In spite of my patchy memories, I've always thought of Mrs Brown with a rose-tinged fondness. I've tried before to write of her, but found I couldn't. She morphed into something else, someone else entirely, a Jane Marple crossed with a woman showing signs of dementia. She was not Nan's Mrs Brown, nor mine as I remembered her.
But Mrs Brown, I discovered that April eve, was not Nan's either she belonged to Hounslow. A by-product of the Phoney War (in that it's how she came to be known in Hounslow and outside it), that strange eight-month period at the start of World War II where Britain was poised for a bombardment which didn't materialise. Government restrictions, however, were imposed. Movement was controlled, freedoms were limited. Theatres, cinemas, and other recreations were shut. Black-out curtains were made and each night secured in place. There was panic, there were queues. There was conscription for war work. Any of it sound familiar? At the time of listening, it echoed modern day, except the enemy we faced was invisible whereas theirs had gone quiet.
This inactivity on the Western Front was known by other names. Winston Churchill referred to it as the Twilight War, the press as the Sitting War, the Germans the Armchair War and the French the Funny War as the stalemate in Western Europe continued. The Home Front was braced but restlessness grew as nothing happened. People complained...of...the BBC: what they considered entertainment the nation did not, and shopping for food: women war workers struggled to buy what they needed. Again, here were echoes from the past to the present day.
And here is where for me it got interesting. For here Mrs Brown entered. Mrs Brown and her volunteer shoppers. She was found (by a BBC Radio Four broadcast) in a newspaper 'Phone up Mrs Brown' and the shopping will be done for you. Ration Books collected, items purchased and delivered. The scheme highlighted perhaps to facilitate something similar in other regions. It was a mere footnote, a briefest of radio mentions, but enough for me to make the connection (or maybe the leap) between Nan's Mrs Brown and Mrs Brown of Hounslow.
There was no description given of Mrs Brown of H. and I have no memory of any my nan gave me of hers, if indeed she ever gave one. Little girls are often quite content with whatever image of an 'old' lady they've conjured up: in my experience she's usually white-haired and wears a cardigan.
I had therefore nothing much to go on other than my wanting it to be. Why else would this Mrs Brown put in an appearance on the day after what would have been Nan's 96th birthday if it wasn't for this reason? And what's more I hadn't been forewarned; it was a surprise attack. No, not a very sensible approach you might think, but sense did kick in. I attempted further research, though to be honest I didn't really know where to start, but the majority of my searches returned results with Mrs Brown's Boys. And my Mrs Brown is definitely not her!
Next I tried relatives. But neither my mum or my uncle had heard of her – Nan's Mrs Brown or Mrs Brown of H. The Mrs Brown stories weren't told to them when they were small. My nan, according to my mum, didn't speak much (to her) of the war years or of her childhood, but she talked to me of working in a munitions factory and for an elder brother in the cinemas he managed, and of walking home from the theatre under black-out conditions.
The conclusion we've drawn is that the bond between grandparent and grandchild is just different. Mrs Brown was for me, me alone.
Picture credit: Rationing Notice, October 1939 (source: flashbak.com).
Written April 2020.
