I Only Came For The Music: 4 - Fussing About Names
...Five of the girls in my class at school were called Betty, and there were three Bettys living in our street. When I was born the newspapers and magazines were full of stories about Princess Elizabeth; apparently everyone called her Princess Betty...
Betty McKay continues her captivating life story.
I can never recall my parents entertaining when I was a child. I remember only one party and that was arranged by my two grown-up sisters. Dad had been a policeman, which set the whole family apart from the rest of the neighbourhood.
Nowadays I don't know any policemen, but prior to the Second World War, police policy discouraged friendship with neighbours and policemen were never employed in their home towns. Consequently, my parents saw very little of their relatives and had few friends locally.
My mother came to Warrington from Bermondsey, in the East End, and a small industrial town must have been a poor substitute for the great city and large extended family she left behind. She disliked living in the North, particularly after someone in her hearing referred to Cockneys as 'dirty Londoners.'
Father, though he was born in the Midlands, had spent many years abroad with the Army, far away from his home. Even though he had been retired for a couple of years, boys in our street always referred to my father as 'Bobby' Skinner, and when secrets were being shared the cry would go up: "Don't tell her, she might tell her dad!" I always thought to myself, 'as if he would care about their silly old secrets.'
I knew he was retired because we had two leather fireside armchairs and a clock with Westminster chimes to prove it. On the clock was a little brass plaque stating: 'Presented to P.C.William Skinner on his retirement from the Warrington Constabulary, July 1936.' Every Sunday evening at nine o'clock Dad would wind it up.
My eldest sister was called Violet - she hated her name and years later, when she was in her fifties, she changed her name to Eve. So I will call her that, because I think that is what she would prefer. Eve was quiet and sensible, and twenty three. I remember that, because two years before she had said she would like a dog for her 21st birthday present.
She chose an Aberdeen Terrier. From a puppy Gary was the most irritable animal I've ever encountered. Mum said this was due to in-breeding. Whatever the cause, on the night of the party, Garry was banished to the kitchen in case he got over-excited and bit someone.
Joan was nineteen, and her full names were Joan Gabrielle. She was proud of this fact and used to say things like: "Thank Heavens they never called me Violet or Betty." Mum had once said that Father had chosen the name Gabrielle.
Years later Joan would hint darkly to me that she thought she had been named after some French girl he'd known in France in the Great War. Though I really don't know what chance Dad had for an illicit love affair between fighting in the trenches and being wounded. How on earth a private soldier earning sixpence a day could support a French mistress was beyond my imagining, but then Joan was often subject to flights of fancy, and well over half a century later she still believed it.
I was eight and couldn't understand my sister fussing about names. Five of the girls in my class at school were called Betty, and there were three Bettys living in our street. When I was born the newspapers and magazines were full of stories about Princess Elizabeth; apparently everyone called her Princess Betty. Some of the girls in class were called Margaret, after Princess Margaret Rose. It was a close-run thing on girl's names the year I was born.
I suppose the party was to celebrate Joan's nineteenth birthday. I know she was the prime mover in organising it. If she wanted something badly enough she usually got it. I don't remember my parents taking any part in the proceedings.
