| Brenda by Petr Novák, Wikipedia |
If you’re lucky
enough to know any nice people over 60 who grew up in large, loving families of
limited means, ask them about whether anything dangerous happened to them as
kids. Indiana Jones will look like a
lightweight by comparison.
From my own
family, where my father was the eldest of 12, there was the time time my
seven-year-old Aunt Judy fell out of the hay mow and broke her other arm. (The first one was already broken by an
encounter with a cow as I recall). Or when Margie burned her back sitting on
the stove, or Tommy got his fingertip chopped off in the fan blade, or Maryanne
almost died of whooping cough. As a variation, you can ask your sources about
the temperature of their house in winter (Freezing!) or the foods they regarded
as treats. (Fat drippings will play a
part).
And
so on to our subject for today, Brenda Blethyn’s 2006 memoir Mixed Fancies. I pulled it out of my mailbox
when I got home from work last Friday. By midnight I had just about finished
it.
Brenda (I feel on
a first name basis with her now), as you surely must know, is a celebrated
British actress. She was born “Brenda Bottle” to her 42-year-old mother in
1946, the tail ender in a family of nine children. In her early years the Bottle family lived in
rented accommodations in Ramsgate, a seaside community in Kent in southern
England. Their home was of a sort that would now be commonplace only in the
third world: one cold water tap, outhouse in the garden – with no door on it – three rooms badly heated. (The poverty of post-war Britain never fails
to shock me – it wasn’t that long ago and the Bottle story is hardly unique).
Brenda presents
the perils and privations of her childhood with honesty but without any sense
of grievance. She didn’t know enough
about sex at eight years old to understand what the pedophile she encountered
in the alley was doing. The “clouts” that her mother administered were part of
the picture, as was Mum’s alcoholism. Brenda seems to have accepted these things
like so much bad weather, and no more to be lamented than bad weather. She doesn’t remember the time she fell into
the fire as a toddler, though she was told that she had. She does remember the time she and her
brother, having been left home alone, almost burned the place down trying to
make it cozy for their parents.
There were offsets
to the hard times: treats of movies (where her mother had the bright idea of
bringing the wet laundry in the winter so it could be dried on the radiators in
the dark theater), and boxes of “mixed fancies.” That is, little cakes, 12 to a
two-shilling box . (Brenda didn’t care for the one with the coconut, but the
cream horn was coveted by all the children). And yes, meat drippings.
It wasn’t til
Brenda was 14 that the family achieved indoor plumbing. Around that same time her teachers,
recognizing her intelligence, recommended further academic education. Her parents deemed a secretarial course more
practical, however, and so a secretary she became. She married Alan Blethyn and soon divorced
him, but no hard feelings. It was during
that short marriage that she was recruited as a reluctant substitute for a play
being put on by her work-place drama troop…
The stories are told
in rapid succession and in episodic fashion, which is why I had such trouble
putting the book down. It’s clear that the genetic combination of Mum and Dad
was a happy one. The children were good looking and sturdy despite their toothbrush
free existence – lots of family photos
are included. And in the end, they loved one another and love and gratitude are
the dominant themes.
Brenda is currently famous as the star of the
British TV detective series Vera. It is because of Vera that you are reading this review. It’s where I became a Brenda fan, watching
every episode at least three times, then chasing down her film appearances (she’s
excellent in everything), and now reading her memoir. Because it was published
back in darkest 2006, Mixed Fancies
omits the great success of Vera,
which debuted in 2011, but you just got the highlights on that here, so
probably not to worry – or maybe she’ll decide to write a sequel. It would be
worth reading, especially as it’s not every actress who gets a career-defining
part in her 60s.
The thing that
makes any story compelling is the arc of the characters. When a likeable
character makes a big swing upwards, as it did in Brenda’s case, it’s a lot of fun
to go along for the ride. Mixed Fancies never going to be taught
alongside Hamlet or Middlemarch but that wasn’t the point.
If you want to know how Brenda Blethyn got the way she is, here you go. Even if you’re not so curious about that, the
book is so full event and charm and good humor that you’d have to be the kind
of person who doesn’t like ice cream, or maybe cream horns, not to enjoy
it.
