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Title: Eulogy for Brenda Christie Author: Stuart Christie Date: 2019 Language: en Topics: eulogy Source: Retrieved on 16th May 2021 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9kd6dm
My eulogy for Brenda:
Good morning everyone and thank you all for coming on this sad occasion
to say goodbye to Bren, my wife, life partner, friend and comrade
through fifty-one years of lifeâs vicissitudes, caprices and blessings â
the beloved mother of Branwen â and Nanna to granddaughters Merri and
Mo.
Brenda was an intensely private person whoâ although engaging, sociable
and witty â disliked being the focus of attention, but Iâve no doubt she
would have been pleased to see everyone here, sharing this day with us.
A baby-boomer, born in Shoreditch in London in April 1949, Brenâs
formative years were spent in Gosport in Hampshire where her lovely dad,
Bert, was a Chief Petty Officer, a âSparksâ in the Royal Navy.
She hoped to take up a career in journalism, but despite her sharp
intelligence, enquiring intellect, love of literature and creative
writing skills, the breakup of her parentsâ marriage and her tense
relationship with her mother Eliza forced her to leave home at 15 and
move to London where she became a copy typist, working in a variety of
temporary jobs, including at the Treasury.
In 1967, her adventurous spirit took her to Milan where she worked for a
time as companion to a glamorous American model, a job that introduced
her to the dolce vita of Milan and Portofino, but it was a lifestyle
that failed to satisfy her sense of moral integrity.
With news of the events of May 1968 in Paris and the radical political,
musical and cultural turbulence that was taking place in Britain,
largely provoked by the U.S. war in Vietnam, the feisty-spirited
19-year-old Brenda was drawn back to London to be part of the radical
social and cultural revolution then taking place, which is where we got
together on Bastille Day, 14 July 1968, shortly after my 22^(nd)
birthday.
We were together from then until the morning of her passing, just a
month after she turned 70.
Those fifty-odd years of our lives together saw many adventures, good
and not so good â laughter and tears â as happens in all relationships.
But itâs the treasured, shared and cheery memories that are the abiding
ones.
On our first date in 1968 I took her to Jimmyâs Greek Restaurant, a
carpeted sewer in Sohoâs Frith Street which to me was excitingly
cosmopolitan in character, but was also cheap with plentiful
Mediterranean-style food. Brenda, however, was distinctly unimpressed,
particularly when she spotted the column of cockroaches marching along
the wainscoting by our heads.
We made our excuses and left for the more salubrious Amalfi in Old
Compton Street. From there we went on to the theatre; Unity Theatre in
Somers Town to see Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs
for which I had wangled complimentary tickets.
I certainly knew how to treat a girl in those days.
After the performance we went back to my flat in Crouch End in North
London where I further tried to impress Brenda with my skill in tossing
a Spanish omelette, but my hand to eye coordination was skewed that
night and it ended up splattered on the floor.
Brenda, who was precariously balanced on a three-legged chair at the
time, laughed so much she leaned back, lost her balance and ended up on
her back on the floor with the remains of the omelette, legs akimbo,
unladylike, flashing her knickers.
Despite those early misadventures, and fortunately for me, Brenda shared
my surreal sense of humour, and so began a tumultuous, lifelong,
genuinely loving relationship.
Brenda was introduced originally to the Marxist-led International
Socialists through her best friend Valerie Packham, and the pair were
deeply involved in the staff and student occupation of the Hornsey
College of Art in Crouch End, which took place from May to July 1968.
Later, during the final years of the fascist dictatorship in Spain, she
became increasingly committed to the anti-Francoist cause, working
closely with the clandestine anarchist First of May Group, which brought
her under the radar of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and the
Security Service, MI5. That, of course, ran alongside her role as a
co-founder of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press and her
involvement with the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag magazine.
In the summer of 1971 I was framed and arrested on conspiracy and
possession charges which led to me spending eighteen months on remand in
Brixton Prison, which is when Brenda came into her own.
While holding down a job as a temporary copy typist, not only did she
visit me most days throughout those eighteen months, she brought me
cooked meals all the way from Shoreditch to Brixton on public transport.
She also played a crucial and pivotal role in helping to organise and
coordinate my ultimately successful defence â that the only
incriminating evidence against me had been planted by former Flying
Squad detectives, with their superiorsâ knowledge! â that and working
late into the night typing up the barristersâ notes during the
eight-month Old Bailey trial, one of the longest in British legal
history.
Her character and integrity won her the grudging respect of the senior
police officers involved in the case. One of them, Commander Ernest
Bond, brazenly admitted to her â in the presence of a Chief
Superintendent â that they knew Iâd been âfitted upâ, but they could
live with my possible acquittal. As far as they were concerned theyâd
succeeded in keeping me out of circulation for eighteen months.
Itâs at times such as those these that we come to really know people in
ways of which others remain completely ignorant. Brenda, to me,
exemplified the Sufi and humanist ideal of âfaithful in loving
friendship, kindness, compassion and solidarityâ.
A few months after my acquittal, in May 1974, following the kidnapping
in Paris by anti-fascists of a Francoist banker, a Special Branch
officer visited our flat in Wimbledon and advised us to move out of
London. Whether or not this was friendly advice or an implicit threat we
decided not to put to the test. As Falstaff says in Shakespeareâs King
Henry the Fourth, âThe better part of valour is discretionâ, and so we
began our life Odyssey.
I may not always have been her Odysseus, but she was certainly always my
Penelope.
Our first house was an nineteenth century mill house in Honley, Last of
the Summer Wine country in West Yorkshire, in fact its exterior featured
in a few episodes of that long-running series.
