Mother's had her day

Not my mother, The Old Man's.

As part of the dismantling process I've just taken her down from the wall above his chair where she has hung for many years. She was 17 when the artist Laura Knight drew this portrait, the age her son would be when his headmaster informed him of her death, although it was to be years  before he learnt that she died by her own hand, aged 38.

Born with the century, Phyllis was the eldest of three daughters. As a teenager her Cornish pixie looks attracted the attention of the artistic community around Penzance and St Ives where she grew up. She acted as a model for several well-known painters and when her mother left her alcoholic husband and migrated to London with her three girls they quickly gravitated towards the arty Bohemian circles where Phyllis, aged 21,  met our father. Their short-lived marriage was forced by unplanned conception and 10 days after The Old Man's birth she wrote in her diary that the novelty of the baby had worn off. His own fascination with his errant parent had not waned 93 years later.