Happy families!
Yours writer Marion Clarke, like our readers, found that siblings can be a mixed blessing
As you can see from the picture, my brothers were a lot younger than me. I was a hands-on big sister, helping with everything from changing nappies to taking them for walks in a double pushchair (they weren’t called buggies back then). The novelty wore off when I had a boyfriend and we were expected to take them with us on dates. My mother probably thought this was a shrewd move – there’s no chance of smooching in the back row of the cinema when you have two small boys in tow!
Sally Ketley also had two much younger siblings – Joanie who was born when Sally was nine and Sandra who arrived five years later: “When my first boyfriend came on the scene, they wanted to go everywhere with us, whether it was walking the dog or dancing.
“Privacy was not possible in our house. My boyfriend and I were allowed to sit in the ‘parlour’ to play records with the door ajar. Suddenly the door would be flung open and Sandra would be standing there, dressed or undressed, saying ‘look at me, look at me’! Fortunately, my boyfriend (later my husband) loved them as his own sisters.”
It’s the rough and tumble of life with siblings that Peggy Brain remembers: “When I was about five and my sister Betty was five years older, we were playing in the churchyard when we suddenly spotted the vicar. Panic set in – Betty and my cousin Robert picked me up and shoved me over the wall into a big patch of nettles.
“A few months later, I got my own back. Betty was riding her bike when I found a dead mouse and threw it at her. She fell off her bike and did I laugh! Seventy years on, we are the best of friends.”
Mary Tigwell’s brother still reminds her about the time she got him into trouble: “Being five years older than me he was given the task of taking me to Sunday School. One day, he decided we would go for a bus ride instead, using the money we had been given for the collection. I was sworn to secrecy, but a few days later I said to my mother how much I liked the new ticket machines. Of course she wanted to know how I knew about them so the cat was out of the bag!”
An only child, Wendy Chappell was shocked when she went to play with her friend, Jackie: “Jackie’s brother Peter pushed her into the wardrobe and leaned heavily against the door. Her screams echoed round the house until
‘My sister was riding her bike when I found a dead mouse and threw it at her...’
he suddenly moved away and went back to his bedroom. Jackie shot out like a cannon ball and I asked anxiously if she was alright. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
“I went home and told my mother about it, expecting her to exclaim in horror, but she only laughed. ‘Brothers do things like that,’ she said. I couldn’t believe my ears and muttered that if brothers did things like that, I was jolly glad I didn’t have one.”