Mum
The first and original founding member of neighbourhood watching… Mavis’s favourite pastime was observing and listening to everything! It has to be said that she loved a good gossip!
And it continued towards the very end, Mavis would love nothing more than to ‘listen in’. Even when gravely ill and confined to her bed in Sandiacre Court Care Home, she complained to Nigel, her youngest son, that his talking was hurting her head and that she couldn’t hear which size black bra the resident in the room next door was going to keep from the options brought in by her daughter!...(It turned out to be the 42D for anyone interested!)
Born on 9th July 1937 to Phylis and Harold Turner, Mavis grew up at 41 Canal Street, Long Eaton with her sister Maureen. Although she enjoyed school and was regularly involved in sports and activities, by her own admission she found academia challenging and would often say that she wasn’t clever, although that really wasn’t the case. She had natural wisdom and astuteness and she was also a very practical person with boundless energy, she was always keeping busy.
Having grown up with a close family in and around Long Eaton, one day she met and was immediately dazzled by a handsome Serbian former soldier, Dragoljub Ilic. What a chance meeting….he had been fighting for the resistance in Serbia and was then enlisted by the Allied forces and engaged to help Europe recover after World War II. Making his way through Italy and Germany he found himself in England and was working in Long Eaton at Sheet Stores sewing sails for yachts when they first met.
Married in 1956 to Dragoljub (known as Peter, as no-one could pronounce his real name), Mavis and Peter lived at 41 Canal Street before buying their home at 50 Carlton Road, Long Eaton and living their lives there together.
Whilst at 50 Carlton Road, they had two sons, Adrian born in 1961 and Nigel in 1964.
With the boys growing up, Mavis and her sister Maureen, her husband Harold and Mavis’s nieces Yvette and Michelle would convene at Christmas and holidays for family gatherings which included quizzes, food and fun along with her favourite tipple of an Advocaat Snowball. In short these fun and memorable events can be summed up by the three ‘S’s…. Snowball, Sunburn and Trifle….. yes Trifle… because Mavis’s trifle was simply Superb!
Mavis often showed her love and commitment to the family in the most unlikely of situations;
Although not a huge pet lover she demonstrated her loving and huge heart when she bottle fed a litter of baby rabbits….getting up to feed them regularly through the night and creating a life-long memory of her for her sons.
In the 1970’s, well out of her comfort zone and with much anxiety, she and Peter, took Adrian and Nigel on a crazy, mad and dramatic trip to Serbia……by train. They contended with the heat, smelly cheese and armed guards with dogs on the train, Peter falling off the train due to his excitement on arrival and then with the horrific realisation that there were no toilets or bathrooms in the village! Mavis showed the boys how dynamic, exciting and different the world can be if you give it a go…. although when she asked for the toilet at a house they were visiting, she was simply taken to the barn and left behind the closed doors. Safe to say, she was not impressed.
Thank you mum, it was fun, it was a blast… you and Dad were the super glue in our family.
Mavis worked hard for so many years at Cox and Moore’s Jumper factory and at Sharp & Nickel’s Brandy Snap Factory, so that she could afford to treat her family, especially her sons and Grandchildren, who meant the world to her. She wanted them to have the chances and opportunities that she never had when she was growing up.
However, amongst all this there were two down sides for her sons…. in particular her unfortunate music choices… with regularity David Essex, Tom Jones and Julio Iglesias would be heard throughout no. 50, also no doubt through the walls of her neighbours at no.52 (sorry Margaret and Morris). She would also enjoy going to their concerts… we dread to think how many of her knickers were thrown at Tom!
Also, the second down side… constantly talking…. for Mavis would surely have been the world champion… it’s an even greater skill when you can converse with your mother and sister in the same room whilst holding three completely different conversations simultaneously…..this was demonstrated on regular basis at 41 Canal Street over a stewed cuppa dispensed from a teapot sporting a colourful striped knitted tea cosy.
Mavis and Peter both adored their Grandchildren, they helped out and looked after them as much as they could. With Joseph and Hannah living in Spondon and Charlotte, Cameron and Georgina living further afield near Worcester, Mavis would travel using her free railway pass… another excellent opportunity to meet people… for a chat or a gossip!
Over the years, Mavis and Peter would go on holiday to Devon or Cornwall with Nigel and his family which led again to drama, adventure and accidents… she was once so intently listening to a conversation taking place in the ladies toilet of a donkey sanctuary that she fell and cut her leg… thank goodness for copious amounts of germolene and band aid!! On another occasion she was distracted in a shop, missed a step, slipped and fell breaking two ribs…. Nigel soon learned to always look for the location of the nearest hospital when booking a holiday home.
So how can I summarise Mavis, a mother, a wife, an auntie a grandmother … it’s simply not enough really, as she was so much more… a defender, a rock, a voice of reason, a supporter… and the heartbeat of this family.
We will always be grateful for all that she did for us, for her love, her caring, her humour, her generosity and for always being there when we needed her.
Now she can go and have a catch up with Dad… she will have a lot to say, so watch out Dad, time to turn the hearing aid down once again!
Nigel, Carole and Family
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