Florence " Annie" Ough

ANNIE OUGH
“If Winter Comes Can Spring Be Far Behind?”
By Martin Ough Dealy

She lies buried in the British Cemetery in Mexico City. The inscription on her gravestone typifies her optimistic, far-sighted, generous spirit. Dear Annie Ough…. as grand children we all called her Annie rather than Granny. Why we did that I do not know. But I guess that “Grandmother” or “Granny” were far too formal for such a gentle loving lady.

Sharing her gravestone are the ashes of her youngest grandson…. Noel Rule. He died in 1981 of cancer at the relatively early age of 46 and his memorial is Spanish and reads “Tu Esposa e Hijas Nunca Olvidaremos”. Also there is the very recent addition of the ashes of his wife Cristina who died on 22 June 2004, 23 years after Noel. Her inscription at the time of writing has yet to be added. The sharing of the same grave draws together in a small way the strands of the four families that fate had incongruously entwined in faraway Mexico - three English and one Mexican. These were the Glanvilles from London, the Oughs from London and Devon, the Rules from Cornwall and Mexico and the Galindos from Mexico

Annie Ough was originally a Glanville and became an Ough when she married my grandfather Sydney William in Christchurch the only Anglican Church in Mexico City in 1903. Noel was the only son of Annie Ough’s daughter Amy who had married Cecil Rule. Cristina was the third youngest daughter in the Galindo family; when she married Noel in the sixties in a Catholic ceremony. Cristina’s own death in 2004 was marked by a Catholic funeral service and it seems an odd juxtaposition that she and Noel now rest in an Anglican dedicated grave in a British Cemetery. This might be seen as a small precursor of reconciliation between the two great Christian faiths or at least a strong sign of greater tolerance between them.

I wonder what Annie Ough would have thought of sharing her grave with a Catholic. Hers was a strong faith, having been brought up as Protestant Anglican in the English tradition. She was a Londoner and had trained as a professional nurse, working as a night sister at the East London Hospital. I do not know much about her early life or indeed of her family. She had trained as a nurse and had been working as a night nurse at an East London hospital where Dad’s Aunt (Amy Ough who later married and became Amy White) was matron. Evidently it was through that connection that Annie met Sydney William Ough and later went out to Mexico to marry him.

Annie Ough (nee Glanville) was born on 12 October 1871 and died on 9 April 1962. It is odd how there are strange coincidences in life. She was born in the same month as her son, my father Walter. It was in that month too that Dad and Mum died. Gran died in the same month that I was born…a day after my own birthday.

Annie Ough was the senior member and centre of our close knit family life in Pachuca, especially so for me during my early boyhood there. In those days of no television and restricted travel, our family was much closer together than they are now. The weekly routines were strongly linked to family related activities and there was a greater predictability and hence a comforting surety, especially for the younger generation in the family about things then. We youngsters were in a sense cocooned from the wider events taking place in the world at the time, especially the effects of the Second World War. Family routines and the almost daily contact with other members of the family in the foreign colony of Pachuca played a great part in creating this sense of security.

As children we had a definite sense of being part of a special group. There were “us” and there were “the others”. We were firstly Oughs and Rules, and then English or British. Other people in the Pachuca colony were somehow not quite in the “us” group, but we tolerated them and they were of course the children of the other expatriates in the town whom we saw as new comers and rivals. The majority of these were all of course associated with or employed in the local mining industry and were American. But there were one or two other foreigner families and individuals from places like Russia. The Ambrossimoffs and Troffimoffs come to mind, both families being refugees from Stalinist Russia. Others in the expatriate colony came from places like Sweden, Canada and Jamaica amongst others.

The local Mexican population was definitely, to our childish eyes, seen as part of the “other group”. The adults in our family planted and encouraged this view so keeping us apart. But there were of course exceptions to this rule….there had to be…. the mining companies employed many Mexican from all social levels. Locals who were seen as part of the “upper echelon” of Mexican society were accepted into what we saw as our especially privileged group.

Looking back in hind sight these attitudes now seem racist and imperial but that was the way it was in those far off days. More is the pity because so many contacts and friendships that could have been made with local people never were and we were the losers.

