Margaret Hathway-Tibbs (2 Apr 1935 - 8 Jun 2017)

In loving memory of Margaret Hathway-Tibbs who sadly passed away on 8th June 2017 - here are a couple of tributes from friends (Nora and Penny).

NORA's TRIBUTE:
She was born Margaret Smith 82 years ago in London on the 2nd April 1935. She had a much younger sister, Angela. She was very proud of her mother, who taught her a lot and was a wonderful cook; and of her grandmother who lived to be 99 in a top floor flat with no water supply. Margaret wanted to reach 100.

Her parents ran a busy restaurant, and she would choose from the menu for her meals after school. She learnt all about good quality fresh ingredients, properly presented plates & how to carry 3 or more plates at once.
(She never forgot how to do this & scared the daylights out of us shuffling from the kitchen to her chair with her walking stick in one hand, a coffee cup & saucer in the other hand and a plate of food balanced on her forearm – until just a few months ago.)

She was in the London Blitz, and walked past bombed out houses on her way to and from school. She was evacuated to Horbury in West Yorkshire for a bit, she hated it.

She was always creative with an eye for detail. At 17 she worked in a bakery making ‘petit fours’ for Buckingham Palace which all had to be perfect and stacked correctly and ready for collection at the same time every day, or there were royal reprimands!

She married Albert Hathway in 1955 and Mark was born. It broke her heart when she couldn’t take Mark with her when the marriage ended. But – in 1960 it was pretty impossible to live in London as a female, working, single parent.
She always worked hard.

One job was as the chief receptionist at the A&E department at Guys hospital, working with people and under pressure. She loved it!

She did amateur dramatics, making her own costumes. She was also a trained singer and became involved in a jazz band. (The band once played at a big award ceremony and she was asked to step in to present the awards when Lady someone-or-other let them down. There was a bit of a mix up and she was introduced to the crowd as The Lady Margaret, and driven round in an open topped car giving people a royal wave. She was in her element!)

She had a breakdown later in the ‘60s, when someone let her down badly, and she was put into a mental hospital, for about two years. This had a big impact on her life and was something she felt strongly about.
They gave her ECT Electroconvulsive Therapy - she knew it was making her ill. – she pleaded with them not to – telling them they were going to kill her.

Well they nearly did! After the last ECT treatment it took her three days to wake up, and she was left with epilepsy for nearly twenty years.
Before discharge – she had to be given a pass – as inmates weren’t allowed outside the gates. She still has it – it says:

This is to certify that
.. Margaret Hathway ..
is sane and able to pass through the gate.

She used to tell everyone she had a certificate to say she was sane & we didn’t!

She moved to Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire and ran a shop selling children’s clothes.
She started breeding oriental cats and building her amazing knowledge of antiques. She became well known in the antique world as a collector of dolls, teddy bears and basketry and for her knowledge of antique linen.

I think it’s through antiques, that she met Dennis Tibbs, a widower. They fell in love, married in the ‘70s, and Margaret moved to Solihull. They worked the antique markets together, and that’s how I met them forty years ago. My three daughters, then little, may remember Dennis driving them round the block in his Austin 7. (was it?)

Dennis grew sweet peas for Margaret, every year – but not red ones – as red and green triggered her epilepsy. But they only had nine years together until Dennis died of cancer.

Margaret had been a mature student at Bourneville School of Art & Crafts and persuaded me to join the City & Guilds Basketry class there. She’d already passed her City & Guilds in Toymaking and in Embroidery, both with distinctions – of course.

Everyone there knew Margaret and her artistic ability, although untrained, and respected her for her own work, and for how she shared her skills, supporting others to work more with colour and to present their work properly.
Margaret & I both loved basketry and Citroen 2CVs, and we each owned a few 2CVs over the years.

When Margaret’s daytime epilepsy went away and she was able to drive, she ‘discovered’ driving – especially driving a 2CV – with the roof rolled back! She was free to go places and became very well known in Embroidery circles for her work, her knowledge, and as a teacher and was a very popular speaker at guild meetings.

