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Ruby Pearson looks back on her life |
My name is Ruby Pearson. I live at Faithful House now
I was born in Gloucestershire. A few years ago I took a photograph of the house where I was born.
My grand father was a wheelwright and so was my uncle but my father worked with farm machinery. My mother was considered to be very beautiful
My Parent's wedding
I remember I had a happy childhood. My mother was very kind and gentle and used to spoil me.
Me, as a baby
She spent a lot of money on my piano lessons. Unfortunately I hated music.
I was 14 when I left school. I wanted to go to the technical college because I was interested in maths but it was too far away and we couldn’t afford the train fare so I went into an office job.
When I was 21 I met my future husband. He was only 18 and had just started college when I met him. We had to save up to get married because we didn’t have things on hire purchase in those days .
When WW2 came my fiancé joined the air force. He was a staff sergeant. He could not be commissioned because he did not fly. We married in 1940 when I was 28.
I wore that hat to make me look taller
I dreaded my husband being sent overseas. Fortunately he stayed in England throughout the war so I was very lucky. He had to move up North so I took a temporary job in the Northern Universities. In Manchester I worked as a firewatcher in the evenings.
After the war I worked at UCCA (University Clearing College Admissions) I loved doing accounts that is why I was so interested to come to this computer course.
After the war my husband went back to teaching in the same school as he had been in before the war.
We bought a plot of land for £100 but at first we could not get a building licence so we lived in a small cottage.
Soon after the war we adopted a seven month old baby daughter, Angela. Our daughter was a very good baby. She thrived on cod liver oil and orange juice. I didn’t go back to work until Angela was grown up.
When we did build our own house it was lovely. Everything was craftsman built. The house had half-an-acre of garden.
Here I am with little Angela and the daughter of a friend outside our brand new house.
My husband, Jack, (His full name was Thomas John Barnett Pearson. Barnett was his mother's maiden name) loved gardening. We had trees, shrubs and lots of roses. We had a kitchen garden. We grew nearly all our own vegetables, soft fruit and fruit trees. Our favourite vegetable was runner beans. We used to freeze a lot.
When she grew up our daughter married a very nice man.
Unfortunately he died when he was only 50. He had cancer. He was a smoker.
My husband worked at the same school until he retired.
After he retired in 1957 we moved to Leckhampton, into a small house with a very large garden. One of my favourite roses there was Aloha which was a pillar rose. It was pale pink with a light perfume. We had hundreds of roses.
transcribed by Margaret Penfold and Lucinda Pearce-Higgins and edited by Margaret Penfold
© October 2000 Ruby Pearson. Part of the Silver Surfers' Project by trAce Online Writing Centre for the 2000 Cheltenham Festival of Literature