Betty

 My cousin Betty, or rather my father's cousin, was born in the village in 1912. She grew up in a rather poor family, and went to live with my grandparents in the city when she was eleven, to give her a better education and more opportunities in life. It is said that she didn't even have a toothbrush, but cleaned her teeth with soot. (As she also had a sweet tooth, it's rather surprising that when she died she still had nearly all her own teeth). The first horror at the city school was that the teacher called the register not with names, but French numbers; she hastily wrote the sound of 'her' number on the back of her hand. She left school aged fourteen, took the entrance exam (simple arithmetic, a bit of geography), for Cadbury's Bournville factory and went to work there. Somewhere around that time her name changed from Lizzie as she had been known in the family, to Betty. She worked there for fifteen years and in 1938 married an airman, and in one year in 1943 had a baby and lost her husband in a tragic accident.

 In 1948 she remarried and two years later gave birth to twins, one of whom died, something she grieved all her life. Another two children were born, one of those dying as a young man following epilepsy and a lobotomy to try and rectify the condition but which left him mentally impaired. But Betty was not someone with an air of tragedy and I was delighted to get to know her in the last decade or so, having tracked her down in my family history researches. She also gave me good reports of my grandparents with whom she lived in the city and whom I never met. Something I found very heartening.

The day we returned from Africa, Betty died. She was 99 and had been looking forward to the Queen's telegram but had at least been able to tell people she was in her hundredth year.Her cheerful smile and up-to-date-ness had been something we'd enjoyed on her visits back to the village, a place she had always called home.  We have had the funeral, the ashes have been buried here. It is the end of an era. I'm so glad that my, some might say, useless hobby, found her, and I only wish I had done so sooner.