As children, we were constantly being reminded that home was England and that we were British. In these later days that really appears odd especially when we had been born in Mexico and saw Pachuca as our real home. But despite the early emphasis on things English, the feeling that Pachuca, and hence Mexico was part of me, part of my territory, “mi tierra” as the Mexicans say, has always remained strong in me and I guess the main reason why I still, even after all the years of being away, regard it as such and constantly want to return.

Annie Ough was in my childhood the matriarch of the family and in many ways the senior focal point. She had arrived in Pachuca at a time when there was still a relatively strong English presence there. Of course the tradition of the English in Pachuca had already been long established for nearly a century from the early days in the 1820’s with the advent of the Cornish miners and their resuscitation of the derelict silver mines in Real del Monte and Pachuca.

So there were already several generations of English people in the area and several English mining companies were still active both in Pachuca and the country as a whole. The Maravillas Company and the Santa Gertrudis Companies were two pre war English owned enterprises in the Pachuca region when she came. Most of the senior staff were British; her husband Grandpa Sydney William Ough being the General Manager of the former.

So Annie Ough came into a place where British traditions and habits of activity and of thought were strong (albeit only in the small expatriate community) and provided the basis for the separateness from the local people. You might be living in Mexico, you may even have been born in Mexico, but if you were of British parents then you were still part of the British Empire and England was still home.

Annie certainly played her part in the continuance of the English way of life. I can vividly recall the two houses she lived in during my early years.

The first was at Hacienda Progresso where the Maravillas Company had built two or three company houses for its senior staff. She lived there I guess from the early 1920’s until the outbreak of the war. Sometime after the death of Grandfather Ough in 1934 Annie Ough moved into the second house located inside the Loreto Mill of the Real del Monte y Pachuca Company. Despite the very different external nature and position of both these houses, internally she made sure that they were very definitely English.

Annie had some furniture from England, much of it Victorian in character I guess. Audrey still has in her flat a Chez Longe that I remember well as being part of Annie Ough’s furniture. She had brought out with her a silver tea service that had been made in England. Her cutlery was from Sheffield; the lampshades used for the lights hung from the ceilings of several of her rooms were definitely English. So were many of the pictures she had hung on the walls, many of which were prints of hunting and other scenes of rural England or of English sea or land battles…. the sort of pictures you still see decorating the walls of many an English pub. Her linen too contained a lot of things that were from England, including tablecloths with lace edgings.

And she liked lavender. She used to grow lavender in garden boxes at both houses, as well as other English plants like snap dragons and roses. She loved the scent of lavender and carried the perfume of this so very English plant wherever she went. She used to dry the lavender, putting some into small cloth bags that she then placed amongst her stored linen and clothes.

Whenever someone visited Annie Ough they were almost invariably asked whether they would like a “nice cup of tea”. And tea would duly be produced in the traditional English way often in her silver teapot and accompanied by cucumber or other delicious sandwiches. The latter were made often from home made white bread that she and her cook produced almost daily, especially during the early years when mass produced bread had yet to make an appearance.

But during the war years, tea became very hard buy. The supplies of this precious herb were never infallible even during the years of peace, but through the war, it became almost impossible to get. However, somehow Annie Ough managed to find a supply. Like so much else in her hard life she always seemed to find a way around a difficulty and to maintain her habits and standards.

For most of the year, whilst we lived in Pachuca, the general routine seemed almost always the same. During the week there was of course school for the younger generation and work or keeping house for the adults. Families more or less kept to themselves during the spare time.

Weekends however, were another thing, and definitely involved the wider family circle and friends. The weekend outings would be a variation of selections from a short list of tennis at the Pachuca Tennis Club, lunch or tea with friends, a picnic somewhere, often linked with a swim at one of the local pools, participation in the community centre at La Luz in Pachuca, or perhaps, but less frequently a trip into Mexico City. Often we would also be taken to one of the local cinemas. There were three places in Pachuca in those days that offered films…. these were the Cine Pineda, Iracheta and La Reforma. It was customary after the cinema, generally on Saturday evenings, to then pile into Dad’s Chevvy and go to a local restaurant to pick up a meal. The favourite place was a small restaurant cum take-away called “Islas “ near the Post Office in the older part of Pachuca. This place produced first class local fare… tortas, enchiladas, tostadas all were part of the menu, but my favourite were the Chalupas.

