Greta Thilthorpe, A Friend From The Past

There are definite positive aspects to having a Facebook account, although at times I agree that the negatives can be weighty. Without FB I would never have known of the recent passing of Greta Thilthorpe that erstwhile best friend of my early teenage years. It was Dawn who told me, a friend I have never actually met but I feel as if I know. Without FB I would not now be starting this Friday with a rather heavy heart full of sombre thoughts about the Meaning of Life. Does it have any meaning? I was rather hoping Stephen Hawking would finally reveal the answer to this exasperating question but alas he too is now recently beyond recall.

Greta was the remarkably sensible Only Girl in a large family featuring a clutch of moodily handsome boys and a rather exotic mother with a penchant for red chiffon and heavy jewellery. Well so it seemed to me at the time but then you have to bear in mind that when I first became Greta’s friend I had only very recently celebrated my thirteenth birthday. She on the other hand was seventeen and in her final year at Wombwell Hall as I was about to start my first. I think our slightly unusual friendship came about in the first place because my mother had just started to work for Peggy and Vic Troke at their shop in Shepherd Street where Greta’s mother had been employed for several years. I was to inherit Greta’s outgrown school uniforms though for me they were uncomfortably tight around the waist and chest because I was fast becoming what my Uncle Harold described as a Fine Specimen of English Womanhood and Young Harold, his elder son, described as Fat. My mother claimed that I was not fat at all, but merely Stout. I could not decide which of the trio I hated most. In any event, as we certainly did not have Money to Burn on trivialities like school uniforms I was required to wear the cast off skirts and blouses whether I liked the idea or not. At the same time I became Greta’s friend though being several years my senior my mother did wonder if it was a good idea. The one thing she did not want was me being corrupted by an older girl because a few months before the advent of Greta into my life I had become friendly with yet another seventeen year old, this time one called Shirley who worked for Ripleys the greengrocers. Shirley had permed hair and pierced ears and a boyfriend who was doing his National Service. She introduced me to cigarettes and gin and so a halt was called to the friendship quite rapidly.

Greta was an entirely different kettle of fish who wore no make-up and her school shoes at weekends and there was little danger of me becoming corrupted which I could not help thinking was a pity but nevertheless there were definite advantages in the friendship. Shirley had been more than willing to talk about sex and How Far she had Gone with her absent boyfriend whereas Greta had not yet developed an interest in the opposite sex and her attitudes were closer to those greatly applauded by my mother who commented that you could say what you like about Greta but you couldn’t say she was Fast. She may not have been Fast but Greta was canny and had a knack of saying rude things to older women (like Peggy Troke) with a guileless expression in both voice and face that led them to believe she was just being refreshingly truthful. She was also exceptionally generous and my cousin Connie who was not known for her own generosity, said that’s simply what happened within large families and it was an experience I was unlikely to encounter in my own because I was only blessed with one brother. Both Connie and Greta had been blessed with a large number of brothers and of Greta’s I remember Michael clearer than the rest of them because he was dazzlingly good looking and fifteen. For his part he failed to notice me at all even when I wore Evening In Paris to his parents’ twenty fifth wedding anniversary.

I remember Greta as having an extraordinarily good work ethic and during the years of our friendship she seemed able to locate all the local farms that largely and quite illegally employed child labour for harvesting work that the adults in the area were beginning to avoid and paid what my grandmother said was a Pittance. Greta was unconcerned with pay rates and simply lined us up for work that usually began at five am each morning of the school holidays. This meant that unlike many of our acquaintances she and I for a time had money to spend on sweets, ice-creams, Smiths Crisps and bottles of Tizer. My brother, who already spoke longingly of owning a pair of binoculars was, at the age of seven, considered even by Greta as being just a bit too young. Old Nan, not known for having a good word to say about teenage girls was wont to shake her head and admit albeit in a low voice that when all was said and done, Greta was a Grafter and no Mistake!

She was also something of an adventurer and that was an attitude that greatly appealed to me. Although I was quite unable to persuade Molly Freeman to embark upon a train trip in the general direction of London, and when I suggested the idea to Joan Bennett she simply looked dazed and said she’d have to ask her Mum, it did not occur to Greta that mothers should ever be asked for permission to do something as ordinary as get on a train. Mothers were busy people, she said, and had more on their minds than train trips especially when their youngest two, like their Stephen and Christopher both had Mumps. She had an idea, she told me, for getting to London without paying a proper fare, simply with the aid of a platform ticket. In the end we got as far as Woolwich Dockyard where even Greta began to doubt the practical aspects of the plan and she deftly led the way to the correct platform that pointed us back towards Gravesend where we nonchalantly handed in our crumpled, sticky platform tickets and exited the station. And over the next month she and I embarked upon a number of similar outings to Maidstone, Gillingham and even Whitstable. These were adventures unfamiliar to most of my Wombwell Hall classmates and because of Greta I managed to gain a certain amount of kudos among the girls of 1SC.

Following Dawn’s message today I’ve thought a lot about the time when Greta Thilthorpe was my friend and have come to the conclusion that she may not have been a particularly sophisticated seventeen year old but she was never simply Run of the Mill or Ordinary. It’s a pity we seem destined to lose touch with the friends that populated our past.