Super mum shares her secrets to a happy life

Phyllis has seven children: Ann, Janet, Tracey, Ruth, Mark, Lee and Julie, along with 20 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren. She has also fostered more than she can remember, many of them with emotional difficulties and other problems. “I loved them all” she says.

Although no longer in touch with her foster children, one came to her husband’s funeral in December 2007 after reading about it in the newspaper. Sadly, Cyril Edward Harrison died the day before their 67th wedding anniversary. They were childhood sweethearts who had been together since they were both 13.

Phyllis Maud Albone was born at her grandmother Becky’s house, 53 Cemetery Street, Biggleswade, which is now 53 Lawrence Road, in 1921. She lived there with her parents Stanley John and Ellen Maud until the three of them managed to get their own cottage in New Town, now Potton Road.

“Dad used to work on the land” explains Phyllis. “Most of his work was for the farm at Potton Road. They didn’t take brussels off as they do now. They thumbed them off. My dad’s thumbs were in a terrible state as a result.

“Women also worked on the land in those days and my mum had to go beaning so I spent a lot of time with my grandma.”

Rebecca Albone had a big influence on the young Phyllis.

“She was a wonderful lady. She taught me everything I know - things like sewing and cooking.”

And it was her grandmother’s advice which possibly provided her with the secret to a long and healthy existence.

“She told me never to drink strong liquor or wear any make up as that was not what God intended us to do and I have kept to it all my life.”

Phyllis was an only child for 10 years, then her mother had seven children in quick succession – Edna (now dead), George (who died aged 10 months), Daphne (who is also in Biggleswade), Margaret (now living in Gamlingay), Shirley (now dead), Rosemary (in Dunton) and Colin (who lives in Sandy). It was possibly helping her mother take care of her young siblings which set the foundation for her future mothering skills.

Phyllis had a strong voice, which was soon noted and so she was taught recitation at the Primitive Methodist Church, taking part in many “lovely” concerts there.

Like many Biggleswade children in the 1930s, she was schooled at Rose Lane. The day before she was due to leave at the age of 14 her mother told her firmly that she would have to get a job.

Phyllis wanted to be a nurse but in those days you had to pay for your training and her parents couldn’t afford it “so at the age of 14, I became a maid for a lovely young couple in London Road. I had a uniform and they were very good to me” says Phyllis; although the first time the young and inexperienced Phyllis cut the husband a slice of bread and butter, she made such a ‘doorstop’ of it that he had to come down to the kitchen and show her how to do it properly.

She subsequently looked after a little girl called Julie Woods whose mother worked as a school teacher. Later she became housekeeper to Johnny Moore who had a grocery shop in Biggleswade. The Moore family lived at the back of the shop and Phyllis also took care of their son.

Another of Phyllis’s jobs was to go to Bunce’s on a Saturday morning and fetch a wicker basket for Biggleswade cafe owner Miss Knot’s cakes.

During this time, she was being courted by Cyril. The couple had met when they were both still at school and their marriage is not only remarkable for its longevity and happiness, but also in how they first met. Phyllis explains:

“It was May 6, 1935. I was 13 years old and walking down Hitchin Street with my friend on the way to visit my grandma when I saw three boys across the road. Two of them were Biggleswade lads that I knew but the third boy I hadn’t seen before. I remember I said to my friend “‘I’m going to marry that boy’.”

As you can imagine, her friend was very sceptical and a week later asked her if she had found out who the boy was. She hadn’t. But then, something happened which would suggest that the hand of fate was very much at play.

“One day, I came out of Girl Guides and there he was standing outside. We struck up a conversation and from that day, we never parted.”

The pair were 19 when they married at Trinity Methodist Church.

“They were hard days” says Phyllis. “We didn’t have a posh do like I had last Saturday, but we had a very happy life. He was a wonderful father and grandfather.”

It is clear that she misses him every day, and that today’s couples could probably learn a lot from her about relationship staying power.

Cyril trained as a painter and decorator for Mr Gale who had a shop in Biggleswade near to where Turners Chemist used to be. Their first house was a prefab near the station. They later moved across town.

Phyllis told her husband she wanted 12 children but after going through a traumatic time in her second pregnancy where she lost one of a pair of identical twins, Cyril told her that he would prefer to adopt. The couple went on to legally adopt five children and Phyllis had to have a pram specially made. They fostered many more and treated them all equally as their own. Although her foster charges are now spread far and wide, all of her seven children remain local apart from Mark, who is a police officer in forensics and lives in Australia, having worked on some high profile cases.

Of her other children, Tracey lives in Stotfold, Julie is in Stevenage, Lee lives near Bedford, Janet is at Wootton, Ann is in Norwich and Ruth lives in Olney. No stranger to long distance travel, Phyllis has recently visited grandchildren as far afield as Vancouver.

Looking back over her long life in Biggleswade, one thing stands out for Phyllis, who was recently a victim of a distraction burglary.

“People were very friendly and you could leave your front door unlocked. If a parcel was left on the doorstep, you knew it would still be there at the end of the day.”

Unfortunately, Phyllis is still shaken by the incident where a woman came into the house to borrow a paper and pen, also asking for a drink of water, while unknown to Phyllis her male accomplice was ransacking Phyllis’s bedroom.

Although she is not the type to keep her cash under the mattress, at first Phyllis feared they had taken a large sum of money which she had been saving in the house “to do a good deed” with. The money was in one of her husband’s old wallets.

However, Phyllis had been unable to part with any of Cyril’s wallets which she had kept over the years, and the thieves gave up after being stalled by having to go through so many which were empty. Fortunately, the money had been in the last wallet.

And that typifies Phyllis. The things she holds dear are her many photographs, pictures and family memorabilia, all invaluable to her.

“I had a workman here recently and he commented on how much stuff I have” she says. “I told him I have had 90 years to accumulate it all.”