5ft 2in Highlander with heart of a giant

MY MUM PHYLLIS

MUM was born in Conon Bridge, Ross-shire, and always spoke fondly of a wonderful childhood roaming free in the Highlands.

She and her two sisters and brother would catch brown trout in the streams and have them cooked in butter for tea.

They kept goats for milk and chickens for eggs and grew their own fruit and vegetables, which were stored for the severe winters when they could be snowed in for days.

Her father taught her how to skin a rabbit when she was still very young.

At 18, Mum joined the Royal Naval Services and became a Wren, stationed at bases north of the Border. Then she met the love of her life — my dad Joseph, a sailor. They were married in Dingwall within four months.

The plan had been to stay in Scotland, but work was scarce after Dad was demobbed, and so they moved to London’s East End, where his family lived. This was a terrible culture shock for Mum, far from that carefree Highlands life in her new home in the bombed ruins of Poplar, with her mother-in-law and a gaggle of seven other children.

She said it was a dump, but her attitude was that you just had to get on with it, so she rolled up her sleeves and did so.

That was how she lived her life. Most people would regard it as a tough one. Mum went on to have five children and money was tight. Dad got work at the docks and Mum took on earlymorning cleaning jobs, making sure she was back in time to get us ready for school.

The sad thing is that just as it was getting easier for them, as we kids started work ourselves and they were able to take the odd holiday, my dad died of a heart attack. He was only 53.

Mum went to the hospital with him, but they sent her home that night, telling her to come back in the morning. He died overnight. She never really forgave herself for that.

She was an extraordinary woman, really. Physically tiny — she was 5ft 2in in her early days, but when she died she wasn’t much more than 4ft 10 in — she was quite formidable.

If someone upset her, or her children, she was quite capable of giving them a mouthful, delivered in the Scottish accent that she never entirely lost.

She was fiercely independent, right until the end. She’d always been physically strong, but needed a knee replacement at 90, which left her in constant pain.

Would she use the wheelchair, though? No. She hated to be seen in it, hated the way people talked over her in it.

She was such a bright spark, with very definite quirks. She loved quiz programmes, but would talk all the way through a film.

She loved eating out — but it had to be in a restaurant with tablecloths, because her mother had always used tablecloths. She had a taste for red wine, but only if it was good.

‘No cheap stuff,’ she’d say, holding up a glass and saying: ‘Look, you can see through that.’

She loved travelling, especially visiting my sister’s apartment in Majorca and one of my brothers who settled in Switzerland. She said the mountain air reminded her of Scotland.

Mum was so proud of her big and close family. She ended up with 14 grandchildren and 15 greatgrandchildren, although she never met two of them.

Family life was everything to her. She loved the big family parties with 60 people in the garden and a bouncy castle. She’d even be known to get on the bouncy castle herself after a wee glass or two.

The only sadness after every new arrival in the family was that my dad wasn’t there to share it.

She used to say: ‘Your dad has missed out on so much.’ Well, Mum, we pray you are with Dad now and you can tell him all about it.

Phyllis Melvina King, nee gordon, born December 14, 1925, died august 21, 2017, aged 91.