Harp Scratchings 11 - One in a Million

I was six years’ old and my sister had just been born. Mum and Eileen Dawn Julia were in Summerfield Nursing Home and Auntie Wina had come to the Harp to help out.

I was thrilled to have a baby sister and with Wina’s encouragement made great pains to write to Mum about it, telling her that all was well at the Harp and that I was getting regular bedtime stories.

Probably one of my first recollections during that stay was the morning I asked Wina to put a blue ribbon in my hair. Standing in the kitchen I remember her patiently taking a few stabs at creating the perfect bow before I was satisfied.

On future visits to the Harp, Wina and Ernie would often bring vegetables from their expansive garden - or sometimes a very special treat - a home-made coffee sponge cake with icing that melted in your mouth.

As I grew up I loved going to stay with Wina and Ernie at Rectory Cottage in Eardisley. While “the Cottage” was one end of a large rambling residence adjoining Eardisley Church, their home consisted of oversized rooms with high ceilings, a wooden staircase and upstairs floorboards that squeaked and groaned as you walked across them.

It was an adventure to stay there, and sometimes when no one was looking I would cautiously turn a doorknob on a door that had been permanently locked as the dividing line between the Cottage and the Rectory itself – half hoping someone had unlocked the door and I could investigate what lay behind it.

I remember summer’s evenings when it seemed to take forever to get dark. Lying in bed I would listen to the church clock strike the hour.

One memory firmly entrenched in my mind is the episode of the cheese rind. Sitting down to supper with Wina and Ernie, Ernie had carefully pared away the rind from the cheese I had been offered. Not realizing, I chose the rind instead of the cheese and spent the next few minutes trying to chew what seemed like a piece of leather. When this was discovered, Ernie and Wina teased me quite a bit and the cheese rind story stuck for a number of years.

When her husband, Ernie was alive, the pair did so much for the family. I will always remember returning home from Toronto. Ernie came to Liverpool to meet me from the Empress of Canada.

I was so happy to see the family that in the excitement I left one of my suitcases behind in the luggage hall. We were halfway through the Mersey Tunnel before I made the discovery, and Ernie in true fashion didn’t miss a beat, turning the car around and returning to the dock to retrieve the missing bag.

Time went by, as it does. I returned to Canada where I have lived for most of my life. The baby in Grannie's arms - this was a christening picture - now lives with his own family in New Zealand.

Auntie Wina is in her nineties now and has outlived her siblings. Despite the frailties of age, she maintains a positive attitude and continues to be an inspiration to everyone who has the good fortune to meet her. I am so grateful she was there for me when I was growing up.

Just feast your eyes on a very classy lady attending the wedding this year of the daughter of good friends and next door neighbours, Paul and Sue.

Wina, you are one in a million.

As a postscript, it is with great sadness that we mark 29 March 2011 as the day Wina slipped away. Rest in peace dear one.