Reid.Elisabeth.11.8.1992
From Livesretold.co.uk
Life story of Elisabeth Reid started by her father, Alex Reid, in January 2008.
Related life stories:
Grandfather: Reid.Philip.12.1.1901
Father: Reid.Alexander.11.1.1941
Brother: Reid.Philip.30.1.1989
Nephew: Creswell.Jocelyn.26.5.1999
Contents |
Introduction
This life story of my daughter Lizzie Reid was started in 2008, when she was fifteen and we were living at 27 Millington Road, Cambridge. She would cycle off every day to the Perse School for Girls, usually with her friend Jenny Granroth, who lives just round the corner in Selwyn Road. Before telling Lizzie's story, a few words about my wife Sian and myself.
Sian is from Wales and speaks Welsh. Her father Emrys Roberts joined the bar and served in the RAF during the Second World War. After the war he was elected Liberal MP for Merionethshire. He lost his seat in the next election, and and spent the rest of his career with Tootal, rising to be a senior Board member. Sian's mother Anna Tudor came from a well known farming family in Montgomeryshire. Sian was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, Altricham Grammar School, Bristol University, and the London Business School. She worked for the Wales Tourist Board, Resurgence Magazine, British Telecom, and Legion Telecommunications. She also worked as a tutor in business studies at the Open University.
My father Philip Reid was from a Scottish family with connections to India over several generations. My mother Louisa was a Luttrell from Dunster in Somerset. I was educated at Winchester College, Trinity College Cambridge, and University College London. I worked for 11 years for British Telecom, then in venture capital, and latterly at the Royal Institute of British Architects.
At the time of writing, in 2008, Sian and I are both immersed in local government. Sian is a Liberal Democrat City Councillor, and is the executive member with responsibility for Growth and Climate Change. I am a Liberal Democrat County Councillor.
Sian and I were married in February 1988. Lizzie was our second child, Philip having been born in 1989. It was my second marriage, and I have two grown-up daughters, Anna and Kate, from my first marriage.
Early years
Lizzie was born in St.David's Hospital, Bangor, at 11.40am on 11th August 1992. Her head circumference was 33 cms, her length was 48 cms, and her weight was 6 lbs 12 oz. Sian was staying with her mother Anna, at Menai Bridge in Anglesey, just across the straits from Bangor.
We were living at 64 Kensington Park Road, London W11, near Notting Hill Gate, and that is where Lizzie spent her first four years. A diary which I kept for a couple of years records her news:
21.5.93. This morning Lizzie crawls properly over a distance of about two feet, then collapses on her tummy with undercarriage failure. She also stands up and holds onto the Lloyd Loom chair in our bathroom. Tonight she has wonderful time in her bath - rosy and chuckling. Philip lets her choose the video after bath time. She chooses Postman Pat - the story about the flying hens who steal Pat's car keys and hide them at the top of a tree.
26.5.93. Lizzie can pull herself up into kneeling position from all fours. She is lookinhg brown and bonny, spending much sunny time in the Ladbroke Square gardens.
7.6.93. Lizzie is now crawling vigorously, with clear directional purpose.
9.8.93. Lizzie continues to steam through life very calmly. She walks along with her plastic walker - but not yet doing unassisted walking. She enjoys putting things into things and out of things. Also very good at pressing buttons.
Lansdowne Walk
In 1996 we moved half a mile to 9A Lansdowne Walk. We could live on three floors (instead of five) and the house was in a wonderfully quiet position looking over greenery front and back. It had been built on a bomb site in the 1950s; one of a terrace of three modernist houses designed by the Swiss architect Rudolph Mock. Lizzie was delighted to find that her room had a 'sink' in it. We made her curtains and a headboard with parrots on them. Also a padded sideboard alongside the bed (with parrots) as the end wall was rather cold.
