Marjorie

Sometime in the 1960s

Today will be the  the funeral of my friend Marjorie Holmes.

But Marjorie would have been the first to tell me off for dwelling on those few hours at Southern Cemetery at the expense of a few good stories about her life and times.

And I want to start with this picture which is a constant reminder to all of us who were born in the first half of the last century that we were once young and got up to some pretty silly things.

This is Marjorie in the back garden of her house in the 1960s which means that she was possibly in her in early 40s when the picture was taken.

By then she had experienced a world war, served in the RAF and sat in a damp and dark cellar in the family home in Stockton Road during air raids and gone through the post war period and the beginning of the “swinging 60s.”

I suppose I really got to know her back in the late 1990s and began regularly visiting here a decade after that when we discovered our mutual fascination for local history.

That said I never let on that on more than one occasion I had knocked her door canvassing for the Labour party in the 1980s and been given short shrift.  If she remembered the event she was too gracious to bring it up in our long conversations that rambled over everything from the Manchester Man to Mr Clarke the blacksmith on Beech Road.

Marjorie in a Dakato top left

She was a wealth of stories about Chorlton when according to her it was still Chorlton.
I never quite understood what she meant but hers had been a childhood when the last vestiges of the old rural Chorlton were just passing away.

She had played on the meadows, when it was still farmland, remembered going to the local farm for milk and was firmly of the opinion that “them in New Chorlton were a snooty lot who were all fancy cakes and silk knickers.”

Of course I could never really be sure that underneath her bold sweeping statements there was not more than a little mischief.

And even when misfortune fell she could brush it off.

Her cousin, Michael remembered that

“the last time my wife and I visited Marjorie was about 4 years ago. When we left by the front door to return home Marjorie came out to the front gate to wave goodbye (in her slippers). 

However a gust of wind came through the house and slammed the door shut. 

Marjorie was without her door keys and her neighbours who had a spare set were not at home. Then we figured that the rear of her house must have been open to allow the wind through so we went round the back only to find the garden gate at the rear locked. 

So my wife who was able to get her foot into a broken brick of the wall managed to get over it falling on the dustbin at the other side as she did so. 

She picked herself up and entered the house to open the front door for Marjorie. 
We then laughed about the event and said our goodbyes once again. 

To our horror Marjorie came out of the house to wave us off at the front gate and the door closed again but fortunately not completely shut so she was saved. 

We insisted that she went back into the house rather than wave us off so that we would be sure that she was safely inside.”

The  funeral will be at the Crematorium in Southern Cemetery on Monday March 10 at 11.20

Pictures; from the collection of Michael Armstrong and Marjorie Holmes

Marjorie Holmes, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Marjorie%20Holmes