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When he was just eight years old, London-born Brian Minchin lost one of his parents. (The previous instalment of his memoirs can be viewed under Brixton in the London section of this website.)
'In 1920 my Mother unfortunately died. This was an absolutely shattering blow to me and even more so to my Father who never completely recovered from it. He was always, as he had been earlier in his life, making jokes, and he well concealed his broken heart and got on with his work. He did all sorts of jollifications being a humorous and a particularly funny man.
Father remained a widower for 18 and a half years until he met his second wife, through a great friend of his, who was an eminent musician, and their shared interest in music brought them together.
When his original friend died this second wife whom we had only just met had the same sort of upset that there had been at my Mother's death, and this brought them together. This second marriage, which lasted seven years until his death, was infinitely lower key than his marriage to my Mother, although they were very happy and she was a very good wife to him and she got on very well with my sister and myself. She only died a couple of years ago.
Anyway, another sad thing happened to the family. I had a lot of maternal uncles, who were all older than my Mother. My Uncle Percy had a very nice Northern Irish wife called Maggie and she died almost at the same time as my Mother, leaving three children.
My aunt and uncle who were not husband and wife but brother and sister, with whom I had been at Woking during the Great War, decided that she would try and be a Mother to us five children. She was very devoted and well meaning but she wasn't altogether successful as she was very much the 'old maid', which was the wrong style altogether. She always did her best and was devoted to all of us.
They acquired a house which happened to become vacant next door to her own at 62 Christchurch Road. We moved into 64, this was in Streatham Hill; it's just on the border between Lambeth and Wandsworth, about a quarter of an hour's walk from our previous home at Claverdale Road, Brixton.
In fact, whilst we were still in Claverdale Road, we had a housekeeper who managed both for my father. The interesting point is that before we moved we had a cat called Peter and this was a remarkable cat, he would follow my father round like a dog, in fact my father quite often, when the kids had gone to bed, we were quite safe in the charge of the housekeeper. He would go round to my uncle and aunt who were about a quarter of an hours walk away, maybe to have an evening meal and this cat would follow him all the way there and all the way back. He didn't go by just calling, he just did it by instinct and never got lost. He always turned up. In the end when we moved to Christchurch Road there was a place opposite which kept pigeons and I fear that this cat would sometimes raid their pigeons and sadly they put down poison to stop this and our cat got this and came back to our house and dropped dead in the front garden -- a rather sad end.
The further reminiscences of Brian Minchin can be found under Dulwich in the London section of this website.
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