She sold much of her work, which included teddy bears, machine embroidery, felt bags, and many other things.
Vogue wanted to do a feature on her bridal head pieces, and Alan Titchmarsh interviewed her about her work on (was it) Pebble Mill at One.

She had knowledge and expertise in so much: Cats, embroidery, antique linen, dolls, teddy bears, toys, Victorian & Edwardian nursery collectables, dolls houses, miniatures, basketry, modern ceramics, textile design and of course in gardening. She judged exhibits at shows – cats, cushions, cakes – whatever.

But Margaret, being Margaret, moved with the times and loved modern design and styling and artists, and started to fill her house with new modern pieces.

When she gained over 20 life limiting health conditions she refused to give in to them, and always tried to be positive, even when going to all her hospital appointments.
She’d sit in the waiting room doing her knitting and tell people off for moaning about having to wait for hospital transport – reminding them it was free and it was safe.
She’d flirt with her consultants – to take the edge off why she had to see them. And was even proposed to last year in one clinic waiting room – the nurses loved the romance of it. She turned him down, gently.

She collected friends like she collected things – always ‘performed’ for her ‘public’ and loved it that the local children called her – ‘that fat old lady with all the rings’.

She struggled though – as she became less able to do everything she wanted to, and it was incredible how positive and jokey she always stayed even though this meant she was sometimes upset when some didn’t realise how ill she was.
(She liked it when Spike Milligan, another affected by depression, had put onto his headstone the words – ‘I TOLD YOU I WAS ILL!’)

I’ve tried to share some of what I knew about her – but there’s so much I’ve had to miss out.
I feel privileged to have known her.
She was a good friend
– there when I needed it
– sharing her wisdom with me
– teaching me to look at things properly
– and making me laugh at life.
Margaret was a force of nature – a one off – unforgettable.
We’ll miss her.

PENNY's MEMORIES:
When I first met Margaret, 22 years ago, she was standing outside her house – a robust, friendly figure welcoming us to the Lane.
In those days, she was flying all over the place in her quirky 2 CV: over to Solihull, up and down motorways to various galleries, meeting friends for lunch and attending embroidery guilds.

Margaret was the life a and soul of any gathering. She loved to talk and she was highly entertaining.

Over the years we gradually became friends and gradually her health began to deteriorate but she always had a plan to get round the new difficulties. When the doctors told her to walk as much as possible to keep her mobility. She bought a dog, Alice, a whippet who certainly kept her on her toes.

She once told me, when I was on the verge of retiring, that I needed hobbies for the active days of my life and hobbies for the days when I wasn’t so mobile. This is of course what Margaret did herself and when she couldn’t go out so much and hospital appointments began to outnumber social occasions, she turned to artistic pursuits. Her abstract embroidery, “Earth from Sun” was selected for the Open Exhibition at Loughborough Town Hall a few years ago, which gave her a great sense of pride and rightly so. She also started knitting and everyone received a
scarf for Christmas. She always had a plan.

She was a brilliant garden designer and though she could not so the work herself she acquired a gardener and with his help created the garden she wanted – complete with bog garden, raised beds and mature trees. After all, she said
realistically, “there’s no point in planting young trees, I’ll no longer be there to appreciate them.

The house and garden were always a priority and each was to become a work of art in her scheme of things. We celebrated a milestone in that scheme on her 80th birthday when she held open house to her friends.

Margaret was my expert. I consulted her whenever I needed help with my knitting, gardening or baking or if I needed help with a fancy-dress costume. She would say, “just leave it with me and I’ll sort it out or look it up” She always did.

Phil and she had a Christmas ritual, when he baked his first mince pies of the season, she would get one to sample and shortly afterwards the telephone would ring and he would get his marks out of ten. She was always honest. “I used to be a judge,” she said, “so if anyone asks me my opinion, the judge in me comes out”.

Even in the last weeks of her life, knowing that the doctors would not be able to do much to help her, Margaret had a plan.

The pond was to be fixed and she was in the process of gathering plans for this. She could still walk the few yards to the pond and it would give her pleasure. More ambitiously, she planned to get a new battery for her mobility scooter, practise and then get out more. She never gave up.

She remained to the end resolute, fiercely independent and humorous – a brave
example to us all a life well lived.