Mary Patricia Saul – my mother

Pat, as she was always called, was my mother. She was born in Higher Walton, Preston on September 27, 1925. She was eleven when she moved with her parents and elder brother, Bill to Blackburn. I think this may have been because Robinson Heys, the asphalting company for which my grandfather and uncle worked relocated to Blackburn. At that time in the 1930s jobs were difficult to come by so it made sense to move with the company especially as it involved two jobs.

Pat went to secondary school in Blackburn, making friends with Theresa Nolan, a friendship which lasted all their lives. Another friend came from Spain fleeing the Spanish Civil War. It was Pat who was charged with helping to integrate her into the class. By a strange coincidence this woman’s son sat next to me in class thirty years later.

After leaving school Pat worked at Mullard’s, a manufacturing plant which produced components for the rapidly expanding market of radio and television. The factory had started before the war with 28 employees but had expanded to over 3000 by 1945. After myself and my brother were born Pat worked part-time in the evenings.

By the 1960s Pat had left Mullards and started work as a shop assistant in Blackburn. She worked in a couple of shoe shops before finding her niche at Boots the chemist where she worked until she retired.