Linda’s Eulogy
My big sister Linda was born in 1952, bringing joy and new life to the family 6 months after a tragic bereavement. At the time, Mum & Dad were still living in a caravan on the Palace Estate near Hampton Court. During her young years the family moved to a flat in Teddington, then to Shrewsbury Close in sunny Surbiton which became the family home for many years.
Linda and Dad made a mischievous duo, both possessing an impish sense of humour and a wicked smile. On one occasion they decided to paint the garage doors with a mix of all the left over paint in the garage – the result was a revolting khaki colour – Mum was less than impressed!
We spent many Sundays down at Shoreham-by-Sea where Mum & Dad belonged to the Lighthouse sailing club. This was fine when we were smaller but as we grew older getting up at about 6 a.m to go to the coast for the day was probably not how Linda wanted to spend her free time.
As Linda moved into secondary school at the Holy Cross Convent, she became increasingly involved in sport, representing the school in netball and trampolining, also enjoying tennis, ice-skating and badminton. She would willingly get up early to go to school for netball practice, although she would pause just round the corner from home to roll her skirt over the waistband several times to shorten it to her satisfaction (possibly to impress the boys on the bus)– I was never sure whether Mum knew about this, but I suspect she did. Linda was not particularly academic and struggled with maths, I can remember Mum patiently sitting with her at the table trying to explain how to break down a problem in order to work out the answer but she just couldn’t get it. So it was ironic that when she got a Saturday job in Bentalls it was in the accounts dept!
At one point, Linda thought she would experiment with smoking, so for a number of months, whenever we went anywhere on the bus, we had to sit upstairs so that Linda could light up. She developed a nasty chesty cough and eventually went to the doctor who told her in no uncertain terms to give up the cigarettes – she took his advice.
Leaving school at 17 with sufficient CSEs and Secretarial qualifications to get a job, she was employed by the Police Federation as a compositor in their print room – a pre computer version of desk top publishing, done with a lightbox and literally cutting and pasting to create documents. She went to a number of the annual Federation conferences where many of the delegates were handsome young bobbies – enough to turn the head of any impressionable young girl, I don’t know for sure whether any short-lived romances were kindled, but I suspect it’s quite possible.
However, it turned out that a certain young man who served on the altar at church caught her eye and Linda set out to get herself noticed. She regularly stood at the back of the church and on one occasion decided to wear a bright green hat, which would have been hard to miss, and soon afterwards starting going out with Leslie – it wasn’t until later on that she discovered that he hated hats!! This fact did not impede their romance, which, in time, led to an engagement and then marriage in 1975.
They started married life in Lavender Road, West Ewell and in time, Graham was born and they moved to a bigger house.
Always very sociable, Linda was surrounded by groups of friends from school, work, the ante-natal group and neighbours old and new, a theme that will, I’m sure, continue through Graham’s recollections of their family life.