As well as typesetting our books and journals, Brenda and a friend
opened a competitively priced teashop called Touchwood, which became a
popular eatery for local mill workers and long-distance lorry drivers on
the Trans-Pennine A6024 between Huddersfield and Manchester. Their
home-made pies and pasties were to die for. On Touchwoodâs last day,
when we were preparing to leave Yorkshire for Sanday in Orkney, she and
her partner Deanna gave all their regular customers free lunches. Many
were in tears when they learned the teashop was closing down.
Our next home was the penultimate of the Northern Isles, Sanday in
Orkney, where we lived for seven years with Brenâs beloved dad, Bert. It
was idyllic for a time, especially made glorious by the birth of our
daughter, Branwen, albeit in fairly dramatic circumstances.
Our wonderful lady doctor had been struck down by cancer and she had
been replaced by a series of locums straight out of the animated cartoon
Scooby Doo. When the one arrived who was to deliver Branwen he had
clearly been drinking, as had the taxi driver of the Commer van that
doubled as the island ambulance. To aggravate the situation, the only
bottle of oxygen on the island had been used up that morning trying to
revive a suicide who had jumped off the end of the pier, having filled
his pockets with stones.
I lay on the bed beside Brenda dripping chloroform onto a tea towel
covering a flour sieve, both of us breathing the fumes intended to ease
the pain of the birth contractions, which somehow the doctorâs ineptness
had caused to go out of synch.
In the end we had to call for the local inter-island aeroplane to
airlift her to hospital on the Orkney mainland. Even that was
problematic as a heavy haar, a sea mist, had enveloped the islands so
completely that the pilot had to fly in dangerously low, just above sea
level. Even the lifeboat couldnât make it.
That and a few other run-ins with incompetent locums, some of whom had
already been struck off the Medical Register two or three times, proved
to be the writing on the wall, especially given our now elderly Bertâs
deteriorating medical condition.
From Sanday we moved south again, to Cambridge where Brenda found a job
as an editorial assistant with Cambridge University Press, working with
the leading historian Albert Hourani and the noted Arabist Trevor Mostyn
on a number of prestigious CUP titles such as the Cambridge Encyclopedia
of the Middle East and North Africa. Both men insisted Brenda was
credited by name for her work on the encyclopedia, threatening to remove
their names as authors and editors if the class-driven Press Syndics
refused to comply, which they had done initially. To credit a lowly
editorial assistant by name in such a distinguished publication was
unheard of, and I doubt if it has happened since.
It was in Cambridge too that Brenda discovered what proved to be her
true métier as a teacher, initially teaching Business Studies to 16- to
19-year-olds at Cambridge College of Further Education where her best
friend Valerie was Senior Lecturer in charge of Secretarial Studies.
Although to be honest she did think it was a thankless task trying to
teach teenagers things they didnât particularly care about â and to be
somewhere they didnât want to be.
However, after six years in Cambridge, Bert, Brendaâs delightful dad,
whoâd lived with us since our Yorkshire days, passed away. It was time
again to move on, this time to Hastings where we settled for twenty
years, largely to ensure that Branwen, our daughter, could put down
roots and enjoy some stability with regard to her education and friends.
Among her talents Branwen had a predilection for drama. But it turned
out that the principal of the local after-school drama studio she
attended was not only a drama queen, but a complete chancer to boot, one
whose knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare and his time and plays
was embarrassingly superficial. Think Donald Trump meets Danny La Rue
and youâll get some idea of the kind of person Iâm talking about.
The bottom line was that Brenda ended up teaching Branwen herself, and
was so successful that she swept the board at the local Music and Drama
Festival, as well as other festivals in East Sussex, Kent and South
London, putting to shame the competing local drama schools. Other
mothers approached her to teach their children, which led to Brenda
setting up her own Rude Mechanicals Drama Studio. This lasted for almost
10 years and won the hearts and minds of her pupils, whom she enthused
with her love of Shakespeare â to say nothing of winning countless drama
festivals across the South East.
Our final move was to Clacton. It seemed like a good idea at the time,
but it coincided with a decline in Brendaâs health. A heavy smoker for
more than 50 years, she had increasing breathing and mobility
difficulties, but these were eased by the entry into her life of her two
darling granddaughters, Merri â born in 2014 â and Mo, in 2017.
Their dynamic and irresistibly exuberant personalities boosted her
spirits and recharged her morale enormously.
The end came much sooner than any of us expected.
Hardly a month had passed between her biopsy and diagnosis of small-cell
cancer, the first chemo session, and her death.
It was sudden and unexpected â it came in the hour of the wolf, the hour
between night and dawn.
What Branwen and I draw some small comfort from is the fact that it
wasnât a long and painful process. She didnât suffer, she died at home,
loved and cared for, not in a cheerless hospital ward or strange hospice
room, and I was beside her, able to comfort her at the end. It was her
time to go.
This morning we say goodbye to Brendaâs body, but not to her spirit or
to the love we had for her and she for us. She has joined what some
African societies call the âsashaâ, the recently departed, whose time on
earth overlaps with people still alive. They do not die, they live on in
the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, and bring them to
life in stories and anecdote. Only when the last person to know an
ancestor dies does that ancestor leave the âsashaâ for the âzamaniâ; the
generalised ancestors who are never forgotten, but are revered in
memory.
Brenda was a feisty and spirited woman who found it difficult to pull
her punches in her dealings with others. She didnât suffer fools gladly
â or even badly, including me on occasions. But despite our sporadic
harsh but soon forgotten and forgiven outbursts of frustration, words
can never express my own and Branwenâs profound gratitude to Brenda for
bringing purpose, happiness and a sense of fulfilment to our lives â not
least for her constant part in the general effort to alleviate the
burden of the darker times weâve shared.
Goodbye, dear.