The ABC of My Life - Carol Holding

THE ABC of

MY LIFE CAROL HOLDING

The Millrind Press

CONTENTS 1. ACCIDENTALLY BEGOTTEN CHILD……………………2.

2. DISCOVERY EDUCATION FREEDOM……………….9 3. GROWING UP HEARTACHE INDEPENDENCE..........15

4. JOURNEYING KINSHIP LOVE..................................19 5. MASTERY NEGATIVITY OPPORTUNITY..............21 6. POSSIBILITIES QUAKERISM RELATIONS...........25 7. SCHOOLING TEACHING UNIVERSITY...............29 8. VACATIONS AND WORK..............................................33 9. XENOFILE YEAST ZEAL..............................................35

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A B C As the youngest child, the lack of confidence in my ability to record the fortunes of this family is always at war with the awareness that there is no one else who will but the latter fact is winning.

My parents had been married for 20 years and had a family of three girls and a boy. They themselves had been reared in relative affluence but had endured many trials and separations in the First World War and after. They were very idealistic and had tried since their marriage in 1920 to live in great simplicity.

They were appalled by the way the Second World War was progressing so I imagine it was not with unbridled joy that they discovered they were expecting a fifth child. Because of the proximity of their home in Welwyn Garden City to London and the bombing, my mother, a qualified doctor felt there would be no hospital beds for a forty seven year old to give birth and fearing for the safety of the older children, reluctantly agreed to join an evacuation scheme to America where they would be the guests and employees of the American Youth Hostels Association.

This contact was secured by my father whose main life's work was to start the Y.H.A. with others in England in 1930 and who was at

Accidentally Begotten Child 5

Dad as I remember him

My Mother, 1940s

that time the first National Secretary working from the National Office which was our house (two small but central semis near the Quaker Meeting House).This work meant he could not leave with the family and nor could my eldest sister May who was seventeen and of call up age.

Thus it was that in August 1940, my mother, Ruth Catchpool and my brother Frank, and sisters Joan and Heather sailed for the New World on the Duchess of Atholl alongside many other hopeful Britons including Shirley Caitlin (now Baroness Williams) the daughter of Vera Brittain.

Back in England the bereft families heard that one of the boats in the convoy had been torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats but were not told which and for many weeks my father did not know if he had lost nearly all his family. This was the first of many 6

Accidentally Begotten Child

occasions during the next four years when the family feared they had made a very wrong decision.

The family were given a warm welcome when they finally arrived at the staff house, 88 Main Street Northfield Massachusetts, which was to be their home for much longer than expected. My mother was kept very busy as House Mother and the children went enthusiastically into the new outdoor life with farm work before school but the letters home all show the longing for their Dad and sister, husband and daughter and the trials of living in someone else's home.

I believe my mother welcomed the few days escape and privacy afforded by my birth in hospital at Christmas, which is a strange thing to say about such a strenuous experience.

My middle name Meredith, was chosen by my sister May after a beautiful farm and house in New Hampshire, owned by Mrs

Carol with her mother and siblings 1941

Accidentally Begotten Child 7

Storrow, which my father hoped to turn into a Hostel. It was later a boarding school where Heather spent a few happy months after the local high school.

Later all three of my siblings went to the Quaker boarding school at Westtown near Philadelphia where they were happy and made many friends. If my mother was often too busy to give me all the attention she would have liked, there were many doting adults and friendly children about so that my early childhood seemed secure enough and not lonely. If the angst of separation impinged on my development it is hard to tell. Certainly the spot on the globe, where England and my daddy was, became well thumbed but apparently when I asked why my father was not present as in other families, I seemed pacified by being told that unlike the other children I had a big brother instead.