Lizzie followed Philip to the achingly fashionable Acorn nursery school, where she thrived. Lizzie's best friend was Leo Faulks, son of our next door neighbours at 64 Kensington Park Road, who also went to the Acorn. He was almost a twin of Lizzie, having been born just three days earlier. Lizzie was pleased when, soon after we moved to Lansdowne Walk, the Faulks moved too. Like us, they crossed Ladbroke Square Gardens, and settled in a fine house in Holland Park Avenue, just round the corner from us.
Lizzie developed a keen interest in penguins, and amassed a large collection of them in all sizes. She wrote in 1999:
Penguins are talented. There can be Emproroper penguins, king penguins and other. All penguins huddle in a ball at cold nights and in turns the penguins have to be left out. All baby penguins are born with a warm cosy grey fur coat. They stay under their mother till it is about quite old and soon can play on the ice lands. Penguin info: Did you know that penguins are getting extinct. Because the antartic is getting warmer and warmer.
She also wrote penguin fiction:
One day Piney Penguin was waddling down penguin grove. His mind saw a sweet shop called Sweets Mall. Oh how piney would like to go in there but he had no money to buy anything. He thout he might go to the bank that had his money in he would have to walk a long way. He couldn't take a iceberg because he didn't have any money to pay the iceberg penguin. So he had to walk all the way to the bank he was tired out when he got there and was very happy because he could pay the iceberg man on his way back.
So he went to the bank lady penguin and got out his money and had a iceberg back to the sweet shop but the iceberg man could not find penguin grove he looked all the way to pany penguins swimming street and pig penguin wrest place walk and soon he found penguin grove. Piney ran up to the sweet shop and bought a fish pop and penguin sweets. He gulped them down and soon it got dark. He must get home he thought mum will get wories so he ran home. The End.
During our time at Lansdowne Walk we bought a a holiday cottage in Studland, to the west of Poole Harbour. To get to Studland, you would drive to Poole, then take the chain ferry across the mouth of Poole Harbour. You felt as though you were entering a new world.
The first sighting of the sea, as the car approached Sandbanks, was a great moment. Lizzie would get very excited and shout out 'Ee! Ee!' which was the nearest she could get to 'Sea! Sea!'. We understood what she meant. There are wonderful sandy National Trust beaches at Studland, and good walks on the hills. Much time was spent making sand castles and jumping about on the dunes. We usually went to Middle Beach, where there were also good rock coves, a tea room, and a shop selling plastic beach kit. Our cottage, a former council house, was cosy with a log fire. Philip and Lizzie both had bunk beds in their rooms, and there was much climbing about on the ladders.
While at Studland, Philip and Lizzie passed through a brief phase of enjoying rolling around in empty plastic dustbins. We insisted that they wear crash helmets.
We bought a small dinghy, called the Toad, which you could sail or row. It had a dark green hull and a tan sail, and is now retired upside down beside our garden shed in Cambridge. Lizzie, when about four, was subjected to an alarming experience in the Toad. We were all squeezed into it, paddling along, when I decided to dive in off the side. Due to some Newtonian principle of moments, as soon as I dived off the boat it heeled back violently, catapulting Lizzie up into the air and out to sea. We fished her out, but she was not keen on water for quite a long time after that.
Lizzie went on from the Acorn School to Pembridge Hall, in Pembridge Square. The uniform included a straw boater hat.
Cambridge and St.John's
In 2000, when Lizzie was eight, I retired from the RIBA, and we moved to Cambridge. Lizzie threw herself into the move, and formed a Moving Club into which she enrolled Sian, myself, and Philip. The Moving Club had an upbeat motto on the lines of 'Believe in Moving!'. Each member was issued with a membership card and instructions as to how to make sure the move worked out well. I have mislaid my Moving Club literature, but will include it here when found.
We sold the house at 9A Lansdowne Walk, and bought 27 Millington Road, Cambridge. Lizzie enrolled at St.John's College School, and Philip enrolled at the Leys School. We had done a lot of work on the house, using Mark Beedle (who had done an excellent job at 9A Lansdowne Walk) as architect. We built a new ground floor study for Sian, and a new bedroom above it, which was assigned to Lizzie. It was a friendly long room, with a low wooden ceiling, and three windows along one side. She put up posters of Orlando Bloom. There was a special set of shelves by the head of her bed to hold her penguin collection.