The trips for swims and picnics frequently involved several parts of our immediate circle of family and friends. Most often there would be Annie and Uncle Syd, the four of us, the Rules (Aunt Amy, Uncle Cecil, Noel and Audrey) and the Tuckers (Winston, Daphne and their son and my very good boyhood friend Gordon). Mostly the picnics were taken at places not far from Pachuca. In those days, there were only three highways out of the town….. to the south was the main road to Mexico City, to the northeast the road climbed up to Real del Monte and to the north and west was the continuation of the main highway to Queretaro and eventually Northern Mexico and the States. There were many unsealed roads and tracks off the highways and we often took these to find a place to stop and eat. The land was mostly empty and there was little or no traffic, so it was relatively easy to find a place to stop where we would not become the centre of attraction for the locals.

The decision to stop was often made on the spur of the moment and the availability of some shade and no proximity to a local village or farm. The pirul trees common in the district and the occasional Nopal or Maguey cactus more often than not provided the shade.

Once we had found a suitable place everyone piled out of the cars and helped to set up our picnic. This involved putting some old blankets down under the shade of the chosen shade tree, getting out the picnic basket and the food and generally making ourselves at home. Dad more often than not instigated some ball game to occupy us and this usually would be French cricket, or just throwing the ball around. When we got bored with that we’d then explore the immediate area and usually found something of interest…. possibly a red ant nest, or a tree to climb, or sometimes even wild animals. On one memorable picnic we found a dead donkey not far from where we had set up the picnic. Fortunately for us the wind had taken the smell of the putrefying animal away from our site, but there was no mistaking the situation as zopelotes…the local vultures, had already found the carcass and were feasting on it.

Whatever the weekend activities were we almost always ended up at Annie Ough’s house for tea or supper on the Sunday evening. Depending on how many people came, we either all sat at the same large dining table or a separate little table, more often a folding card table pressed into service for the purpose would be set aside for the small generation. Then Annie Ough would produce her wonders from the kitchen with its wood fired stove and its smells of English and Mexican vegetables and chiles and herbs. Most often the main meal would be English. A roast with traditional baked potatoes, sweet peas, carrots and thick gravy was a favourite.

Occasionally Annie Ough would provide a “tamelada”. The tamales are a traditional Mexican offering made up of maize paste with chicken or turkey or beef meat inserted with chile and assorted other local herbs, the whole concoction then wrapped up in cornhusk leaves and steamed for hours. She often bought the tamales already made and precooked from a local tienda and these would be supplied in old rectangular tin cans (originally used for gasoline!) converted for the purpose. The lids of the cans had been removed and a wooden handle placed through the top for easy lifting. The cooked tamales were placed in the cans until filled, covered with a damp cloth and kept hot over a wooden fire until ready for delivery. Produced either as tamales “verdes” or “rojas” they were always a special treat.

But whatever the food, we always had tea and that was almost invariable served from her silver tea pot.

After the meal we were settled down to play games. These were traditional English games and often involved the use of pencil and paper. One favourite required each player to draw a part of a person, starting with the hat, then the head/face, then the neck and torso, then the legs and finally the feet. After drawing one part the part-completed picture would be folded over leaving just two lines to show the next player where to start drawing, then each player handed their piece to the next person to add the following part of the picture. The game proceeded in this way until all parts of the person had been completed. Of course, no one knew what the preceding player had drawn and so at the end of the game when the papers were unfolded the result was often a hilarious mixture of styles and features. A woman’s hat would be drawn on top of a bearded man’s face, followed by a torso of a swimmer, followed by the legs of a child followed by the feet or boots of a soldier.

Another game involved a competition to see who could find the most words from the letters of a single word in a given time. We would each be given a piece of paper and a pencil and told to write the original word at the top. …… Someone would shout “Go” and everyone hurried to write down every combination of letters to form legitimate words. There were frequent disputes over what were legitimate words before a winner was decided. These were noisy, enjoyable games.

As a special treat Uncle Syd would sometimes show family films. He had been one of the first people to start taking home movies as a hobby. To begin with he had used the old Pathe system prevalent in the 1920’s. This involved hand cranking the camera to take the pictures, and then hand cranking the projector to show them. These produced a very jerky shadowy result that was fascinating but mostly frustrating. He later bought the, then, new system for taking pictures using 8 mm film on celluloid, with wind up cameras and electrically driven projectors from Kodak. Walt Disney black and white cartoons were included as part of the show. The collection of family films grew of course as pictures were taken of family outings and holidays over the years since then. The collection was left to me and provides a marvellous source of memories and a nostalgic sense of those happy times.

