This page is not in the book Word Count page at the foot of page.
Patricia Huth did a Creative Writing Course in Oxford for four years and has published five books of her poetry. This is her memoir now that she is a published author.
It is an early 1980s account of a one-time debutante who fled an unhappy marriage and went to live in Oxford. Taking that huge step wasn’t easy for Huth. She had curtsied to the Queen, had been the lady of the manor, and a magistrate for the same married twenty years.
She bought a dilapidated house in Oxford and had it renovated. Finding a new niche in society included enrolling in the Open University. She also played a pantomime Fairy.
A new, important, and interesting discovery was how vulnerable Huth had become as a woman. Huth joined a women's support group as well as volunteering at the Oxford Rape Crises Centre.
She remarried in and shared the looking after of an academic’s children. He died 2017 and Huth now has a retired professor as a partner.
The back of the book cover gives shortest text via
https://halfapairofpeople36.blogspot.com/p/back_11.html
notes left over from a previous attempt
The author is writing the synopsis starting on 16 Feb.
The following is no more than a collection of sample text some of which may be included.Page created on and under construction from 5 February.
The aim is a one A4 sheet. That will be, in effect, a synopsis of a synopsis.
Reminds one of schoolday précis.
This is an early 1980s memoir of a one-time debutante who fled an unhappy marriage and was fed to the wolves in lesser Oxford. Patricia Huth was a magistrate for twenty years but was assailed by a colleague. More of such cowardice later. Many daily events and chores around 1982 have changed or have been superceded. If nothing else, they are the author's contribution to social history. Indeed, the book is such.
To continue with broad aspects.
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Huth relates that at the age of ten in 1950 her father was working as an actor and film producer at Pine Wood studios. He left early every morning; a chauffeur picked him up and dropped him back in the evening. For most of her childhood her also dysfunctional mother was absent. She had met a diplomat on the train from Reading to London and went off to live with him in Paris. She solved schooling problems by sending Huth to several boarding schools and very seldom visited her. Thrashings by nuns did not help. Perhaps such a childhood toughened her for a sad twenty years of marriage as a lady of the manor.
Chapter 2 - The Start of the Single Life
August 24th, 1981 was the memorable day Huth moved into her own house to start the single life. During her married life, in the unruly manor house in Hampshire, she had often imagined the house she would like one day. Then at last, unbelievably, here it was – a small, terraced house in Oxford full of future potential and present, strange silence. The big however was that she had to learn about very basic tasks that her husband had dealt with. The better however was that the house was her Utopia.
That said, the outside resembled a squat, with flaking paint and dirt-grimed walls, the inside was filthy. Masses of newspapers and circulars everywhere, windows you couldn’t see through, electricity meters in every room and graffiti on the walls. Plumbers, electricians, and painters worked long and hard making the house habitable. The unreality of dreaming of a house of her own had become a reality.
Chapter 3 - Expectations – Discoveries – Satisfactions
The conditioning of women when Huth was young was that theyshould be subservient and submissive. They should have no identityof their own and voice no opinions. Such a condition is of little help to those who wish to survive a single life.
What Huth continued to struggle with, however, was the acceptance of the fact that standards must change in a single life if the sought-after peace is to be attained. Different standards and different values are inevitable, there is less time, less money, and less willingness to spend either on yourself or your friends.
The chapter includes some health aspects. At the beginning of the eighties, exercise became fashionable. The woman leading one of the classes Huth went to was straight out of Dallas, or some such fantasy grown-up fairy-tale world. She had long silky blonde hair, long red nails, lots of make-up and a lovely figure clad in hundreds of pounds worth of leopard skin leotard, plus trimmings. Looking round, Huth felt no empathy and to say that she was the odd man out would be a great understatement.
The odd man out simile extends to the woman on her vulnerable own. Huth's first encounter with
this hazard was when she was looking for someone to help her with the garden. He was to remove bedsteads and beer cans,
and generally prepare the ground for planting. One turned up.
“Do you know much about gardens?” She asked him. There was a silence. “No” he said, “I know nothing about gardens. I am a studentof the philosophy of life.” He then asked her what her husband did and she told him she was separated and living alone. Immediately an anticipatory light shone in his eyes. He looked at her with a new interest. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I don’t feel like working this afternoon. Why don’t you and I go somewhere more comfortable?” The thought of being anywhere comfortable with Phil made her laugh.
There are several more such incidents relayed in the book and it's tempting to include much more. However, the earlier mention of a fellow magistrate continues. After sitting in Court one cold snowy December afternoon, Huth boarded a bus for home in the company of this fellow on the Bench. They chatted as far as her destination and when she got out, he got out.
