A time to honour mums everywhere

And here, Bolton-born best-selling novelist Ruth Hamilton, alias Linda Girling, writes exclusively for the Bolton Evening News about her own mother, and just what she meant to her

My mother made world of difference

I WOULD like to introduce you to a lady -- and I use that word advisedly -- who was born here in Bolton in 1913, just about a year after the sinking of the Titanic.

As an adult, she was tiny, five feet and two inches, with Titian hair and a smile that could melt the coldest heart.

She also had a temper that could strip paint and curdle milk, but her humour made up for that. She was my mother.

I am one of the luckiest women in the world, because I had a mother who made a difference.

Frances Evelyn Nixon, previously Girling, nee Higgins, was a total enigma.

She loved opera, clog-dancing, Richard Tauber, Winston Churchill, the comedian Al Read, Southport, Bette Davis, Charlie Chaplin, ballroom dancing and the Times Crossword.

She read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Catherine Cookson, the Reveille and the cornflakes packet.

Her handwriting was poor, the product of an inadequate education, but her brain was as sharp as a razor and her spelling was a great deal better than mine.

For 15 years, since I began writing novels, I have been searching for her. She is Molly, Nancy, Ivy, she is Tilly Povey in Matthew and Son. She is my strength, my anger and my humour -- she gave me everything.

When I passed my eleven-plus, she dragged me up to school, no bus fares, we had to walk. The tears streamed down her face as she told the headmistress that I could not go to the Mount (St Joseph's), that it could not possibly be afforded.

The headmistress cried, too. "This child will be something," Miss Shannon said.

I already was something. I was the daughter of a woman who cared.

Mam was a doffer. She took me into the mill once and thrust me against a wall. The heat was awesome, the noise unbearable.

Then she pushed me out on to the landing. "I never want to see you in a place like this again," she said, "so get home and do that homework." Such power, such determination.

Every penny in the house went on her three girls. We were special and she told us so.

We would never wear a pinny, would never work in a factory. To this end, she deprived herself of everything. I seldom saw her eat -- she had always had hers earlier in the scullery, or she would eat later.

The saddest memory is her wardrobe. Had it been completely empty, it could not have been as unbearable as the reality.

Reality was two dance dresses, one in black, sequined tulle, the other in emerald green with a matching stole. These she wore to mill dances.

The rest of her clothes, work skirts and aprons, were stored folded up downstairs. She never learned to dance properly and I can't remember why.

When her youngest daughter was qualified as a nurse and midwife -- yes, Susan wore pinnies of a sort, I suppose -- Mam went upstairs, lay down and died.

She was 55 years and 4 days old and I was eight months pregnant with her first grandchild.

We all went to the grammar school. While those two dresses grew too old to wear, Mam gave in and took what she thought of as charity.

The people of Bolton clothed and fed Mam's three daughters and paid for us to be educated. Alice is now a head teacher in Cardiff. Susan, the youngest, died two years ago in New Zealand.

And still, I search for my mother, try to work out what she was, who she was, why she deprived herself so cruelly.

And, as I write, little bits of her come back. "Look at me when I'm talking to you." "Do you want a good hiding?" (Was the reply to that meant to be YES?)

It was she who taught me to read, she who introduced me to the classics, she who gave me my love for music and poetry.

I cannot express in words my gratitude to her. But I can thank her and hope that somewhere, on a white cloud, a small woman sits and looks at me now.

And I suppose she'd say, "Stand up straight and take some of that muck off your face."

Bye, Mam. And thanks so much.