Annie Ough looked after Uncle Syd all his life and they both shared the various houses she had lived in. Poor Uncle Syd’s disability imposed huge constraints on his life and stifled his career. Yet he never allowed the problems to get the better of him and maintained his interest in life through intellectual and scientific pursuits. His workshop was always a place of mystery and wonderment for me. There was always something of interest going on. One of the things that fascinated me was his experimenting with high voltages creating small lightning in old-fashioned filament bulbs by creating a high tension between the surface of the lamp and the filament. Quite how this worked I did not understand, but his lightning bolts certainly impressed my boyish mind. He pursued any new development in the fields he was interested in. Thus he progressed from still photography through to cinema. He also experimented with wire recorders (the predecessors of the now very common tape recorders as well as radios and gramaphones.

Annie Ough used to keep chickens at the back of her house in Hacienda Progresso. These were in sheds in the back yard surrounded by the high stonewalls capped with broken glass to keep out intruders. Many were the times we were treated to boiled eggs for tea. These eggs were produced by her willing flock and really fresh and tasty. They would have been given great approval by the organic farmers of today.

But then came a time when she began to lose chickens. They were simply disappearing one or two at a time and intermittently over a period of a few weeks. Both Uncle Syd and Annie Ough were certain the chickens were being stolen, but they could not work out how this was done let alone who was responsible. After all the stone walls of the yard stood at least 2 meters high and the broken glass set into the upper cap of the walls should have deterred the most aggressive burglars.

Frustrated by the continuing thefts, Uncle Syd determined to put his skills to good use. He set up, with Annie’s assistance a series of trip flares in the yard and a couple of cameras in the hope of getting pictures of the thieves.

Sure enough after a few nights of waiting, an explosion of noise suddenly erupted late one evening. The flares had been st off and the resultant flashes of light startled the thieves and the chickens to make a noise that must have startled the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, by the time Uncle Syd and Annie had gone out to the yard to investigate there was nothing to be seen except a depleted flock of hens milling around the yard protesting to the world about the disturbance to their peaceful sleep.

But Uncle Syd’s cameras and flash contrivances had worked and captured pictures of what had happened. The best of the pictures was on of the back wall behind the chicken shed. Astride the wall were three men. Each had a chicken by the legs and was obviously in the process of making off with them. They had slung old sacks over the top of the wall as protection from the sharp edges of the broken glass. Two of the men were dressed in the traditional garb of the Mexican peon…. but the third was a startling revelation for he was wearing the uniform of the local police force!

Armed with this irrefutable evidence Uncle Syd then went down to the local station to lodge a complaint. His demand to see the local police chief resulted in his being allowed into an inner sanctum of the scruffy station where he found himself in front of the chief. “El Jefe” was a large fat man, the archetype of the old-fashioned Mexican police chief, seated on a chair behind a battered desk. Uncle Syd still on his crutches was not asked to sit down, he was simply asked to state his problem. The sight of the damning photograph did not faze the representative of the local constabulary. He simply yelled out the name “Jorge” at the top of his voice and in response shuffled a rather woebegone policeman…. the very man caught sitting astride Annie Ough’s wall with one of her favourite chickens in his hand.

The Chief then simply struggled to his feet…. he was obviously very over weight and enjoyed his food. He promptly slapped the offending policeman across the face and turned to Uncle Syd and said, “OK now senor”? That was, as far as he was concerned, the end of the matter, and neither Uncle Syd or Annie Ough were able to get any further compensation …… but the photograph is still somewhere in the family albums and at least verifiable proof of good story! There is no record unfortunately of what happened to the policeman and his thieving cronies, but doubtless he was allowed to continue to serve and continued to supply his Chief’s table. But at least Uncle Syd’s ingenuity provided a dividend and afterwards Annie Ough’s chickens were left in peace for a while.

Annie Ough was often my refuge in times of trouble and many is the time that I remember her giving me a sweet or some other innocuous compensation for the punishments I received as a transgressing small boy. These gifts were always in secret, out of sight of my parents. But she did this in a way that ensured I understood that I had done wrong and she was simply easing the pain of a justified punishment. She was a loyal and very wise gentle hearted lady who formed a central part of my boyhood days.