After an increasingly desperate fourth year apart, my mother was given a chance to come home on the Mauretania in May 1944 and with only two week's notice took that chance. Frank had by this time left school and got himself a job in New York. So mother and I shared a cabin with three other ladies and my sisters shared a dormitory with many other returning evacuees. After 10 days of one of the roughest ever Atlantic crossings, we made it safely to Liverpool. The trauma of being told to wait on a trunk all day while the paperwork was sorted out was soon forgotten and the privations of Britain in the blackout were all bearable now the family was together again.

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Accidentally Begotten Child

D E F The extremes of separation, pain and joy of family togetherness in drab little England were only dimly perceived by me if at all, having overcome my shyness of my dad. I made close friends with other children roughly my age plus various hangers on and indulged in various daredevil exploits, interspersed with romantic fairytale imaginings. The former usually involve bikes or rollerskates and the latter, horses.

Four Daughters, Meadow Cottage 1945

Discovery, Education, Freedom 9

I was a Brownie briefly but was more involved with secret societies with school friends for which we signed in blood declarations of loyalty with written rules in embroidered felt bags (mine much moth-eaten still exists) I have strong memories aged four collecting bright ladybirds in a jar and the desolation felt when they all discoloured and died from lack of air.

I remember bursting the paint bubbles on the garage doors and picking the pebble dash off the house as well as playing with the tar at the edge of the road, all of which earned a scolding but I remember no major misdemeanours or punishments. I was teased or mothered by siblings, who were sometimes there and sometimes not, and they were always taken for granted by me.

There was very little traffic in our road, the milk came on a horse-drawn cart and we played there most of the time, although we all had gardens and our games often took us miles away. I often sneaked back home mid-game if I knew my mother had been cake baking to sample a hot chocolate bun or to lick out the mixing bowl.

Parents only wanted us home for meals or bedtime. This laissezfaire aspect of my parents attitudes struck me early when we realised that the youngest child of the gang had an earlier bedtime than us. It always seemed unfair that she should lose out on the last hour of fun and one day we hid her when her father came looking for her. We played on and then gradually all drifted home.

However unlike the rest of us she found herself locked out and left hysterically crying in the dark "to teach her a lesson." What would today's social workers say about that as a punishment?

I did fairly well at school and was in and out of gangs (mostly in).

The main exclusion in those days being quarantine. I had measles 10 Discovery, Education, Freedom

Mrs Cann’s Class (Me, second from right, front row)

and mumps fairly badly but otherwise enjoyed good health.

Childhood in the 40s pre-NHS was full of hope if not affluence.

We had few things but much imagination. Books, ballet and piano lessons and many interesting foreign visitors gave a certain breadth to growing up, climbing trees and spitting competitions went side-by-side with French-speaking teas with Maude, a Swiss girl who lived with us for a while. We later even went riding (real horses) and mucked out at the local stables but never owned one or wore the right gear.

This carefree world did have shadows of the impending 11+ examination and possible separation (My gang all passed).

When I was 10 my middle sister died very suddenly of polio. My family all believed I was too young to feel as they did as I had not the words to express it. The exclusion was very painful and I felt shut out. The bubble of self-sufficiency and ability to communicate Discovery, Education, Freedom 11

Carol with Mother and brother Frank 1947

was pricked for a while just as my self-awareness was growing and horizons expanding.

Outside events such as the Festival of Britain and the death of George VI had a strong effect on my views of life, but leaving my friends to go to boarding school seemed a more major milestone.

I sat the entrance exam but to me it felt a fairly last-minute decision that I should go to Sidcot School, a co-ed Quaker boarding school in the Mendip Hills where my father had been very happy half a century earlier.

Thus in September 1952 I went west by train and my parents sailed east a few days later to be wardens of the Quaker Centre in Delhi for the next three years. My cousins came to live in the house and 12 Discovery, Education, Freedom

my sister Heather, who was teaching in Ipswich was home in the holidays but I didn't see my mother for the best part of a year or my dad for over two years.

I seem to have acquired some independence and this abandonment was only really felt when I achieved something special like being in a play or concert when they were not there to be proud of me. I was taken out by various relations and parents of friends but I was aware that the loosening of family ties due to geography and chronology seem to be happening faster for me than for my friends and sooner than I would have liked.

