Meg

March, 2006

I recently received this from Meg via the Yahoo group:

“I do not think I can make the reunion much as I should love to see you all again and revisit Bedford. Unfortunately it is the weekend before we have hoardes of Young Farmers descend on the farm for their annual county field day followed by a disco. The big "clean up" and setting up ought to be taking place with their help the weekend of the 6th. I shall have to keep the peace and calm shattered nerves! I believe Rosemary suggested our own reunion at another date.”

While that may be sad news to those hoping to see Meg in London, I was gratified that she sounds so energetic. When I last heard from her, in December, she noted she was happy to have received a letter from me, “Because I was in hospital having just had my knee replacement “replaced.” When I went for a check-up to my neuro-surgeon, I convinced him that his operation on my spine had not cured my knee. An x-ray revealed that the bottom half of my implant was adrift and so causing considerable pain. By then I had other complications to sort out, including anaemia and so I did not have the operation until August. I am doing so much better now, but the recovery has been slow. I had a check-up on Thursday and the consultant said he was happy with it and I must just be patient as far as the residual swelling and localized pain is concerned.”

The days following the operation turned out to be happy: ”I had just been home for four days when our third grand-child arrived. Clare, who married Osama and lives in Sudan, had a baby daughter, Safya." Osama was present for the birth, but had to return to Sudan to finish up his medical studies. You can just imagine how delighted Meg was to have her new grand-daughter in the house as she recovered and how much she appreciated her daughter-in-law Jill coming to help out. When Meg wrote she was looking forward to John and Jill and the girls arriving for Christmas. Clare and Safya were to go back to Sudan shortly after that.

Since we have rumblings of an auxiliary reunion in Meg’s part of the world, maybe she can organize another disco!

September, 2005

In the first edition of the newsletter, Meg recounted the tragedy of losing all their animals to Foot and Mouth and becoming a farm with two dogs and a cat. The bright spot had been the birth of Charlotte, their first grand-daughter.

In her Christmas 2002 newsletter, Meg described a trip to Australia for her son Richard’s wedding and the huge amount of work they faced when they returned home, replacing a milking parlour and renewing buildings. Then, of course, there was the challenge of building up a new herd. “It is good to hear the men discussing the different animals as they calve and as they get to know them as individuals—I suppose it is like a mass adoption! We do frequently wonder why we have bothered as the milk just about pays and we are bombarded by experts with little practical experience with all sorts of wonderful advice as to how to run successful businesses in all the spare time they seem to think we have.”

But she must have had a little spare time, as she went on to give details of her work with Partners and Parenting courses and with the Mothers’ Union, including hosting women from Zululand and feeding young people at an all night event in the cathedral. She added a note to say that during 2002, four children were born, one to each of Barbara (Taylor’s) children. Four new grandchildren to whom Barbara would surely have been a devoted grandmother.

Meg didn’t send me a Christmas 2003 newsletter, but she sent it a year later together with the newsletter for 2004. If she had thought things couldn’t get any worse after the Foot and Mouth disaster, she was terribly and tragically wrong. I think Meg must have needed every scrap of the delightful sense of humor and resilience she shows in her letters just to get through 2003. The marriage of her son Richard came to an acrimonious end and while they were still dealing with the fallout, their son John, together with his wife Jill and little Charlotte were in a serious car accident, just after leaving home in Sheering en route to the isle of Wight. John was airlifted to hospital and when Meg and Will and their daughter Clare arrived, they found that Charlotte was safe, Jill was bruised and bloody, but John more seriously hurt. The hospital (incidentally my local one when I was growing up in Enfield) failed to diagnose John’s broken neck and the damage to several vertebrae. Fortunately after his discharge John’s GP was sufficiently suspicious to send him to a neurosurgeon. The beauty for the reader who gets two newsletters at the same time is to learn that by Christmas 2004, John was back at work and coping well in spite of periods of pain and Jill and John had a second daughter, Erin. But the intervening period of time, which I read about in the space of a few minutes, must have been so very onerous and worrying for Meg and Will.

2003 still had surprises in store for the Messengers. While they were returning from John’s sickbed, a pipe in their underground slurry system fractured and let the slurry into the drains. As soon as they discovered it, they addressed the problem. Meg’s wry sense of humor came through again: “ . . . after 37 years without problems we suddenly became the ‘rich cattle barons polluting the crystal river’ and were featured in the local press, radio, TV and Ceefax, not just for one week but until an action group had been formed to protect the environment from the likes of us! The EA have been very helpful as soon as they realised we were as appalled as anyone at what had happened. There was another spurt of building to track down and effect repairs as necessary. We have had a huge bill for cleaning up the river, but we still have to hear whether we will be prosecuted.” By Christmas 2004 Meg was able to add, “Sadly many inspectors and advisors make much more money than the farmers or their workers and so it is little wonder that no one wants to get up early to milk cows, muck out and feed animals. So far this year we have kept our slurry under control even in this very wet season. Will and Rich had to pay over nearly another £6,000 when they appeared in court in the New year, in addition to the huge clean up bill that had already been paid for.”

In 2003 Meg noted that her daughter Clare was working on a Master’s degree in International Law and Human Rights at Lancaster University and by 2004 Clare had graduated with distinction and was working for Save the Children in Khartoum with the possibility of being assigned to Darfur. Osama passed parts 1 and 2 of the Royal College of Surgeons exams and was facing a complicated registration process in the United Kingdom. He had returned to Sudan.

One development that took place in 2003 and which hadn’t had a happier outcome by 2004 was Meg’s health. Her back was damaged by a fall on black ice in February, 2003 and in March of 2004 she had surgery. After that she had severe pain in her knee and then an infection on the operation site was detected which required two weeks in hospital, followed by doses of intravenous and oral antibiotics. Ever the philosopher, Meg wrote that the constant trips to Newcastle for treatment at least afforded the opportunity to admire the Roman Wall as they went!

The year ended on a happier note, when Meg and Will celebrated their Ruby wedding anniversary with a lunch at home organised by Clare and the rest of the family. Her 2004 newsletter ends, “Will and I did have a mini holiday—a weekend in Edinburgh–which was an anniversary gift organised by Richard and it included a visit to the Royal Yacht Britannia and a Cliff Richard concert. The latter was some experience as it was out of doors on the Esplanade outside the castle. I could not manage to sit through it all, but Cliff was really remarkable and brought back some wonderful youthful memories. Once again we really appreciated the thoughtfulness of our family.” A good note on which to end, except to say that Meg added a postscript, “I am tired of being told to take life easy and rest while everything is so busy around me.” Let’s hope that the next news from Meg indicates that she is back to her old busy self.