The Gospel according to Saint Cuthbert

Posted, typed and written: 16:52, Thursday, 18th October 2007. 

The other night, I, Pete Rose nee Baldwin, dreamt I saw Grandma, (Nelly Johnson Rose, mum (Sylvia Johnson Rose Baldwin)’s mum) walking, haltingly, frail, from left to right, towrads me. I wanted to steady her, and to enable her to get to Mum’s house, a little way further back, on the right hand side of the street, a middle of terrace house. then there were two Grandmas, the one on the left, stronger and fit. Then the Grandma on the left disappeared, and the remaining one on the right, still frail, was faltering; I rushed forward to steady her as she sat down, uncomfortably, with a bump.

That was the end of the dream. Nelly Johnson married Victor Rose in India, after travelling in her own by ocean liner from Blighty in 1922, cynical blokes suggesting they’re would be no one to meet her in India, at her destination. They did meet, they did marry; Grandma got malaria a few times; then his father’s salt mine went under and the family fortune disappeared, his father died, and Grandma, Grandpa and his mother came back to England, his mother living in a small bungalow in Scarborough in relatively poor circumstances, making Grandpa disrespectful of his father. Grandpa and Grandma lived first in Rotherham where mum, Sylvia Rose was born on 11th November 1924, and later they moved to Sale near Manchester, Victor working in the Ford plant at Halewood. Then Victor was told sometime in the 1930s to start working as an inspector, in Dagenham Essex, next Monday, and they moved to 43 Park End Road, Romford, Essex, where they lived for the rest of their lives, through the Second World War, until Mum married Basil Cuthbert Baldwin nee Stuart-Wynne, (who had been born on 29th November 1925), from Guidea Park, near Romford, Essex, in 1954, after 4 years of courting and saving, and they moved to a rented house in Orpington, Kent, where I was born in Farnborough Hospital on 16th November 1955, moved to Kington-on-Thames, Surrey in 1957, living in a house at 19 Bockhampton Road, using a loan from a family friend, “Uncle” Sydney Legg, who lived in Hornchurch, Essex, and was mum’s former employer in the River Roding Water Authority. Then my sister, Christine Rosalind Baldwin was born on 11th August 1958. In 1960, Dad’s job at Leyland’s in london stopped and he found a job selling Rolls-Royce diesel engines in their Shewswbury plant. We moved to 12 Well Meadow Road, Copthorne, Shrewsbury, Shropshire and David was born on 6th June 1960. In 1962, I started watching TV! I took Victor as my role model for what a man should be, and maybe Nelly secretly as a model was what my future wife might be like, though Mum being unavailable to me as a child, and especially after I went to boarding school in September 1967 in Adams’Grammar School, Newport, Shropshire until June 1974, which had a profound effect on my later capacity to relate to people; Granpy, Arthur Baldwin, Dad’s adopted father having died of cancer in 1966, and Grandpa, Victor Rose, having died on 21st June 1969 of a split artery. At AGS, I achieved 11 ‘O’ levels and 3 ‘A’ levels. From September 1974 until June 1975, I studied at the Bartlett, later the Wates’ School of Architecture in University College, London, living in Max Rayne House in Whitcher Place, Camden Town. In October or November 1974, I met Miss Janice Conyers at an Introductory meeting for Transcendental Meditation classes in UCL. She was studying in London for just a few months, on secondment from her University course in Florida. She recommended TM, which I bought for 12 UKP and after a few meetings, asked her, “What’s your formula for success?” She said, “TM, Ai Ki Do, and The Bahaí Faith!” I asked, “What’s the Baha’i Faith?” In Shrewsbury, at mum and dad’s house where we moved in 1969, at 2 Granville Street, Copthorne Road, Shrewsbury, I signed my enrolment card early in the morning on Saturday 21st December 1974 and on Sunday 5th January 1975, at a Baha’i weekend school at a Quaker Centre in College Hill, I declared, handing in my signed card, in order to be allowed to buy, from Mrs Faezeh Parkes, Dr Heshmat and Mrs Nosrat Ta’eed’s daughter, a Baha’i badge for 20 pence, a circle of white plastic as if cut out by a hacksaw, with the Greatest Name, Ya Baha’ul-Abha! (God the Most Glorious!) embossed in gold paint on the front, with a safety pin, attached by a blob of blue plastic, on the back. I went to my first Baha’i 19-Day Feast, (Baha’i Community meeting) in Coleham, Shrewsbury at the home of Brian and Mahboobeh Hallam, soon afterwards. Since then, the pure Magic of God, the Creator, has ever since, become more and more improbable with every year, more and more powerful, more and more wonderful, sometimes dangerous, sometimes discouraging, sometimes painful, always interesting!