Discovery, Education, Freedom 13

July 1961, Used for a Quaker Poster

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Growing up, Heartache, Independence

GH I 3. GROWING UP HEARTACHE INDEPENDENCE The next seven years proved decisive. I enjoyed all the normal aspects of school except perhaps Chemistry. I was averagely co-operative and perhaps more than averagely creative.

My peer group made close ties, many of which are still there and the usual teenage angst was more than offset by the joy of the other emotional discoveries even religious ones.

I took part in antisocial activities which did not include drugs and was sometimes argumentative in class. To my shame I did nothing to stop my peers tormenting weak members of staff and spent quite a lot of useless time hating other members of staff who I felt were tormenting me but overall I was aware how caring most of them were and that in this privileged place I could, with their help, achieve much.

I enjoyed sport and spent many happy hours with a favourite teacher learning all forms of dance, music, singing, and piano was another preoccupation. I had violin and flute lessons briefly but not long enough to get really involved.

My father hoped I would take up languages and to this end I struggled to pass "O" level Latin but eventually my success in Art was acknowledged and I was allowed to go to Newcastle to read Growing up, Heartache, Independence 15

Fine Art which was a four-year (mainly Practical) Honours Degree Course after which I did a one-year Postgraduate Course in Education.

As with school the multi-track approach to life meant I joined many different societies, Literary, Sporting and Political, possibly to the detriment of excellence in my chosen field but I persisted with enthusiasm and graduated.

I then jumped into teaching and marriage preferring to follow life's adventures as a twosome rather than singly.

My partner in life was another Quaker my age, who went to Sidcot at the same time and later to the art school in Newcastle. The

Carol and Tim on their Wedding Day July 25th 1964

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Growing up, Heartache, Independence

attraction, though on and off both at school and university, had been growing. The staff and parents were generally supportive although anxious that in our youth and inexperience we would make mistakes. Thus it was after a couple of years at college I became engaged in 1962 to Tim Holding from Worcestershire and nearly 2 years later we were married at Welwyn Garden City Friends Meeting House, followed by a felicitous fortnight exploring Ireland.

Tim had found a job teaching in the art school in Colchester where he remained for the next 30 years and I got a job teaching art in a secondary school in Harwich. After a year I got a job in the University of Essex Bookshop which was perhaps not a good career move but was very interesting and much nearer home. Nine months later we were parents.

Carol and Tim, newly weds 1964

Growing up, Heartache, Independence 17

The early 60s felt very grown up and we made the most of new freedoms at university but I would say that the swinging 60s only really got going by 1964 by which time we were married.

In retrospect we were fairly conventional even then. In 1967 as the parents of a one year old we visited family in California and we tried marijuana which did very little for Tim and nothing at all for me as a non smoker and so we continued a hippyish easy-going but respectable life with a house, a car and the salary and expectations! The envy of today's young people. The advent of a second son led to a slightly more staid way of life but that life was pretty carefree and very good indeed.

Carol and Tim at Welwyn Friends Meeting House 1964

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Growing up, Heartache, Independence

J K L Nat and David

As parents of young children we took appalling risks, (according to our grown-up sons), always feeling that freedom to grow and make their own mistakes was more important than lots of rules and restrictions. We moved from our much loved cottage in the village of Peldon into Colchester having found a crumbling but bigger house in an acre of land between two open areas of parkland. My parents who were to have moved in with us, both died only two months apart just after we moved and so never joined us in the experiment of three generations living together.

Journeying, Kinship, Love

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With our children both under 10 we travelled round Spain, Switzerland and France many times, camping. We flew to the USA to spend time with my brother Frank in California and had several wonderful Christmases with my sister Heather in Florida and New England. The children, through the school, went on trips to Wales and Yorkshire and on Mediterranean cruises and they forged friendships locally and joined Cub Scouts.

