973 and Mum was on hand to drive me to the rehearsals each day which happened to be in nearby Burton Joyce, in her very flashy Lotus Elan. She might have come to driving later in her life, but she absolutely loved it, even getting a speeding ticket in her nineties! Speeding is not something I condone of course!!!!

It was while I was away on one of my dancing jobs that Mum and Dad took the momentous decision to move from West Bridgford. I left our family home in October 1975, heading for rehearsals in Italy followed by six months on a cruise ship in the Caribbean and returned to find them gone! Maybe they were dropping a rather large hint that their youngest should find a place of her own? I tracked them down of course and went to live with them for a few months on the Isle of Skye before my next dancing job. It was a total change of lifestyle for both of my parents, keeping a croft and raising goats.  

I returned from a six-month theatre contract in Barcelona to spend Christmas with them on Skye and stayed for a few months, helping Mum with her dancing school in Portree, before heading off again. This time I decided to put down some roots of my own in London as it was much easier to get to auditions. I did miss our Scrabble games though! 

I visited Skye one final time before Mum and Dad sold their croft, to introduce them to my new boyfriend, Chris. How can that be over forty-six years ago? Mum adored Chris. He could lift her spirits when she was feeling low, and she gave as good as she got in the banter stakes.  

Once Mum and Dad had moved back to England, visiting them was easier for us and vice versa. They lived in Stixwold in Lincolnshire for a while which is where this photo was taken during a visit while I was recording The Price is Right at Central Studios in Nottingham. They then moved to their forever home in Cotgrave where my Mum continued to live independently after my dad died in 2007. 

They drove down from Cotgrave to meet their grandson, Daniel and a little over a year later babysat him while I was in hospital having Sophie.

They visited as often as they could, and these are just two of the hundreds of photos I have of them both with our two of their nine grandchildren. 

Speaking of journeys, when Chris and I bought a holiday home in Spain, Mum and Dad were keen to visit. Their first question was, ‘Do we need a passport?’ as theirs had expired. They’d honeymooned in Belgium, visited Norway, Switzerland and Austria, so the question seemed a little odd. We suggested getting passports through the Post Office and just three weeks later they were back on the phone, raring to go. Flights were booked and a couple of weeks later they were on their way – proper jetsetters at ages 78 and 84! It was early evening when they arrived at the house in Javea, so already dark but they both insisted on going out onto the balcony off the lounge to take in the view. The words, ‘This is paradise,’ are etched on my memory and I hope paradise is where they both are now, reunited forever.

Geography, working full-time and raising a family has made it difficult to see as much of Mum as I would have liked, although she came to ours every Christmas except for lockdown until Christmas 2023, pictured above with Daniel after which she decided the journey was too much for her. We tried to visit as often as we could and particularly on all the special occasions such as birthdays and Mother’s Day.  

The photo above was taken on Mum’s ninetieth birthday and the one below on her ninety-seventh birthday… she really was quite amazing! The lifetime of dancing gave her incredible posture and she maintained her brain sharpness by doing The Times crossword and writing short stories and little poems. Not only do I get my love of dancing from Mum but also my desire to write. She was so proud of my novels, having a particular fondness for the Rachel Hart series that I wrote as J G Roberts. It’s a shame that despite her urging me to get it finished, I was just a couple of months too late with the new book. 

Both Chris and I spoke to her often on the phone and she also said that watching me on QVC made her feel as though I was in the room with her. She didn’t only watch the channel, she made an appearance one Mother’s Day modelling Butler and Wilson fashion jewellery which she loved almost as much as the creator of the brand, Simon Wilson.  

Chris and I were lucky enough to spend the afternoon with Mum before she went to sleep for her final time. She was on good form even attempting the crossword although we didn’t get far with it. She asked if she could tell us a story and of course we said yes, and of course it was about dancing. Nora Morrison had introduced her to a class of girls as their new tap-dancing teacher. They were underwhelmed and Mum guessed it was because she was ‘old’. However, their opinions were soon revised after she set them a brilliant routine. My reaction to that story was that she was the same age then as I am now. It made her laugh and has given me a wonderful lasting memory of her.

Thank you, Mum, for giving me a lifelong love of dancing, for encouraging me to write my books, for being a fun and loving grandmother, great grandmother and great great grandmother. In fact, thank you for being you.

I wanted to finish my tribute to my mum, Josephine with a picture of her that I remember from my childhood. I loved her in that dress and although she was never a sun worshipper, in this picture she is The Woman on the Beach.

To all the mothers reading this, I hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day. I know my children will do everything in their power to fill the gaping hole in my heart. And if you still have your mum, treasure her… you never know when it will be your last Mother’s Day together.

Much love

Julia xx