Mum was nanny to Mrs T’s twins — and just as tough as the Iron Lady!
a divisive figure, but she and Mum were very similar types — driven and blessed with endless energy — and they worked very well together, though they were rather competitive! Mrs T decided to learn to knit after watching Mum make little jackets for the twins.
She could be an exacting boss, though. One of Mum’s favourite stories was about the time she and Denis wallpapered the nursery. When they had finished, they realised they had hung one of the strips upside down, so all the little animals were standing on their heads. They fell about laughing — but when Mrs T came in, she was not amused. She thought it was a waste of time and effort.
When Mrs T engaged the services of a handsome young landscape gardener called Keith, she was, unknowingly, playing Cupid in getting my parents together.
There is a lovely story about how the romance started when Keith turned up at work with sandwiches his mother had made, filled with jam and beetroot.
Carol and Mark found it hilarious and Mum came to see what all the fuss was about. It ended with Mrs T making my dad a cheese sandwich in the kitchen.
Within a few months, Keith had stolen Mum away from the Thatchers with a single red rose and a proposal of marriage.
Mum and Dad moved to Suffolk in 1959, eventually setting up a market garden business, growing lettuce and tomatoes. They would be up at dawn, travelling to Covent Garden market with their produce.
All that childcare experience came in handy when Gillian, Sara and I arrived in the early Sixties. She was simply the best mother. I always say that a mother is the heart of a family and a father is the backbone. We were blessed with both.
In the latter stages of their working lives my parents grew shrubs for garden centres, and Mum was still working at 68.
She applied her trademark high-energy, no-nonsense approach to every aspect of life, even her illness. She was not afraid when ovarian cancer was diagnosed, just seriously fed up that something had got in the way of her ambition to live to be 100.
‘Clare, you have to just fight these things,’ she told me. But, as she was doing so, she suffered a brain haemorrhage, which was how we lost her.
Mum was a human dynamo, a woman who won’t be recorded in the history books, but will never be forgotten by those who knew her. She lived her whole life with great style, energy and love. Barbara Jean Baynes, born January 5, 1929; died September 13, 2016, aged 87.