Ann Richardson is resting in peace

(and probably laughing....)

This post is in honour of my Aunt Ann.

She died recently at the age of 98; her funeral is today; and I can’t be there because I’m performing.

So I want to dedicate this afternoon’s “Not So Ugly Duckling” to her and remember her here.

She was an astonishingly lively and alert person. Such a joy always to be with.

She was proud and supportive of my work as a writer and performer: and also was active on social media.

So I know she would appreciate this post.

She was my mother’s little sister.

My mum and grandma were in Persia, in a town called Bushire. They were there because my grandfather, Hugo Bill, was a political agent working for the British Empire. These were dangerous times; there was a widespread revolt against the British at the end of the First World War; and he was assassinated by Kurdish tribesmen when my mum was still a young girl.

Bushire was besieged; a dashing young subaltern called W.A.K. Fraser, who was commander of the South Persia Rifles, relieved the siege and rescued my mum and my grandma.

He went on to marry my grandma and become a Major General. Ann was their daughter, and she and my mum loved each other dearly.

My mum died very suddenly in 1962, when I was 12 years old.

This broke up my family, and me and Ann just communicated dutifully through Christmas cards for years and years.

When I began living as a woman I caused my big brother Tony great distress. He had fallen in with an Evangelical church in Reading who told him that what I was doing was wicked and wrong.

He turned to our Aunt Ann for comfort and advice.

She told him I had every right to make this decision, and she could understand why I had made it.

She told him she knew he loved me, and that the best thing was for him to try to do his best to accept and to understand.

And so she brought about a reconciliation between us. And wrote me the most beautiful loving letter at a time I really needed it.

I honour her so deeply for it.

She was the daughter of a general, brought up in ultra conventional ways… and yet she and my mum and my grandma were also in their way free spirits.

One of the many wonderful things about getting to know her late in life was that I came to understand this.

The trauma of my mum’s death cut me off from so many memories of her. It was as if they were hidden from me by a thick, dark and impenetrable curtain of grief.

Ann helped me find chinks in the curtain, restored my connections with a past I thought I had lost for ever, and helped me recover from my trauma.

You can see from the photo how a loving, life-filled intelligence shone out from her.

And continued to shine, right to the end.

I’m writing about death just now. My new piece begins:

“I can’t wait to go, my grandma said

I’m really curious to know what it’s like…”

Ann had the same curiosity and courage.

And she died as she had lived:

Alert, loving, and at peace with the world.