How you remember some people

It may be I am probably being a little unkind to some of the 'Church Widows". Every now and then, they did shine valiantly for their efforts. The amount of energy some of these elderly women expended in pursuit of the various committees could have powered the national grid. And probably had left some over to export. My mother, despite her constant scrutiny as a parent of such a wild and unruly throng (compared to some of the average children’s behaviour today, I think we were really pretty good kids), did often attempt to curry favour with some of them. My mother being at heart a good woman, they at heart (and in their minds) powerful women. Certainly mother would be enrolled every fete to take care of the manufacture of the traditional toffee apples. Of course when I say our mother, it meant that all of us family members… well, the children at least were drafted into working on the mass production of several hundred bright red toffee apples in the space of a day and a half and all at the cost to our struggling family budget, no funds provided by the church. “It’s our donation”, our mother would say.

Hang on, the church were already getting half of any potential comic collection we may have started with our own meagre savings (more on that later), books, stray toys and clothes. Clothes our mother was constantly purchasing or had been given and finished passing down the line (fortunately at least, I didn’t have to have my older sisters hand-me downs). Once at the last wearer, they would be added to the church bazaar box (which probably resembled a very ‘bizarre’ box by the end of the lead up to the fete) with the other items, despite any protests. Any serious protest could lead our mother to find something else to ad to the boxes, an extra something that belonged to the protester, not instead of.

So, there we were each year, both at the church fetes and the school fairs. Donating considerable time, effort and resources from our meagre family budget, to supporting the schools we attended as children and the churches we attended as victims. The ‘Dwyer’(for Dwyer, read ‘mother’) family, always offering to ‘make the toffee apples’. The hundreds and hundreds of crunchy, red, teeth shattering, sticky, toffee apples on a stick! And it was a real production line. An incredible example, that would have stood examination by the most stringent time management examiners of any major organisation. From start to finish, and, finishing was the very best part believe me. You see there are many, many tricks to making classic toffee apples, particularly with young children involved and apart from the fact that the product must reach the end output, we became exceptionally good at it. Thanks to an Edmonds® cookbook, our mother and many pairs of hands (I won’t say enslaved workers, as we were sometimes allowed to take breaks).

(continued tomorrow)