Scarlet Ibis

When I first read Peter’s tribute to Mum ahead of the funeral it was like a jolt of time travel, back to the Mum of my youth, an energetic, vibrant force living a full and active life, as a wife and mother, as a devoted daughter, a toiling worker and more besides, a vital and caring presence.

That was my Mum. Mum never stopped being my lovely caring Mum but Peter’s tribute demonstrated just how much her world had shrank, first almost imperceptibly over the years then much more suddenly, following the crippling triple whammy of losing her mother Jess, the Covid pandemic years and then that first horrible stroke at the beginning of 2022.

I remained firmly in denial for as long as I could after Nan’s death in 2014. As late as 2019 I had organised a special birthday treat for Mum: a new play in the West End with an amazing cast starring this white hot new actor Timothée Chalomet who Mum liked and Eileen Atkins of Doc Martin fame. We’d see the show, have drinks and a posh meal out and do the whole London experience, echoing what I had done for Dad’s 80^th that year, when we went to see The Tina Turner musical.

I was excited at having got great front row tickets in the face of enormous demand but Mum was clearly doubtful and anxious in the face of my success. It was then that my denial became apparent….come to think of it when had Mum last spent a night away from Malmsey House? 15 years? 20 years? Sure Mum did occasional day trips, to Bath and to restaurants and for walks in the countryside but nothing beyond that and certainly nothing involving a night away from home.

So I messed up there. Mum was never going to make it to London but to her relief she didn’t have to let me down, in the end Covid hit and the production never went ahead.

But back then Mum did go the whole wide world, as Peter’s travel tales from the 80s and 90s vividly showed me. And the story that I loved the most was of Mum in Trinidad & Tobago in 1986, on the trail of the famed scarlet ibis.

I’ll let Peter take it from here:

We did do a little long haul with a couple of excellent trips to Canada and one to Trinidad and Tobago, this was also memorable in being perhaps the only time I have ever seen Anne seriously rattled as generally she took everything in her stride. This was the occasion we visited the Moroni Swamp in Trinidad in search of the Scarlet Ibis colony. This required a boat to get to the centre of the swamp where they lived happily in the mangroves. I had made arrangements for an Indian to take us out and we met up with him at a shack in the middle of nowhere to start out. Before leaving Anne suddenly said to me that she needed the loo. Given the surroundings, I was not optimistic about this but asked the chap if there was a toilet. He seemed worried by the question and finally point down the track where there was a small tin shed.

Off went Anne, fairly reluctantly and disappeared into the shed. After a few seconds the door burst open and Anne came tearing out absolutely ashen faced. She blurted out “there are things moving in the pan, it is alive with things”. “It can’t be that bad” I said “Go and look for yourself” she said, so I did. It was worse than anything I have ever seen in all my travels and I won’t go into detail. Ever the stoic, Anne set off with me in the boat accompanied by mouse sized mosquitos and we did get to see those wonderful Ibis.

What an anecdote: Mum far from home and out of her comfort zone, getting down and dirty and battling giant mozzies with Peter and other hardened twitchers (birdwatchers) in tropical Trinidad. You go, girl.

There’s some fabulous pictures of Mum on that trip, looking so youthful and up for it but I wanted Peter to have something else to commemorate his adventuring plucky wife of that era. That led me to Yvette at Baobab Tree Mosaics and the commission of a scarlet ibis in coloured glass and mirror, the glass perfectly capturing the striking bright red plumage.

The scarlet ibis mosaic now sits in the tall borders behind the pond, keeping watch over Malmsey and in pole position to catch the morning sun. Not too prominent and semi-hidden because ibis shouldn’t too easy to find after all.

Indeed, if Mum can do it, we certainly need to journey to the Moroni Swamp for ourselves, to track down a roosting flock of those beautiful birds at sunset amongst the mangroves. Now there’s an epic trip to be planned. As a tribute to Mum’s exploits, naturally.