My mother, Christine Mason, who has died aged 86, was a typical housewife of the 1960s and 70s, devoting much of her adult life to managing the household budget, looking after her children and doing the rounds of cooking and washing.
She had worked in a bank before her marriage, after which she transferred to full-time work around the house. As a family we all appreciated the bedrock that she provided, built as it was around her unselfish, caring and thoughtful nature.
Christine was born in Oxford, one of the three children of Dennis Kemp, a carpenter, and his wife, Evelyn (nee Smith), a shop worker, and was brought up in the quiet villages of Greens Norton and Welton in Northamptonshire. Her father was captured in Crete early on during the second world war, and his return after many years’ imprisonment in Germany upset the young Christine, who cried at the prospect of having to share the family home with a strange man.
After Daventry grammar school, where she represented the county at tennis, she took a job as a clerk at the Daventry branch of the National Provincial bank. There she met Tony Mason, a fellow clerk, and when he was moved to Nottingham she followed him there. They both worked at the bank’s West Bridgford branch in the city until a further move to Bedford, where they were married in 1962. Christine then left the bank to raise three children: Anne, Stephen and me.
Promotions for Tony meant moves first to Leigh-on-Sea in Essex and then to Letchworth in Hertfordshire, where my parents settled happily for the rest of their lives from 1979 onwards. Tony was able to take early retirement at the age of 56, and they enjoyed many subsequent years travelling around Britain on short breaks. Having been part of a generation that neither contemplated nor could afford foreign travel, in her 60s Christine made her first trips abroad, to Paris and Brussels, and thoroughly enjoyed them.
In retirement she was an active member of the Townswomen’s Guild in Letchworth and a newsreader for Talking Newspapers. Particularly adept at handiwork of any kind, she produced homemade cards and gifts that were much sought after, and she also wrote accomplished and amusing poetry for all occasions.
One of her main joys was the beautiful garden in Letchworth that she had created from unpromising beginnings in the early 80s. After she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in her mid-70s, the garden’s safe, familiar environment became a haven in her last few years before she entered a care home, even if she could no longer remember the names of the flowers she had planted.
Tony died in 2020. Christine is survived by her children, four granddaughters, two great-grandchildren and her brother Peter.
