November 6th 2015

Happy Birthday Ro

It is my sister, Rosemary's, 60th Birthday today.  It is easy to think of nice things to say about her as she is one of the loveliest people I know; she differs from me so much in that respect that some find it difficult to believe that we are related!  With Anthony and me as incredibly annoying younger brothers she had every right to treat us with the disdain we deserved but, instead, she remained helpful and supportive throughout our childhood – with very occasional, and entirely understandable, short-lived periods of exasperation.

Like our mum, Rosemary has always been extremely practical.  She was the most fantastic mechanic and would embarrass many male friends by her superior know-how when it came to mending cars.  Her first set of wheels was, I think, a Ford Anglia, which cost her £25.  This seemed like a bargain at the time but my memory of that car is that its starter motor always sat in pieces in the kitchen as Rosemary re-ground its brushes.  She moved onto minis after that, a love affair lasting many years.  This proved very useful to me.  I remember being allowed to take my father’s beloved pink mini – our parents named all their cars and this one was called Heffalump after the Winnie the Pooh character – to go to a New Year’s dance with a girlfriend in Kent.  Half-way around the North Circular, and about forty miles from home, I was momentarily distracted looking at a map open on my lap and crashed into the back of the car that had suddenly stopped in front of me.
 
Heffalump's nose (trunk?) was severely dented and I was forced into the embarrassing position of having to phone home from a telephone box and ask for my mum, and more particularly Rosemary, to come and help.  I was resigned to being towed back home and missing out on my date but had underestimated Rosemary’s expertise.  Within minutes of arriving at the crash scene, she had pulled out the caved-in front grill, removed the distributor cap that was broken, replaced it with a new one that she just happened to have with her (one should never travel without a replacement distributor cap) and restarted the car.  In retrospect I wish she had not been so impressive as my date turned out to be a disaster, but that is another story.  Rosemary still has a love of cars but has learnt that it is much better to drive something that she does not need to repair constantly.  She now uses her practical skills to build houses and is currently on number four (or is it five?).
  
I have been trying to work out how to describe what comes to mind whenever I think about Rosemary.  Here is a short list: Her smile; her giggling fits; that booming laugh; the knowledge that were I to ask a favour of her she would not only accept but do so gladly; her desire to help; and her optimistic outlook, even at the age of sixty, when the rest of us complain about everything – or is that just me? 

I remember at Mary’s and my wedding that her father, Ian Roddie, likened a son-in-law to the subatomic particle, the neutrino, as an object that could be shown to exist but was in every other sense completely useless.  My sister Rosemary is more like a proton: a central stable influence – contolling those flibbertigibbet electrons – with a fizz of positive energy to counteract those chargeless, dour neutrons.

This special birthday has given me another excuse to pore over old family snaps and choose a variety of not too embarrassing photographs to put together into a slideshow, which is preceded by a lovely video put together by Tim and Ruth.