Extraordinary
MY MOTHER never knew her father, a World War I soldier with the Royal Artillery — she was born almost eight months after he died of pneumonia. He had come home to Bury on leave in October 1918 and was due to return to the Front on November 5, but reported sick. The doctor told him: ‘Go back to France, lad, and work it off!’ Had he been given a week’s sick leave, he would never have gone back, because the Armistice was signed six days later. Mum had a poor, neglected childhood. Her mother remarried and, when Mum was 18, her sister, Pat, was born. Despite the age gap, they were close. Mum started work at 14 in a babywear shop, working 12-hour days, six days a week, for five shillings a week. She had a succession of factory jobs until she met my dad, Stanley Jepson, just before World War II — they loved ballroom dancing. Dad was called up and they were married on a 24-hour pass in December 1940. Janet was born in 1943, but Dad didn’t see her
until he came home in 1946. All Janet had seen of him was a photo, and when she was taken to meet him off the train, she ran straight past him, shouting: ‘Daddy.’ My family was living in a damp, one-up-one-down terrace cottage when I was born in 1948. The following year, we were offered a council house with two bedrooms and a bathroom and Mum thought she’d gone to heaven. She was a hard worker and determined to give her daughters a better childhood than the one she’d had. She worked in Bury Market Hall and then in a chemist’s. Our family was one of the first in the street to buy a TV, car and go on holiday. Dad died in 1985, aged 68, and, two years later, Mum started dancing again. She met Norman on the dancefloor, they married and spent 18 years together, dancing and holidaying abroad, until she was widowed again in 2005. She moved to Cheltenham to live with me — which she enjoyed once she got over the fact everything was more expensive than Bury market — and loved spending time with her three grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren. Mum had a good sense of humour. Her favourite joke was: ‘Someone asked what I would do if I found a man in my bedroom. I told them I would give him 24 hours to leave!’