Did any of you feature in the 1911 census? Not many I suspect. Well, Edith did... just! Born on census day April the 2nd ("I was nearly an April fool!"), her name had clearly not been decided. She is listed simply as "daughter". That daughter was to live through two world wars, all the demoralising harshness of the depression years of the late 1920s and 1930s and then had to cope with the years of rationing and austerity of the post World War Two period. That she survived and came up smiling, indeed laughing, was down to her smashing husband Tom, the faith and fellowship of their church and her own ability to see the best in all things. As she told me, "Life is for getting on with it!" .For over 60 years it has been my privilege to know and to be warmed by her company. Recently she said as I left her flat, "Don’t we laugh a lot!" Indeed we did.

Sometime during 1946 when I was aged 7, I have a clear memory of my grandmother hurrying me down Hollins Road in Hollinwood in Oldham passed the pit, the pubs and the mills and hurling me into the Hollins Road Methodist Mission to which she belonged and saying," I’ve brought our John and I’ll be back for him in an hour". Unknown to me we had passed the Tasker family home by the pit. We had passed near to the mills where Edith worked and we passed the pubs where neither Edith nor Tom could have been found! Whether Edith or Tom, Ian or Pat were there that day I don’t recall, but there is every possibility that they were. For them, as for me, that Methodist Chapel was to be our 2nd home. It was in that building and among those people that attitudes were formed, standards set, friendships made, fun enjoyed, tears cried and dried, prayers shared, learning encouraged, responsibilities given, organising, singing and acting talents tried .....and in some cases found wanting! It was in that place too that Edith met her Tom.

As a child Edith had been sent to the local Anglican church. She recalled how the services there were "dull, boring and incomprehensible" and how one day as a 15-16 year old she was walking home from such a service and had to pass the Methodist mission. There she saw old school friends leaving their service. She said, "They were all smiles, laughing and chatting. It was clearly a happy place". So Edith went home to announce to her mother that she was going to attend the Mission. Her mother said, "Tell your dad". She did. His reply was straight to the point. "I don’t care where you go as long as you go somewhere. You’re not hanging round on street corners!" It was one of her father’s best decisions. So Edith became a Ranter, a Primitive Methodist and as she told me "Ranters could sing, church couldn’t". Soon she was singing in the choir and teaching in the Sunday School, as one of her scholar’s recently reminded me. We used to talk about the old hymns and she recalled, "He will gather the gems for his kingdom........ bright gems for his crown" and "When the roll is called up yonder I will be there" .They were the hymns of the assurance of heaven and Edith had that assurance.
Edith’s memory was bright right to the end of her life and I loved to get her to tell me her stories. She took little persuading!! There is only a little space to recount some of them.
"When we were married we had 10 shillings (50p) between us. To put a sixpence (2½p) into the collection plate was to show off "!! I went to school on Incline Road. The headteacher was Mr Wood. When he was out and about with some of his pupils, people would say, "There goes Mr Wood and some of his little splinters!"

"Did you know who ‘Owd Palmer’ was? Do you know why I never touch alcohol? Because of ‘Owd Palmer’.

People used to stagger passed our front gate from the White Hart. ‘Owd Palmer’ was very bow-legged, so he walked with a stagger. After he’d been drinking he was a terrible sight. Then he had a stagger on top of a stagger. It put me off alcohol for life!" "Do you know why I don’t like cows? They used to pass our front gate (presumably not with ‘Owd Palmer’!) on the way to the abattoir. They frightened the life out of me when they put their head over the gate. I’ve never liked cows since." (As her daughter, Pat married a farmer and has been seen persuading reluctant kind to go off to market, the dislike is not genetic!)

Edith and Tom were generous people and I benefitted greatly from that generosity. They fed me, took me around the country in their little Austin A35, to the south coast, to the oily fumes of Oulton Park when Stirling Moss thrilled the crowds, to the Great Oak of Sherwood Forest, to the blistering heat of Rhyl and treated my sun-burn, to the beaches of Italy.... my first trip overseas. In so doing they widened the horizons of an Oldham lad who had hardly ever left the town. No wonder I’m so grateful.

Grateful too was the Oldham Church. Last April they celebrated the 50th anniversary of their new building and asked Edith to come over from Preston to cut their Birthday Cake. It seemed somehow that things had come full circle. She told me how overjoyed she was to be asked and how the memories of years ago came tumbling back. "Such happy days," she said. Edith was among those folk of that chapel who made our happy days too. They were the ones who did so with much care, with much prayer, with much diligence and with much humour. I shall always maintain that at that chapel we were loved into the Kingdom by such as Edith and Tom.

In her final days, her 99 years and 9 months had taken their toll. She told me she was simply too tired. Yet we laughed together to the end. I sat by her hospital bed and told her that Pat and Bill were on their way. She said to me that she was cold. "Will you tuck the blanket round my shoulders?" I did. "My hands are cold too". I held her hand until hers was warmer. "You know my nose is cold as well." I ran my finger down her nose. "My knees are so cold." "If you think I’m going to ferret under the blankets searching for your knees you can think again. That will be the moment Pat arrives and the police will be close behind!! "Her laughter was uncontrolled for 5 minutes. It is a precious memory among so many.
On the 21st of December Edith changed her membership quietly and peacefully. Boldly she has approached the eternal throne and claimed the crown through Christ her own; and in so doing is changed from glory into glory and in heaven has taken her place casting her little crowns before Him, she is lost in wonder, love and praise........... and smiling even more!

PS. Alas, being a stranger in a strange land, I lost my way to the crematorium, finishing up on the M6 travelling north. We were gratified to see a sign welcoming us to South Lancaster. We made it back for the refreshments and somewhere not very far away; I’m sure I heard Edith chuckling!