I meanwhile returned to work from being just a mum and a taxi driver. First as a nursing assistant in a mental handicap residential home, teaching art and then full-time art teaching in secondary schools and life was very settled though busy. We felt at home in our local Quaker Meeting and took on more responsibilities there.

We were in touch with siblings on Tim's side in this country and also mine although they were more geographically scattered.

Our garden was an adventure playground for our children and their friends and we grew vegetables and built studios and enjoyed the feeling that keeping hens, ducks, and geese as well as dogs and cats was a great antidote to the pressures of teaching.

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MNO

Early Commission plaque, New Drama Studio, Sidcot Tim with his Mother, Father, twin brother,niece and Carol

As our careers diminished so those of our sons flourished. Our elder son Nat left school and met and married Wendy in early 1986 and started working in the outside world all before he was twenty. A few years later we became grandparents of first Daniel Mastery, Negativity, Opportunity

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born in 1989 and then Katie in 1992. We both felt quite young for this new phase. Later after taking a degree in biochemistry at Essex University and a training in Suffolk as a paramedic; Nat rose steadily through the ranks and finally worked in a doctor's surgery as an emergency practitioner in a Medical Centre. He lives with his new wife Lindsay and daughter Rosie in Thetford.

Our younger son David who had studied biochemistry at Sussex University and for a PhD at King's College London got a post doc at Riverside campus University of California near Los Angeles. His Mexican girlfriend Claudia who gained her PhD at the same time went with him and a year later they were married in her hometown of Tampico in Mexico. Four years later they moved to Tucson, Arizona where their two daughters Natalie and Amanda were born.

During these years we managed quite a few trips to the USA to see them and other family in California and New England including a memorable trip to the Grand Canyon and they also visited England. He is now assistant professor at Lincoln University, Nebraska.

Now cost and work commitments are inhibiting their travelling and for us hence health insurance problems. This geographical splintering of families was bearable in the knowledge of the technological communications. Possibilities available nowadays, with television and other media revolutions, which can bring the world to people when travel is no longer possible but it is hard to admit losing powers and shrinking horizons.

Reaching the second millennium, a turning point for many, was a sharp reminder of mortality as I was diagnosed with breast-cancer and was operated on quite quickly three days before Christmas 1999. Early 2000 was marked with drugs and daily radiotherapy for a month or two but I was grateful for the early detection, 22 Mastery, Negativity, Opportunity

prompt treatment and relative lack of pain and by Easter was nearly back to previous form.

By the early 1990s we both took early retirement; for me this meant branching out into all the aspects of the voluntary sector which had interested me. We paid off our mortgage and tried to live very simply and I worked in the book department of the local Oxfam shop for 15 years. After an eight-week training I worked for 10 years as an honorary granny and help meet with some delightful but demanding families for Home Start. I spent time demonstrating the work of the Fair Trade movement in schools organising sales and also working in the Fair Trade shop. I also trained to be a chaplain in the local hospital and for two and a half years I worked in the general wards and the stroke unit and then two and a half years in the mental health unit and am now currently back on the general wards.

Mastery, Negativity, Opportunity

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Speaking out against the Iraq War

Quaker Tai Chi group

Stand up against Poverty 2008

24 Possibilities, Quakerism, Relations

P QR The post-retirement phase makes philosophy and poetry more possible. The knowledge of having lived more than three-quarters of my life makes the urge to make a mark fight the waning energy.

This urge is weak but real and taking responsibility in the many avenues within the Quaker community is one way of broadening experience and serving others and learning to grow by acting outside comfort zones.

