My brother, Jack Unwin

I recounted my own early years in Patricroft in the suburbs of Manchester and my experiences in service during the second world war in the first part of this article ("Marching as to war"). It is now time to say something about my brother Jack before moving on to bring the whole story up to date.

My brother Jack was very clever at school (I was the mediocre one). He went in for a special examination and he could really have gone to secondary school. But in those days there were too many paying pupils going (one of the biggest dunces in the class went because his Dad could pay for him) so Jack couldn’t go. The organist at Church (Mr Nutter) had his own small school and he was so incensed about it that he used to take Jack on a Saturday morning for lessons. He put Jack through matriculation so he didn’t lose out. He left school at 14 years of age.

He worked for a local company near Manchester until the second world war. When war broke out he joined the Navy. We didn’t see him for about four years.

Jack ended up with a strange accent. When he was younger he was sent up to Scotland for a while for some reason and become “Scotland Mad” whilst he was there. The rest of the family resented it at first but we didn’t mind afterwards because we had some lovely holidays with him.

He married Nora Grant, a girl from Aberdeen and they settled there. They lived with her mother - a nice old lady but very difficult to understand what she was saying. When he first moved to Scotland he worked in the fish trade and he used to bring home a lot of fish. He subsequently got a job in the office with Regent, the petrol company. Regent’s parent company was Texaco which took full ownership (4) in the late 1960s.

Nora didn’t go out to work when she was married. She was a home maker. They didn’t have any children. Norah used to bemoan the fact but earlier she some health issues of her own and as we used to say she should have been “scraped and painted”. At the beginning I don’t think Nora wanted any family but later on in life she regretted it. So it was her own fault. We had a friend called Rose who wasn’t medically trained but she was one of these old fashioned know-it-all people. I remember her saying to Nora “you will know to it when you are older girl” She did as well!

Their home in Pittodrie Place was a tenement. There was a loo at the bottom of the garden which was a nice march to get to it. It was a very cold place and it wasn’t the place to get caught short in the middle of the night. They did move after Mrs Grant died to a flat in Roslyn Terrace in Aberdeen. That was a much nicer place.

Jack was a mason and was the Grand Master of his lodge at one time. Nora died of cancer before Jack. Afterwards he moved to Cullen. The girl that used to live downstairs in the flats moved to Cullen and Jack would visit them at weekends. She had a big house there and they said “You might as well come here rather than travelling back and forth” So he did. He liked it at Cullen and died there in 2003.

Mum was 76 when she died. When Dad came to retire from his engineering job he moved to a firm of manufacturing chemists when he was in his early fifties and worked on until he was over 70. Dad lived to be 97 and was as bright as a button to the end. So I looked after him for about 21 years.

I had my share of health troubles. I developed a growth on the nerve of the inner ear (an acoustic neuroma). It became so big that I needed several major operations in the Neurosurgical Department of Manchester Royal Infirmary. It left the right side of my face paralysed and I was left hard of hearing on that side. I have lived with cancer for over ten years (or should I say it has lived with me). I have had operations and courses of chemo (I have a marvellous surgeon and the staff at the hospital have been wonderful.) My friend Dorothy who had coeliac disease and I always called ourselves "a right pair of 'demics"! Still I never lost my apetite and always enjoyed my glass of sherry.

Continued in column 2...

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Monkseaton, Whitley Bay

About the time that Dad died, George and Hilda were selling up and moving from Leicester to go and live in the North East of England. I moved with them to Kenilworth Road in Monkseaton. I enjoyed living there. The house had a big kitchen which Hilda liked. I remember as well there was a bar in the middle room. It wasn’t an easy house to keep going. It was rather like the house they had moved from in Leicester. We developed some very good friendships around there, particularly the hairdresser that we used to go to. We would get together and have a glass of sherry. Either she would produce a bottle or we would take one around ourselves.

Your father made me laugh. Every Thursday we used to go out for lunch to the Briardene Hotel in Whitley Bay. Every week Hilda and I would experiment with something different from the menu. But he wouldn’t. He just kept to one thing that wasn’t very dear. After we had eaten he would sit for half an hour in the car park overlooking the sea – and that’s the only involvement he had with the sea. I used to get out of the car and I would say “I’ll be home at tea time” meaning I would walk home. And he would ask “What about the afternoon tea?” and I would tell him that if he wanted a drink he would have to get it himself! He was hopeless, absolutely hopeless!! He didn’t get mollycoddled by me. Not at all!!

It was very useful living very near to the railway station. We would go by Metro into Newcastle. George and Hilda went to Canada one year and my friend came to stay with me for a holiday and we had a whale of a time. I liked Tynemouth too.

A final home in Humberside

In the late 1980s Hilda had a spinal stroke and became paralysed. Eventually she had to go into a nursing home. After that I moved again to stay with cousins in Lincolnshire but that didn’t work out. So I moved on again, and that’s how I ended up in another Barton – this time on the river Humber. I have had a wide variety of activities to keep me occupied: crafts and painting at Tofts Road, Monday lunch at the Salvation Army Hall, bus trips to Hull, the seaside and the countryside when the weather is good. I was also presented with a VJ Day Commemorative Certificate marking my service during the war.

I have always enjoyed my holidays. My particular favourite country has been Norway. I loved everything about Norway from the breakfast upwards! I only saw it in the summer so I don’t know what it would have been like in the winter. I stayed in Norway two or three times. I tried everything there was to eat, including reindeer meat. It’s just like coarse steak really.

In my day you didn’t travel outside Europe whereas nowadays they go all over the world. I never got to France but I’ve been to Belgium , Holland, Switzerland and Austria. I have lots of holiday memories to look back on. I was never one to go to the seaside and lie on the beach. I always wanted to do something active or see the sights.

I’ve always been a good judge of character. I never got married. I guess I didn’t fancy it. There were no serious involvements - not since the war. Everyone thought I was too bossy anyway and you would just have to keep them under your thumb. I don’t regret my life. I said to my mother that “It’s evident I’m not going to get married so I’m going to have some good holidays” I’ve been all over the place. So a good holiday beats a good husband any day!!

I am 89 this year. I am looking forward to dancing a jig when I turn 90!

Footnote

Shortly before completing her memories, Eva moved into residential accommodation in Barton upon Humber. She died peacefully there on September 1st 2008. A moving account of her memorial service can be found at In Memoriam: Eva Unwin 1919 - 2008

References

1. A history of Christ Church, Patricroft: Christ Church Patricroft Online
2. The history of Muller's Orphanage, Ashley Down, Bristol
3. No.6 Pittodrie Place, Aberdeen: Photograph courtesy of Jeff Hill (2007)
4. Texaco takes full ownership of Regent: History of Chevron in the UK

Page added: March 14th 2008
Last updated: April 6th 2012

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