Day a plane spied my WAAF mum sunbathing starkers
SHE was christened Margaret Winifred Jepson, but became ‘Peggy’ when, aged six, she was sent to boarding school.
As there were two Margarets in her class, she was told she would be Peggy from then on.
It suited her. Mum had mischief in her and was expelled from school after painting the walls with toothpaste!
But she was kind, too, with a lifelong passion for the underdog and for animals.
Mum had so many wonderful stories. Like the time she volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force ( the WAAF) and was subjected to a brutal medical where a young doctor couldn’t contain his amazement at her broad shoulders and muscles, the legacy of a childhood spent outdoors and her time as a land girl.
‘Have you seen this?’ she recalled him bellowing to his peers.
Or the time when, stationed in Northumberland, she and a friend were caught sunbathing on top of the control tower in what she called ‘the harry starkers’ by a passing plane.
Her time in the WAAF left her with a great fondness for driving — which, along with a passion for sailing, she shared with my father Tom.
They met in 1949 when she went to the bank where he worked to ask for a loan for her first car. Not only did she get the loan but a request for a date, too.
As was the way then, they spent five years in celibate courtship before their wedding in 1956. My sister Sally and I came along soon after. My parents spent their first 25 years of married life sailing and competing in races at national level in their 14ft dinghy.
Dad’s love of the water was matched by Mum’s love of the land, and in her 50s they moved to the smallholding she’d always dreamed of in the Mendip Hills. It had space for horses, dogs and a goat called Amethyst.
When, in 1986, my parents emigrated to the warmer climes of the Algarve, all the livestock went, too.
Their Portuguese adventure started with a two-week holiday, but the way my Mum told it, she felt like she’d come home the moment she stepped off the plane and smelled the eucalyptus in the air.
Within six months they’d sold up, spending their first two years in Portugal in a two-berth caravan while they renovated an old farmhouse. Of course, it was typical of Mum that she renovated the stables first. She was so happy there, with Dad at her side until his death in December 2012. There will never be another like her.
Peggy Brown, born July 24, 1923, died october 14, 2017, aged 94.