042: Speech for Mum
“The tailor sat down, close over the fire, lamenting: “One-and-twenty buttonholes of cherry-colored silk! To be finished by noon of Saturday: and this is Tuesday evening. Was it right to let loose those mice, undoubtedly the property of Simpkin? Alack, I am undone, for I have no more twist!”. This is from the Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter, a book last read to me decades ago by mum. She wanted to give a set of the books to Ayla, my daughter. In the week after her death “I am undone. I have no more twist!” kept echoing around my mind as a strange epitaph.
Since mum’s death we’ve been blessed to receive many wonderful emails describing how people first met her. Antonia Till told us “Santa and I met at a teen dance in Birmingham when I was fourteen. That's sixty-four years ago. There she was, tall, slender, stylish, laughing, wearing the most perfect short dress…”. This led me to wondering how does a son first meet his mother? Look I know that sounds obvious but really how…
I don’t have an earliest memory of mum. What are your first memories of the world, sky, sun, moon, stars? That is your mother, my mother. A fixed point in the universe. We are aware this point doesn’t last forever and will cease. But for me that was in the same hypothetical way in which I know the universe will come to an end – that was until June 14th.
We have photos of me aged around 6 months sitting on mum’s tummy in a tent in the south of France in the early days of La Daby looking at the camera with a slightly surprised expression on my face. Probably wondering how I got there…
Due to the amazing garden at Lansdowne road Mum and Dad didn’t feel the need for a weekend country cottage. Instead they thought about somewhere in France for the holidays. The Cote d’Azur – St Tropez and Cannes – were too expensive and so they looked between Marseille and Toulon. In a week they found the plot of land owned by three children of a French architect who sold the land at a bargain to escape inheritance tax. I think it was bought in 1972. Initially there was only a tumbled down old cabin and overgrown terraced land with a multitude of pine trees. Mum was the architect and supervised the construction. They initial built the pool and Rebecca’s house for Dad’s oldest daughter. Jemima’s house was started without proper plans and from what I understand was designed to hug the terraces but instead was built with a cave – because the mason/builder thought it needed one. He was right. The next house built was the tower – my tower. My earliest memory is wandering around the tower as it was being built watching mum chatting with the builders, who she had incorporated as extended family. I remember being given a ride, which must have been oked by mum, at around the same time, aged 4 or 5, on the motorcycle of a heavily bearded but delightful builder – a wonderful experience for me. Tabitha’s house was finished a bit later resulting in four cottages for the four of us. Her generosity to us meant she could never build her own house, included on the initial plans. These four separate and separated houses is the wonder of La Daby and the beauty of her overarching vision. It is a place where groups of families can holiday and live, eat, drink, swim, and laugh together and then go back to their own private space. It IS loved by all of us Burrills and so many people and I think many of you have stayed there over the years and enjoyed it in the way mum intended, quirks and all.
The last 44 years of La Daby would have been impossible without mum. She has physically toiled on the land regularly pruning olive trees, cutting wood, planting gardens, designing watering systems and so on. If there was a 44 year composite photograph of mum at La Daby she would be everywhere. I doubt there would be a single square foot of space without her in it including the roofs of all the houses. It is a place which is a 100% Santa. Her influence is clear everywhere, from the ahead of it’s time tower with solar heating which is much loved by her son, still confused by it’s bachelor-pad design, through to the perfectly-mum imperfection of the door of one houses being situated under the roof gutter resulting in a waterfall on your head when it rains. Carina, my wife, has vivid memories of mum picking figs from the roof of the cabinon only a few years ago. Carina thought she was nuts and was going to hurt herself, but at the same brave, fearless and independent. Mum was a horse you could take to water but only if it had decided to go their first.
The stories about mum, La daby and the South of France are infinite. My favorite are all those which demonstrate her stubborn determinedness in the face of suboptimal information. One of our favourite places near La Daby we call the Happy Valley which consists of a hiking trail following a small river with a waterfall plunging into a deep ice-cold green-blue pool. Mum thought this trail was a back route to the Grotto of Mary Magdalene and so every holiday we would go hiking and the older we got the further we would go. Finally after many years we got to a ridge which should have been in the region of the grotto. No sign of it and on reviewing the map it was impossible to get to the grotto via this route. Thus years spent following an impossible dream had led to wonderful walks and the discovery of an unforgettable location. Truly a tale of “enjoying the journey”.
Of course my most special memory of La Daby and mum is of her walking me up the aisle on the land to get married to my wife in front of our friends and family.
I’ve just come back from France. There with my wife and daughter for the second time as a family. It is wonderful and very very hard. The death of my mum has left me heartbroken. I look around and I know that mum was instrumental, no not that, she was Romulus of La Daby. It would not exist without her. Her La Daby legacy for her children is far more than the physical property. It is the gift of freedom she gave us to explore, play and feel connected as siblings. The kindness of unexpected fresh baguettes and croissant left for us in the morning, and the liberation to be first on the dance floor before the French. Mum’s greatest gift was therefore her love, given unconditionally to so many people but most definitely her children and grandchildren. In the last few months it has become clear that she has given so much more to people whether old friends or those met briefly in passing. The effect is such that despite the loss of mum - the individual - she truly lives on in us all. She lives on in La Daby and the many memories, both past and future, created there.
Josh posted this memory on Monday 12th September, 2016
