Before I talk about mum, a few words about granny:
 
I asked Tom and Heath what springs to mind when they think of granny, and both associate her with playground swings and slides.  Tom is transported to the area up by the cricket ground at Naunton; for Heath, it’s the bottom of the communal gardens at Southwood Park in Highgate.  I don’t think granny was often present, but she was always a presence, always there; security in an insecure world.  Whether in The Cotswolds or in London, Granny’s was a refuge for a hapless single dad; a safe place where being cared for by her meant being better able to care for the boys.  I’m incredibly grateful on their behalf.
 
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While I dare say mum’s heritage was more ‘exotic’ than most, I’d guess that, as an inter-wars baby from the suburbs, her upbringing would have been pretty conventional.  Which makes some of the choices she made in life pretty remarkable.
 
For a young woman fresh out of secretarial college to head off to live abroad for 18 months strikes me as courageous.  The world was a lot bigger and less known then than it is today, and, although part of her DNA, Greece would’ve been a very foreign land.  A new city, a new language (without so much as the comfort of a familiar alphabet) and a new culture - I don’t think bottom-pinching was a particular hazard of London’s public transport system at the time - would surely have been a daunting prospect, but off mum went, conquering the language and the people, making connections and forging friendships that lasted a lifetime.
 
Back in North-West London, and having made a safe, comfortable and loving home, first in West Hampstead, then Oxhey, and then Radlett, and seen four mostly happy children navigate their early years with barely a scratch between them, mum’s obvious curiosity for the world around her led to her next unorthodox decision: to juggle being a full-time mother and housewife with the rigours of studying for a degree.  She chose European Studies, a multi-faceted course which reflected her wide-ranging interests.  Regular treks to Hatfield Polytechnic for lectures followed, with assignments often worked on long into the night, but always, to my knowledge, completed on time.
 
Having shone as a mature student, and seen her brood safely into adolescence (some more adolescent than others!), mum next embarked on a fresh venture, turning her long-standing love of the decorative arts into a vocation.  Mum was never able to resist the lure of an antiques fair or a bric-a-brac shop. I recall, perhaps unfairly, spending quite a lot of time sat in a poorly parked car outside one emporium or another while mum dashed in for a ‘quick mooch’.  Her inquisitive nature meant that mum had acquired a wealth of knowledge over the years, but to reinvent herself as an antiques trader, armed only with a book of silver hallmarks, a ceramics reference guide, and – crucially – a good eye, was another brave move.  Over the years, it was never clear whether she turned a profit - offering a discount before a prospective buyer had even asked for a price was an interesting approach - but the fact that, much to mum’s horror, the Inland Revenue at one time took an interest in her suggests she did okay!
 
It’s only in committing these thoughts to paper that I appreciate how my life-choices have mirrored mum’s in many ways: living abroad for a period, returning to education, embarking on a second career.
 
I say life-choices, but the difference between us is that, while I had to be pushed, prodded, and otherwise persuaded to make such moves, mum took these daring leaps of faith of her own free will.  For someone so seemingly ordinary, she was pretty extraordinary.