Just like Joan Bakewell, my Aunt Fanny has some strange ideas about anorexia: thank goodness no one listens to her
It could have been so different if my Aunt Fanny – a comely woman in her youth – had been an arts correspondent and broadcaster for the BBC in a period when there were so few women in such roles. However, I feel my aunt never regretted her choice of Southall and West Middlesex Library Services as a worthwhile career. Of course there was the added bonus that she could also express her more strident views in almost complete anonymity, outside of Southall at least.
Naturally her position in the library led to offers of more varied roles, being instrumental in establishing the mobile library under her banner, “Novels to the rural hovels”. She was also commended for her charity work in suggesting that the mobile library bus could be hired out for the subsequently very successful “Appeals on Wheels” charities on the days when the bus wasn’t on library business. In fact she was even recommended for a gong by the town clerk, who became extremely friendly with my aunt as the council meetings were held above the library and they shared at least a canteen.
Of course her life wasn’t without controversy. The local library was a magnet for many local celebrities including the then driving force behind the Southall Amateur Dramatic (SAD) Society, a Mr X as I’ll refer to him: no names, no pack drill for reasons that will become obvious. Sadsoc members would often visit the library’s drama section for inspiration for future productions, so it was almost inevitable that the dynamic Mr X and my aunt Fanny, a lifelong fan of the theatre, would become ‘close’. There were even rumours of a candlelit tryst between my aunt and the married Mr X in the Tandoori Tonight on the High Street. Many saw the intimate candlelit Indian restaurant scene in Sadsoc’s production of Macbeth (adapted and directed by Mr X) as a cathartic act – after all of the subterfuge – and an admission of that vindaloo-hot evening on Southall High Street.
Her stint as an Anne Summers rep and her parties will long be remembered in West Middlesex at a time when it was unheard of for librarians to even admit they had front bottoms. She was clearly way ahead of her time, not necessarily in the use and selling of vibrating toys, but in the self –publicity based on the notoriety that her brazen attitude courted, particularly after leaving lavishly illustrated leaflets on the library notice board advertising her parties and products.
Her left-wing politics and entertaining placards came to the fore during the Conservative government’s infamous ‘library cuts’, bringing her to the notice of the Southall North-North West Labour councillor. Ironically, having been active and successful in the re-electing of the Labour candidate in the Southall North-North West ward over four elections, probably my aunt’s greatest disappointment was not being selected as the “Voice for Older People” by Gordon Brown’s Labour government. She used to say that she was left wing and old and therefore uniquely qualified to take up the position. Had she been selected she felt it would have been a shoe-in to a peerage.
Perhaps it was therefore better that my aunt Fanny’s latest view, that all diseases or ailments containing the letter x in their name are invariably caused by the sufferers themselves, was to a small audience. I have to say that elevating someone to a position of influence and even a peerage based on tenuous and arbitrary qualifications means that people listen to what they say, even if it’s complete and utter bollocks.
