Memories of Bridget

My auntie Bridget died recently and I was able to speak at her funeral --which managed to be what her diverse family had hoped: a celebration of her life as much as, if not more than, grief at her death.

These are slightly expanded notes of what I said.

My sisters, my brother and I grew up in a fairly well off suburb of south east London. It was not at all a multicultural environment.

Every now and again Bridget visited us from wherever she was living then: after a time in Helsinki, Finland, she lived in Switzerland, and then especially Athens. Her visits brought a feeling of a wider world into our house, perhaps an exotic spirit. (Our father was a businessman and he travelled frequently, but the postcards and airport or hotel gifts he came back with didn't have the same effect).

Bridget brought stories from another world, of different ways of living and understanding things. She spoke, for example, of a good friend who was a Black South African woman, a committed communist. 

Looking back, she was a bit like the aunt in the Graham Greene story and film, Travels with my aunt: a glimpse into an exciting universe beyond the suburbs.

I think she was a significant influence on us, on me at least, in broadening horizons, the idea that you can live in a bigger world, not just one neighbourhood or city. It was only in the last few days that I have wondered if her example partly inspired my move to live in Barcelona in 1993.

I said my auntie, and she was our auntie, although we had no biological relationship. As my mother Gay explained at Bridget's funeral, Gay's parents (my grandparents in Wales) and Bridget's parents were close friends. Even so Gay and Bridget only became really close when they were adults. But from then on, she definitely became part of our (non biological) family. Bridget was part of our family Christmas, part of our lives -- though not only ours, as we saw clearly at her funeral.

Music

In the 1960s, we had at home records by The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and some very dire LPs with cover versions of recent top twenty songs.

But Bridget brought other very different sounds into our house. According to my memory, firstly Simon and Garfunkel, with the Sounds of Silence, then Bridge Over Troubled Water, which I still like. 

But then she brought us Santana: the Third Album, then Caravanserai. So at the age of 11 or 12 I became a big fan of Santana. At the age of 14, my sister (one year younger) and I went to our first ever concert; Santana at (I think) Hammersmith Odeon. (I now regret not having paid more attention to the distraction of the support act: Earth, Wind and Fire. At the time my appreciation of soul was limited to Motown Chartbusters; fine as far as it goes, but even so...)

And then, of course, Bridget started bringing us Greek music; the soundtrack of the Costa Gavras film, Z, by Mikis Theodorakis, then songs by the great Maria Farandouri...

Not only that, Bridget also played the piano we had at home. She played, of course, totally unconventionally: what she called "piano improvisoire" or some such expression in unconventional French. Her playing whatever she felt like, unconstrained by conventions like musical keys or time signatures, inspired me to try my hand. I became an inexpert but occasionally enthusiastic self taught pianist. (At one point I did learn to play a fair bit of Bridge Over Troubled Water, though this was a betrayal of the improvisoire ethos!)

Politics

On my first independent holiday, at the age of 18, I went on interrail to Greece (at the time, this meant some 24 hours crossing Yugoslavia). I stayed some days at Bridget's flat in Athens, where there was more music (often from reels of tape she played on a big old fashioned tape recorder), and we ate incredible food on the terraces of different tavernas.

She took me to a concert on a hill, where we saw Farandouri sing. Only later did I realise that it was almost certainly a festival of the Greek Communist Party, just a few years after the end of the military dictatorship. If Bridget explained something at the time, then it meant nothing to me.

On a later visit, I met her then Greek Communist boyfriend. I think he had been a political prisoner, or maybe in exile, but anyway he was an impressive figure in his way: very charming, but totally sexist and totally Stalinist. We argued a lot over flagons of retsina wine that they had bought by the kilo (that detail always stayed in my mind) on the way to spend a few days in his summer house on the coast. I didn't have clearly formed politics then but I think I learnt something about the strengths and weaknesses of Stalinism, and it confirmed my rejection of it. (Having been born in Finland, which Stalin tried to invade in accordance with his pact with Hitler, probably had vaccinated me against illusions in "Russian communism".)

Much later, living in Hackney, Bridget was involved in the Stop the War coalition, and antiracist struggles, movements led by left activists whose vision was very different from that defended by Stalinism. But this was never a problem for Bridget; for her the struggle for rights and social justice was the thing, not the labels.

Around this time I used to see Bridget at the Marxism event, organised every year in London by the Socialist Workers Party. It was a strange experience to bump into your auntie at a revolutionary festival, as she was rushing to a meeting about the revolution in Africa or something similar...

Bridget was an incredible person, who left a mark on many of us. The world is shit in many ways, but Bridget was one of those people who made it a better place just by being there, and she fought politically most of her life to make it a much, much better place.

PS

I had prepared the above ideas before the funeral. Bridget's (biological) niece Sarah, who I had never met before, spoke before me. She also described in very similar terms how her visits to Bridget's Athens flat had impressed her, and about her improvised piano playing.

And following the funeral I was delighted to meet a person who turned out to be the daughter of Bridget's great South African communist friend. She also referred to her auntie Bridget.

The variety of the attendees at the funeral proved once again how much she had meant to how many different people.

Poem

Bridget's niece, Sarah, read this poem at the funeral.

“WARNING” BY JENNY JOSEPH

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people’s gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.