My mum, Margaret Clowes, who has died aged 85, believed that every day was a chance to learn something new, see something different and enjoy a small sherry.
Born in Mossley in Cheshire, the eldest of five, she lost hearing in one ear and suffered lung damage as a baby due to contracting measles and pneumonia, but neither impaired her abilities and zest for life.
Her parents, Miriam (nee Eardley) and John Clowes, a lorry driver who became a master butcher, sent her to St Audrey’s, a Parents’ National Education Union school in Congleton, where she made lifelong friends and discovered a love of literature and art.
In her teens she was an enthusiastic teenage member of the Biddulph Players amateur dramatics society, in the neighbouring Staffordshire town. On leaving Derby Teacher Training College, she careered around Europe on a scooter with her cousin Ruth, and in 1961 married Michael Fitt, a building society manager. With two daughters, Sally Ann (born in 1964) and me (1965), the family moved from London to south Wales, Northern Ireland to Yorkshire, then back to Wales and Lancashire.
After the birth of her daughters, Margaret took up a post as an infants teacher at Kingsfield school in Biddulph, but the family’s subsequent moves made it impossible to sustain a career. So she took up other jobs, including as a shop assistant in a shoe shop and a hardware store, at an estate agents and as a civil servant in Cardiff, in the early to mid-80s.
Moving back to Biddulph in 1986, followed by her divorce in 1987, Margaret typically embraced life with bravery and positivity, travelling to the US, Asia, Australia, north Africa and Europe. She also volunteered at Biddulph Grange, the National Trust-owned house, in whose magnificent gardens she had played for hours as a child.
In 2007, Margaret moved to York, close to me and her much-loved granddaughters. A volunteer at York hospital for more than 10 years, she also became a volunteer guide at York Art Gallery, particularly for the Anthony Shaw Collection, built up over more than 40 years and on long-term loan to York Museums Trust.
She had a diagnosis of breast cancer in late 2020, and a recurrence proved terminal. Anthony wrote to her in March this year: “Always a pleasure to see your smiling face and catch up with your lively descriptions of visitor reactions and your own to our new displays. The way you portrayed your own passions always enlivened my own visits, as it must have done to many visitors of all ages.”
A beloved sister, friend, mum, granny and volunteer, whatever Margaret did and wherever she went, it was with determination and a vibrancy that was infectious.
She is survived by her sisters, Marion and Miriam, brothers, John and Robert, daughters, Sally Ann and me, and granddaughters, Phoebe and Esmée.