There was always a sense of quiet fun and good humour in Annie’s homes. Hers was a patient, gentle smile and her eyes sparkled with intelligent understanding. She would often read fairy stories to her grandchildren…. and one I particularly remember with frustration was about magic Persian carpets that could fly. I understood that if you spotted the correct label under the corner of such a carpet you could sit on it and be transported anywhere in the world. I have a clear memory of once sitting on such a mat at the house in Hacienda Progresso, convinced that I had found the right label. But the frustration came when I could not get it to fly and having to explain why I wanted to continue sitting on the floor on top of the carpet.

Uncle Syd like most of the adults of the family smoked like a chimney. His choice of cigarette was a milder one that the Elegantes that Dad smoked. The latter were quite rank – the equivalent I suppose of the French Gauloire. Smoking was the “in thing” of their generation……. But not for Annie Ough, I never saw her succumb to the habit let alone even try one. One of Uncle Syd’s party games was to produce smoke rings. But his method was not simply blowing them from his mouth. His approach was typically much more ingenious than that. In those days Quaker Oats used to be supplied in round cardboard cylinders about six inches in diameter and a foot high. He used these as the basis for his smoke ring machine. He cut a round hole in the cardboard top of an empty container and then blew smoke into it. He could then, by tapping the bottom of the cylinder produce a succession of very complete and perfectly formed smoke rings to fascinate and entertain his audience for at least a minute or two. Of course I got into trouble later by trying to copy his trick using illicitly gained fag ends.

I saw Annie Ough only twice in the years after I had been sent to Jamaica for schooling and going from there to England to join up. The first of these was during a school holiday when I returned to Mexico for the summer break in 1948. Dad was still living in the Casa Nueva and Gran, with Uncle Syd were still in their flat/come house in the Loreto hacienda at the bottom of the hill.
This holiday was bliss for me as I was home again after nearly three years in Jamaica at boarding school. This was the year when it was my turn to return. I had nearly two months back with Dad and the rest of the Ough/Rule family. I was able in a way to take up where I had left off when sent to school. But things were not the same as before. The absence of Mum and Charmian still in Jamaica left a gap and for much of the time I was home I was left to my own devices whilst Dad was at work. So I frequently walked down the hill to spend time with Annie and Uncle Syd. I was fortunate to be given the run of Uncle Syd’s workshop and his collection of books.

So the time soon flashed by. I read a lot, amused myself by making a model aeroplane and occasionally saw my cousins who by that time had moved to Mexico City but still came to Pachuca to see Annie Ough. Annie by that time was in her seventies and was evidently less able to cope with the demands of her life and looking after Uncle Syd. I did of course talk to her, but the earlier close communication and affectionate links had somehow decayed. Things were just not the same. I suppose this was because I was growing up and had become a somewhat self-centred teenager. Whatever the reason, Annie Ough seemed to have retreated into a world of her own. I was sad as a consequence and at a loss as to what to do.

After returning to Jamaica t the end of that summer holiday to start school again, a barrier seemed to come down between the demands of life in Jamaica and my connections with distant Mexico. Home for me was still Mexico, but somehow it seemed as if there was no way to get back there for me with no reason to.

The main link was still the monthly letter from Dad. He wrote to Charmian and I separately every month, and more often to Mum. These letters were always keenly anticipated and news of Mexico and the family there eagerly absorbed. But these letters also seemed to emphasize the separation and the obstacles to getting back. I always replied and Dad’s address was always the same…it had remained unchanged for over 40 years. It was W.G.Ough Apartado Postal # 21, Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico.

Occasionally there were letters from other members of the family, But these were few. Annie Ough wrote sometimes, for birthdays and Christmas. Again the lack of communication just emphasized the remoteness of “home” and what was happening there.

Consequently the childhood links with Annie and the rest of the family atrophied and the feeling that I no longer really belonged there gradually took hold.

My last contact with Annie Ough was in 1957 when I had returned from England and the Army to Mexico on DOMCOL leave. I had been given one month to spend with Mum and Dad. By this time Mum had returned to Mexico and had resumed her life with Dad, but still living in Casa Nueva next to the Loreto Mill. Uncle Syd had died the previous year and Annie Ough was living with Aunty Amy in Mexico City. So I saw her only very briefly then and that was the last time I saw her.

RIP Annie.

Ough Family Memories