Homage to those people I knew as mum and dad – Viv Burdon
'Have you seen your Dad's paper cariad?'
I loved it when Mum cast that warm Welsh word over us.
My lovely Mum, Eve.
Evelyn Augusta Margaret Meredith, child of the towering Tanat Valley, of slate quarries and remote hill farms and the smell of coal fires. Born into a paradise lined with fourteen brothers and sisters and edged with mining disasters.
Eve a child, reared slowly. Small distractions, stealing plums and hiding them in your knickers, squealing in the cold cwm on the bracken covered peaks. A world of village schools; village dances; village boys and world crushing mountains.
Eve, a young woman, arrived, after a flight taking her from chapel, through companion maid to steel-worker's wife, via a 'Kiss me quick' hat in Blackpool. My mum, a naughty girl!
My mischievous Mum, creator of the best picnics ever, and provider of superb days out and presents. Tutored by gentry, always neat, newly pressed and smelling of Camay. A believer that there was always something better and forever slightly disappointed.
Eve. A young wife with champagne taste and beer wages. Well not quite beer wages. Not yet. Her husband worked shifts at the mighty Davey Loewy , the place to work. A very good living . . . pre 1990s, pre Thatcher . . . pre redundancies.
Her husband. That's Joe, my wonderful Dad.
Joseph Henry Hitchen, dragged to this point from a different start, one of homemade swings from lamp posts and 'kick can' in the sprawling streets of interwar council estates. All dirty knees and snotty nose. From a world away, where you hid in Anderson shelters and dipped rhubarb sticks from the veg patch into sugar bowls. A world where milk bottles sat on newspaper tablecloths. A time when secondary schools cared and there were jobs . . .
Joe, a husband, bred from a city covered in great swathes of steel mills and manufacturing, and nurtured in League football, Hastilar Road Fish Ponds, and his beloved peak district. A city where 'on Sunday you're a free man'!
Joe, my kind hearted, uncomplicated Dad, his donkey jacket smelling of fire and brimstone, white hot steel splinter scars covering his forearms from the drop stamp. And Joe the man, scrubbed up right nice, down to Eve, on his way to evening work at the youth club. A man who couldn't believe his luck . . . Evelyn, two little girls, a good job, and Sheffield United. My Dad, not a responsibility in the world once the pay packet was handed over.
Mum calls again . . . 'Viv, Dad wants last night's Star come on.' I know he wants last night's paper because it's the one with 'Spot the ball' in. Joe knows his football, he could win a car. Eve would love that.
So, here we are, Eve, Joe, and their two girls. Husband, wife, daughters and sisters gathered in the front room. We are squinting at a grainy black and white image. The action frozen and ball erased for our entertainment and torment. Joe will put his cross on first, to be the one responsible for winning that car. For Eve. His cross, the one he is certain will predict the exact position of the ball. The exact position he has deduced from where the trajectories of the header, volley, and the sight line of the footballers eyes, will cross. Eve, feigning indifference, encouraging us kids to have a go. Yes we can afford five more crosses. Five more chances for dreams to come true, differences made to lives lived.
So there they are, Eve and Joe, two people in an unpredictable union in a south Yorkshire front room. The trajectories of two lives and two dreams crossing invisibly on my own faded photograph of mum and dad.