Thus began several years of happy family life at Cambridge. Lizzie is gregarious, and soon built up a good network of close school friends. The arrival of our golden retriever Cesca provided good reason for frequent walks in Grantchester Meadows. And the city centre was not far away; Lizzie and her friends would bicycle in and browse in Boots the chemists. She was keen on swimming, and would shoot down the flumes at the Parkside Pool.
We continued to make use of the cottage at Studland, and took two sailing holidays with Sunsail at Farmess in Turkey. During the first holdiay Sian and Lizzie made an expedition to the Roman city of Ephesus. For the second holiday Sian had to stay behind, as she was recuperating from an operation for breast cancer. Happily she recovered fully.
When Lizzie was ten she wrote a poem which five years later we had sandblasted onto glass in one of the two tall thin staircase windows at 27 Millington Road. It was about Cambridge in the autumn:
The dew covered ground is like a
Patchwork quilt of chestnut, crimson and russet.
As I eagerly walk, the brittle leaves
Crunch pleasingly beneath my feet.
Every step I take is a note in a wild song.
We wondered whether to go with this, or a poem by R S Thomas. My erudite nephew Theo was staying with us. When, in a blind test, he could not distinguish Lizzie's work from that of R S Thomas, we decided to go with Lizzie.
Perse School for Girls
In 2003 Lizzie moved up from St.John's College School to the Perse School for Girls, where her half sisters Anna and Kate had been. She was not lonely because Blonnie Walsh and Miranda Robbins, friends from St.John's, moved there too.
The big event for us all was the arrival of Hugh Roberts and Miranda Stern as members of the family. Their mother had died when they were small, and Miranda's father Michael Stern (who had also brought up Hugh) was tragically killed in a car accident. He had named Sian and me as their guardians, and Hugh and Miranda joined the family as brother and sister to Philip and Lizzie. Although the circumstances were deeply distressing, Hugh and Miranda brought great happiness to our family, which was much too small before.
In 2004 we had two great USA holidays with Hugh (who was doing a Masters Degree in International Relations at Columbia University, New York) and Miranda. The first, in August, was to California, where we rented two white convertibles, and the second, in October, was to New York. Memorable moments included Universal Studios in Los Angeles, and skating in Central Park in New York.
In September 2006 we bought a tiny ruined farmhouse called Cefn Cynhafal Fach. It is in the Snowdonia National Park, near Pennal and between Machynlleth and Aberdovey. It stands in three acres, which contain groves of ancient oak trees. The landscape is spectacular, and no house can be seen in any direction.
During her first year at the Perse, Lizzie volunteered to act the part of Golum (a small sinister character from the Lord of the Rings film) in a sketch being performed as part of the school assembly. This involved wearing a rubber swimming cap to give a bald look, and doing a kind of muttering, squatting crawl on stage in front of the whole school. She achieved a good likeness and her performance was well received. After this theatrical baptism of fire, she went on to take leading parts in Daisy Pulls it Off and the Snow Queen.
Other extra-curricular activities included Street Jazz dancing classes at Bodyworks with Jenny Granroth, and six months in the Sawston Air Training Corps. The weekly sessions at Sawston involved dressing up in military uniform, with hair in a bun. There was marching and instruction in tactics. She went flying twice and attended a camp which included sleeping rough and an all-night exercise. She also did rifle shooting lying on her tummy, and paraded on Remembrance Sunday. Mainly, she learned how to form her hair into a bun, a skill which will be useful in the event of war.
Lizzie dropped the Royal Air Force, and turned to dabbling in fashion modelling, having been spotted at the Strawberry Fair by a scout from the Models 1 agency. But her main preoccupation was working away hard at her Spanish, French, textile design and other GCSE subjects, striving to meet the high expectations of the Perse School for Girls. The school has a stern conviction that Perse girls will succeed.