Nat and Daniel 1990

We have seen several generations come and go in Colchester Meeting and have served as Clerks at all levels, Local, Area and Regional over the years. I was Registering Officer for our unique system within the national law regarding Marriage for

Possibilities, Quakerism, Relations

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David and Daniel 1989

nine years and served on Children's Committee at one end-of-life and Funeral Committee at the other. We have been Elders and Overseers many times over and helped on Premises and Library Committees and many more. We have been Trustees in the specific areas of buildings and subscriptions and taken our part at National level such as Quaker Life, Meeting for Sufferings (the National Executive body) and the Central Nominations Committee. All this is both a tie and a chore as well as a comfort where we feel valued and useful.

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For me the death of parents and now siblings, has forced a re-evaluation of my position in the outside world and a reinforcing of my place in the line, (that minute but important part of continuing time) and the realisation that we cannot know how or how much this part will affect the future. The freedom and privations of the 1940s childhood, I feel have been an excellent start. The privilege of the happy hardships of the 1950s teenage years at boarding school followed by excitement of the (now considered restricted) university life and the flowering of art school in the 1960s, provide a rich remembering half a century on.

The cost of living was manageable and the prospect of a job and home possible as soon it was required. The expectations of comfort and modern conveniences and later technologies were not high, so in general the level of contentment was high. Having little, the anxiety of losing it was low and that and the confidence of youth made threats from outside seem inconsequential.

At a Quaker gathering

Possibilities, Quakerism, Relations

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Quaker Creative Days in the Garden at Little Glebe 2012

28 Possibilities, Quakerism, Relations

S TU As a teacher I am very aware how formative the actions of peers and grown-ups can be on the mind of a school-age child. Otherwise, why is it that we remember the punishments for something we didn't do, the occasional bullying or exclusion by our friends all our lives and not the great revelations made in the classroom. Learning can be solitary but it is definitely about relationships too.

Buildings however live long in the memory. My first school was a brick built, high windowed, old-fashioned and stark with separate entrances for boys and girls. I remember the dank smell of the cloakrooms (even more dark and forbidding than the chalky class rooms) and running up and down on a big pile of earth left in the girls playground.

We skipped a lot or did handstands against the wall but there was no obvious provision for positive play. My next school was quite the opposite and I remember two very happy years at a modern purpose-built school, created as an overspill in the stark concrete of the time. Its architecture has been described as "space, hope and brutalism", I thought it was very exciting. The classrooms all on one level were staggered to catch maximum light and the hall/dining room had a wonderful mural at one end designed by professionals.

Schooling, Teaching, University 29

I was allowed to help paint this probably to the detriment of my spelling classes and with the proximity of the local woods and nature, I felt very much part of the whole community and that we as children were respected and given freedom to develop as local citizens. As I lived just over a mile away I was allowed to cycle to school and my parents were relaxed about me cycling through the woods and over a level crossing. (I remember the pride of managing the gates without getting off).

Modern parents would most One of Tim’s many loves likely be rather shocked about this but I remember the feeling of power as well as enjoying the space to be a child. This latitude continued to a certain extent during my secondary education at boarding school, even though the general repressions of the 1950s regarding food, uniforms and lack of contact with home, might seem hard today. I left there with hope and a feeling that anything was achievable. This feeling existed at university although the teaching in the 1960s was decidedly lacking. We moved among many exciting artists such as Richard Hamilton, Victor Passmore and Kenneth Rowntree who were influential but mostly felt that their prestige would rub off on the students who were left to get on with it. It was not ideal but it mostly worked. My painting tutor said “just get a good body of work

30 Schooling, Teaching, University

behind you and you'll be all right� and similarly my dissertation tutor was not around very much.

Tim also just "got on with it" in the sculpture department, building a foundry as well as a harpsichord, both outside the "curriculum" but showing an initiative that was noticed. During my postgraduate Education Diploma year I met Sybil Marshall, a 1960s educationalist and read her book and was hooked by her wholeness approach where the child is free to make connections between all subjects, very often through one particular theme.

This is obviously not always practical at the secondary stage but enormously helpful and I would say vital in engaging the youngest minds.