“Do you live far from here?” he said, “I could do with a cup of tea.”. On arrival, the magistrate settled himself in the sitting-room while she made the tea in the kitchen – thus revealing he was a male chauvinist pig as well as a sex maniac. Huth took the tea through on a tray and sat down opposite him. Suddenly, with loud yell and a mighty leap he was on top of her, - pinning her into the chair, shouting filthy suggestions. Huth disentangled herself and told him in two assertive words what to do. “Ah well” he said, “If that is how it is, and there is no sex to be had, I might as well go home.” The tea was left as untouched as her garden.
Chapter 4 - New Challenges – Different Standards
What Huth continued to struggle with was the
acceptance of the fact that standards have to change in a single life if
the sought-after peace is to be attained. Different standards and
different values are inevitable, there is less time, less money, and
less willingness to spend either on yourself or your friends. Alcohol is
expensive and dangerous to keep in the house. Dangerous
because drinking alone can lead to drinking too much, too often.
Having discovered this, friends were asked to bring their own vodka, gin,
beer or whatever, which they did willingly, thereby reducing
expense and temptation.
Huth moves on to house renovation. The odd-job men include the first task
of sifting the sharks from the saints. Who to trust is a
vital question when choosing someone to employ in your house with
probably no references, and no personal recommendations. It's easy to be
suspicious of anyone, especially if they are trying to work
and are unemployed, but it is a wicked world, and it is important to
be careful. If you live alone, consider what this man will know about
you and your movements, your door and window locks – or the lack
of them. The first one was
friendly and enthusiastic, but clumsy, unreliable, and an amazing liar.
He had been an officer in the SAS he said, and told tales of spying in
East Berlin. On one occasion he had been sent to quell an African
uprising. Apparently, he had sat up trees in the jungle with his troops
and, with great daring and accuracy, felled hundreds of warring
tribesman. Later he had to leave the regiment on account of his
teeth playing up.
It had to be decided whether
odd-job-men are worth the stress they cause. Large firms are much
more expensive and not always first rate, but at least with a
company there are legal ways of retribution. There are none with the
odd-job-man.
Huth came across a woman who had started her own business
The one certain thing she now knew was that she could trust nobody: that
no one was
trustworthy. If this were true, life would be very sad and gloomy. But it is a
sad truth that there are
unprincipled people everywhere, especially in cities, on the lookout
for
easy money. And single women, particularly middle-aged women,
Chapter 5 - A Youthful Fantasy Realized
Until 1950 Huth lived near Windsor, so for many years of childhood was able to enjoy the famous Windsor pantomime. Each year she looked forward to it and was never disappointed. Some thirty-five years later, a friend lunching with her in Oxford announced that the Chipping Norton Amateur Dramatic Society were auditioning for Dick Whittington the following evening.
The audition took place in a bungalow, the home of the director. A collection of people were sitting on the floor already reading fromscripts. I was given one and sat down. Glancing through the parts, the good fairy leapt out. Huth knew instinctively that the part of Fairy Silverchime would be offered to her.
It was not a major role, and there were not more than three dozen lines,but Huth simply could not learn them. She felt faintly idiotic mouthing pantomime philosophy such as: "A triumph, evil’s overthrown, Once more doth good the victory own …." and so on. If the other cast members did forget their lines they simply made up something appropriateand nobody seemed to mind or notice. Pete Webb was a very nice and amusing man who worked as a gamekeeper on a private estate. Before becoming a gamekeeper, he had been a drummer in a pop group. In the wings, to cheer Huth up and quieten the nerves he told her jokes about the groupies that followed them about. Her favourite was:
Girl groupie after sex with a member of the band:
“Do you love me?”
Member of the band replies:
“Do I love you? I have just screwed you and bought you a packet of crisps –
what more do you want?”
Chapter 6 - Mature-Student Days
As a child, to please an eccentric grandmother who insisted on
paying the school fees, Huth was sent to Heathfield, a boarding school
near Eton. The priorities among the pupils in those days had little to
do with learning, and she left after a few years of scant education with
three O levels.
Many years later she made some attempt to repair this state of
affairs. She joined evening classes, studied A level English and began
a mammoth course of reading. But as a busy mother of three
schoolchildren her latter-day studies were always forced to come
second. So, it was not until she was alone and free in Oxford her
opportunity came to make up for the lost years.The Open University
seems the obvious answer to the desire for some sort of intellectual
achievement.
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