Mum was an enigmatic person, well educated at St Joseph's Convent School in Reading and admired by all. Her parents were publicans in London. Mum had a brother, John Alfred Plumb, and an older sister, Linda Bridges (nee Plumb). Sadly John was shot down in Northern France on 13th May 1940 during the Second World War. He later died of his injuries and is buried in a war grave at St Andre near Lille, N. France. Linda went on to marry and had 6 children,Robert,John, Roger, Sally, Tessa and Mark. Linda died in June 2007 aged 99 yrs. Mum's parents were publicans who at various times, ran "The Shakespear's Head" in LondLondonon and "The Mitre" in Reading.Both of her parents died within a few months of each other when mum was a young teenager. Mum's parents are buried at Caversham Cemetery, Reading,Berkshire. There is mention of John Plumb on their memorial stone. Subsequently Marie went to live with her Uncle and Aunt who owned "The Cherry Tree" public house in North London. Even now, if I meet very old friends after a long time, they soon ask after Mum and usually mention how clever she was. Very sociable and very helpful. Never a cross word for us kids who must have been awful at times – maybe all the time. I cannot recall any time when mum hit us. Such a thing was completely alien to her nature. We all love her. Mum certainly worked very hard and she was central to our existence. In the early days (late 1940's) we lived in a tent and Mum would have had to do washing, cooking and all the other domestic chores outdoors, often in the rain, whilst looking after myself and Dad as well. Mum also looked after the horse Nobby. He was a good natured little pony and after a day pulling the cart he would let me ride him bareback round the field in the evening. I was only about 3 years old so no great weight for him. Our next horse was Joe . He could not have been more different from Nobby. Picture the ride of the Valkerie and the great dark chargers rolling their eyes as they thunder through the heavens blowing fire and brimstone through their nostrils and you get some idea of what Joe was like - on a good day! I never knew Dad to be scared of anything much but he was scared of Joe. Every time he got near this monster his hands would start to shake and of course the horse sensed this and regularly attempted to trample him. This was pretty serious stuff as Dad could very easily have been killed in the daily ritual of putting the bit in Joe’s mouth. Dad soon gave up and delegated this job to Mum. Mum could handle Joe quite easily because she was so calm and competent with horses. Only recently have I come to realise that Mum was perfectly at home with horses as she owned a horse of her own at Southgate, London, when she was younger. Her horse was called “Whitey”. I have now been able to post an early picture of Mum mounted on horse. This picture came courtesy on John Alfred Conradi,from Breda, Holland, whose father was a very close friend of John. Later Mum did fieldwork, picking peas, potatoes, hops and sprouts. All of this was hard work. I suppose the heaviest of these was potato picking. We worked on farmer Starley’s fields at Beeding during a very hot summer in the 1960's. Us young lads,all found it grindingly hard work. Mum was there and worked all day with us. I never did pea picking so I cannot comment on that activity. I was too young to pick, but I can remember the women in the fields chatting and the smell of the fields of peas on MacIntyre’s farms at Angmering. It all seemed very pleasant, but bending over all day in a hot field or in the rain was not so easy. Sprout picking took place in October and in those days the weather seemed to be much colder. The sprouts had frost on them in the morning and our fingers went blue with the cold. We couldn’t wear gloves as this would inhibit our ability to pick. Mum, of course, picked all day. Maybe all that hard work contributed to Mum’s overall fitness. Also she did not smoke or drink alcohol except on rare occasions.