Beloved home for over 50 Years

Schooling, Teaching, University 31

The Gallery

My Paintings

Poetry Discussion

32 Vacations and Work

Spiral Staircase

V &W Work and vacations have been mentioned before on life as an adult but my early life was covered by travel of my parents choice and I have been enriched by the foreign visitors to our home and travels to places in Europe when no other families travelled much and always to somewhere different. Trips to Wales, the Lake District and the far north of Scotland (where I was taken to see salmon leaping Shin Falls near Dornoch) coincided with YHA Conferences, as did Norway (where I learned to ski aged 10) France and Saarland. Many of these holidays were taken with our beloved Bluebird touring caravan, which my mother had bought with a small legacy from my grandmother, who died when I was seven. (I remember the cranes lifting car and caravan long before the roll on-role off ferries. Bluebird was a bit heavy for our Austin 10 and one year we borrowed my brother-in-law's Land Rover and took it to the south of France via Switzerland seeing on the way the impressive confluence of the blue and brown waters of the RhĂ´ne and the Saone and the magnificent Roman Pont du Gard and dancing on the Pont d'Avignon. These remain in my memory as does sailing up the serene majestic Fjord after the roughest Newcastle to Bergen crossing in recent times.

At the time of my parents Golden Wedding it was arranged to gather at my sister May's house in St John's, Newfoundland.

Vacations and Work 33

Mother had a stroke a few days earlier so the golden couple did not actually travel but Tim and I and our boys, my sister Heather and her husband John and one of their sons and my brother Frank from California all did. Mother recovered enough to enjoy a happy celebration month later with her siblings in Worcester.

Towards the end of our working life at the beginning of 1991 we travelled to Athens, Ohio as part of an exchange of work, home and car, set up by the Art Adviser for Essex. It was a great adventure. The University, being one of the oldest and smallest and situated in an interesting south-eastern corner of the Mid-West was a great place to be assimilated into American life. The house was exciting and modern on a steep site in the middle of an oak forest about three miles out of town. The staff at the Art School and other officials were accepting and kind and we were immediately welcomed into the community and the life of the Quaker Meeting, which shared the use of a building at the centre of the campus. We spent time at the homes of local people, explored the area and took part in the social and political life to the full. It was a time of the first Gulf War and I joined various protest groups and phone-ins and also a choir. Tim made a guitar from a kit and we followed the fortunes of the local Blue Grass group called “The Rarely Heard.”

As the deep mid-western winter turned to spring I got a job teaching "Art in Context" as the neighbouring campus at Zanesville about 60 miles away. So although Tim’s salary was still paid in England, I was paid in dollars which we put towards a trip back to Boston by road via Washington and Philadelphia for which we bought a spacious but beaten up Oldsmobile which just about got us to New England, where with some difficulty, we sold it again.

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X Y Z

Nat’s three children, Daniel, Katie and Rosie

To have reached the X part of life seems to emphasise the thinning at the top as very few X words seem to be important in my life.

Xenofile, Yeast, Zeal

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Although I feel passionately that I should do more to publicise that I am a xenophile.

I would like very much to be the yeast or pivotal point in a movement which is effective for good in some way but almost feel it is too late. I have not the energy to work towards a single only goal or any recognisable aspect (such as World Peace). I hope the sum of the enterprises of mine and others with which I have collaborated have contributed in some measure.

It may be too much to hope for but I hope to stay in the Zone and to tackle life in a Zonking fashion rather than as a Zombie before ZZZZZ.....

David, Claudia, Natalie and Amanda

36 Xenofile, Yeast, Zeal

I am now a widow reluctantly and sad – I don't feel very well equipped for a single life – but – who knows?

My blood goes on in the lives of two sons, one grandson and four granddaughters as well as one great grandson. The future is very uncertain as I approach my 80th birthday and the world is struggling with a life changing pandemic. I have survived another aggressive cancer and major surgery. I am hoping others will continue to work to preserve this most beautiful planet.

Carol Holding 2020

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Croquet at Little Glebe

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