Snapshot: My mum, Shirley, and our boxer, Maxy
This is a photo of my mother, Shirley Arron, with our pet boxer, Maxy. It was taken in 1959, when she and my father were newly married. Mum would have been 24. Maxy had moved with my father when they married. He went back to my father’s parents during the day while my parents worked. Dad says Maxy adored my mother and followed her every word. He is sitting on a rocking chair.
My father, Mike, took the photo. He was establishing himself as a freelance press photographer in Manchester at the time, and he sent this photograph to the Manchester Evening News. It was the first photograph he had printed in the paper, and after this the picture editor rang him with commissions, so it helped his career to get going.
My mother died recently, and Dad chose this photograph to go on her order of service at her funeral. Our family are all familiar with it and have always loved it and it is now a lovely moment of our family history. Friends at Mum’s funeral who had not seen the photo before were fascinated by it, and we have all fallen in love with it all over again.
Maxy died about five years later and most of the shots of him in his last years are of him being used as a garage by my brother, with Dinky and Corgi cars lined up along his back and around his body lying on the floor.
Mum told me she once walked home with Maxy and had left my brother in his pram outside a shop.
Mum was 81 when she died this year, and we have many wonderful photos of her long, happy life, but this one holds a special place.
Clare Arron
Playlist: Rock’n’roll rebel arrives late to church
Do Anything You Wanna Do by Eddie and the Hot Rods
“I’m gonna break out of the city / Leave the people here behind / Searching for adventure / It’s the kind of life to find”
I wouldn’t risk life and limb for many songs – but this one was different. This song exploded in my brain and suggested a different future.
When Eddie and the Hot Rods hit the charts, I was living a sheltered life in an Essex village. On Sunday evenings, my family would head for Evensong at the parish church. By the summer of 1975, I had been accepted into the church choir, and took choir practice and the Sunday services very seriously.
In the heady days of summer 1977, when I had just turned 13, things started to change. It’s hard to say what the main catalyst was, but one of them was that I spent a few weeks away from home that summer. My best friend had hospitable Danish grandparents, so – for the first time – I experienced a bit of freedom.
I was ripe for revolution when Do Anything You Wanna Do hit the charts. I became obsessed by it, and listened desperately to Radio 1 whenever I could in the hope of hearing it. My best hope of hearing it was the chart countdown on Radio 1 on Sunday evenings. At that point, I still didn’t have any means to record music, so I just had to pray that my favourite songs would remain low enough in the charts for me to hear them before setting off for church. But then one week, in August 1977, Do Anything You Wanna Do climbed the chart beyond my reach. And I made a decision I remember to this day: I would follow the devices and desires of my own heart. I would listen to the song, then set off for church at breakneck speed. And if I was late, I was late. But I could surely make it, if I cycled at breakneck speed … the inevitable happened. My handlebar clipped the school wall, and I went flying out into the main road.
I survived. There was a gap in the traffic, and I scrambled to safety. But I was late for church and, by the time I arrived, the choir had already sung the first hymn. Fortunately, I had enough bruises and scrapes to attract sympathy from the warden. As the congregation knelt to recite the words of the general confession, I confess I was singing along with Eddie inside my head.
Frances Nantongwe
We love to eat: Grandma’s green and orange soup
Ingredients
Green soup:
Half a stick of celery
1 courgette
1 leek
1 onion
Chop all the above into tiny chunks and simmer for 45 minutes in enough chicken or vegetable stock to cover the vegetables. When cooked, check the seasoning and liquidise.
Orange soup:
1 cup of red lentils
3 carrots
1 small swede
1 large onion
Cover the lentils with water and bring to the boil then skim off any of the rising scum. Chop the carrots, swede and onion finely and add to the lentils with enough chicken stock to cover the vegetables. Simmer for approximately 45 minutes. When cooked, check the seasoning and liquidise.
My grandchildren love having homemade soup for lunch with lovely, chunky bread for dipping. One likes Grandma’s green soup and one likes Grandma’s orange soup. They eat it without questioning what vegetables have gone into it. My son says I should just make one soup, and they should eat whichever one I make, but making two soups, one for each, is just the kind of thing grandmas do isn’t it?
My third and youngest grandchild, aged two, eats whichever soup she is given. I’m sure she’ll soon realise that she has a choice!
Kay Smith
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