Carolyn Norma Minty : A history of her life
16/8/1944 – 3/10/2014
Carolyn was born in Taunton, Somerset, in 1944, near the end of World War Two.
Her mother, Wendy Warburton, had moved there to be near her brother, a teacher. She was only 18, and unmarried, having left home due to the shame it had brought upon the family. Carolyn’s father was Norman Riddick, who supported them on the condition that his name was never mentioned.
Wendy eventually married, but her husband wanted a fresh start and Carolyn was transferred to the National Children’s Homes for adoption. A chance meeting at a bus-stop between a social worker and Mrs Perry, led to her adoption. Frank and Phylis Perry had been told by their doctor to beg, borrow or steal a child to be a companion to their daughter Ursula, to help her chronic asthma. Carolyn always held her new parents in the greatest affection.
Carolyn grew up in Brookmans Park and later in a house attached to the vicarage in North Mimms Her father Frank played the organ in the church and was a valuer for fine antiques for Philips, Son and Neil in London, and would take her on valuations, where Carolyn developed her love for antiques.
Carolyn went to school at the Hatfield Technical Grammar School, where the English teacher encouraged her dramatic talents in school plays, to such an extent that at the age of 18, she braved the great London Smogs in a Campden bedsit and attended the New College of Speech and Drama located in the former house of the ballerina, Anna Pavlova. The head of movement there was Litz Pisk, a lady who appeared to be truly ancient to her pupils (she was 53!), but who was more supple than her pupils. Her mantra was “Movement is Life” which Carolyn carried with her and practised throughout her life. She also learnt to PROJECT her voice, a talent I often benefitted from when she got upset.
Unlike Helen Mirren, who was in the year above, she did not choose to pursue acting, but chose teaching and ended up in some of the rougher parts of London.
Around this time she met a young vet called Robert (Bob) Hart, who was training along with medics to become an anaesthetist, and later became the first person to successfully anaesthetise an elephant. They married and Bob secured a post at the Royal Veterinary College in Edinburgh. Then they moved down to The Wirral, where Carolyn had the twins, Dawn and Karen.
Bob was doing cutting edge veterinary research and was head hunted by the University of Davis in California, to go out there. He was part of the “brain drain”. Carolyn, by then pregnant with Fiona, was dragged reluctantly over to California, but grew to love the sunshine and “can do” attitude of Americans and stayed there 17 years. They lived in Woodland, near Sacramento, in “The White House”, a palatial house with an Italian marble staircse and an olympic sized swimming pool. Carolyn looked after horses and even went trotting. She distinguished herself at a local derby as the only contestant who drove round the course backwards (i.e. in the reverse direction to everyone else)!
However the marriage failed, and she returned to England with the children and worked in the probation service in Oxford. She bought a house in Bletchingdon, but a week later decided she did not like cold English weather and flew back to sunny California. Dressed in her best clothes, with no money, no home and three small children she presented herself at US customs in San Fransisco airport.
“And where are you staying Ma’am?” asked the customs officer.
Carolyn drew herself up to all of her 5 feet 2 inches and said, “To the Hilton, of course!”.
“Welcome back to America Ma’am !” exclaimed the officer, and stamped her passport!
To support three small children, Carolyn took on multiple jobs, working in offices by day and mixing cocktails at night. She became a qualified “realtor”, selling property, an interest which she never lost. They could only afford very basic accomodation and even ended up staying in a small “pool room” at the bottom of someones swimming pool ! During this time she survived:
- Cerebral meningitis.
- A disastrous second marriage to an american army major, and ended up in a battered women’s shelter.
- Buying a brand new MGB.
- Running with the Hash House Harriers (a drinking club with a running problem) and was nicknamed “Smokestack” after a song of the time, Smokestack Lightning, as she could run faster than anyone and still smoke.
- Took up marathon running in her 40s, with a personal best of 3 hours 36 mins.
- Wayward daughters. The youngest (Fiona) at 12, drove the family car to school, giving her friends a lift AND stopped to fill up with petrol on the way.
So Carolyn decide to return to the UK and improve her employability by doing an MA in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and attended Christchurch College in Cantebury. On qualifying, she took a job out in Singapore teaching English, but the promised high salary and a free education for Fiona did not materialise and after a year she bought an Aeroflot ticket home, and arrived penniless without enough money for a cup of coffee. She needed somewhere to live and on the suggestion of her sister Ursula, she bought a vintage replica canal boat in the Midlands, and had it brought down to a very rare permanent mooring on the Thames near Harts boatyard, opposite Bushy Park.
She continued to run with the Hash House Harriers, and after a run from Richmond upon Thames to Hampton Court on the 7th October 1990, she met one Peter Minty, some 8 years her junior. Love blossomed up in Peter’s cottage in Snowdonia and they were married in July 1991.
Carolyn and Peter lived in Teddington, Middlesex and continued to run with the Hash House Harriers. Peter was nicknamed “After Eight” by the Hash, partly because he was a Minty, but also it is Cockney rhyming slang for “late”. Carolyn and he used to arrive so late for runs that they often ran the run backwards (i.e. in the reverse direction to everyone else) [some pattern here?? Ed].
They spent long weekends outside London and dawdled back, eventually putting an offer on a thatched cottage in Stanton Harcourt. But they were gazumped. Peter then bought the Banbury Times by mistake instead of the Oxford Times and they ended up moving out of London and buying a thatched cottage in Shutford, some 4 miles west of Banbury. By this time Carolyn had taken early retirement from teaching on stress related medical grounds. A chance article in the paper for people to look after brood bitches for Guide Dogs for the Blind led to the arrival of a wilful golden labrador called Sula. Named after her mother, Ursula. Carolyn and she would run 7 miles or more every day.
Sula died at age 16, during which time Carolyn and Peter had moved to another thatched cottage in Adderbury and then on to a town house called Benfield on Sheep Street in Stow-on-the-Wold. By this time a white Guide dog brood bitch called Topsy had arrived. Her first litter went disastrously wrong and Topsy almost died, but one of her 2 pups, Happy was retained as a brood bitch. Meanwhile Carolyn was found to have a tumour on her kidney, which luckily proved on surgery to be benign. As the courtyard garden in Benfield was too small for 2 dogs, they purchased “Coppers” on the High Street in Stow and started to renovate it. Unfortunately during this time, Carolyn was found to have lung cancer and it became a race against time to complete the renovation before she returned from 3 months in intensive care in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where a lung (and the tumour) was removed. Carolyn was left very weak (she had lost 2 stones in weight and was down to 5 stone) and needed support. She survived through sheer gutsy determination, and saw:
- Coppers completed (But maybe not to her exacting standards).
- Happy have a litter of 8 pups.
- Her 70th birthday.
- Scotland remain part of the UK after its referendum.
Unfortunately the patch over the hole in her trachea (where her old lung had been) failed, and she was left with a hole into her chest, which became infected. She developed septicimea, and died on the 3rd October 2014.
