By ALENA HIGGINS
IT WAS not until 1992 when she was made redundant that the thought of writing an autobiography first popped into Eileen Skuse’s head.
The London ex-pat was in her early sixties and new Australian legislation had come into force, compelling all migrants who had worked in their mother country and wanted a pension to apply to that country instead.
When the application forms arrived she was faced with a rather daunting process.
In order to complete the form, Eileen had to account for all her employment since leaving school, which meant reaching back into the memory bank spanning more than 45 years.
The former legal secretary admits it was no small feat, but found listing all the houses she had ever called home helped her wade through the string of timelines.
Once done, she was stunned to find they numbered more than 40, which is when she decided she had enough ammunition to weave an interesting memoir.
It has taken more than 20 years to complete the book, entitled Too Many Homes and over those two decades, Eileen has managed to increase the grand total of homes to a whopping 53.
Now aged 84 and with her book launch in sight, the Warwick local said she felt “relieved” at being able to down her pens and get on with life.
“Now I can get on with getting stuff done,” she laughed.
The 500-page memoir documents her time in England, Scotland and Queensland, which is where the family (her first husband and twins) moved in 1968.
Her younger years were tainted with war, growing up in London where she endured the harrowing night time atrocities in what would later become known as the blitz.
In 1952 she and her husband were one of the many spectators who had gathered at Farnborough Airshow and witnessed the ill-fated flight of pilot John Derry in the his De Havilland DH-110 (a naval twin boom plane) prototype.
Twenty-eight spectators were killed on that day when, during a manoeuvre, the aircraft broke up, hurtling one of the two Rolls Royce engines onto the crowd on the hill.
Eileen recalls the day with precision ease as an excerpt from the book reveals.
“There was stunned silence and my first thought as I stood alone in the crowd was ‘My God! Everyone’s going to panic and we’ll be trampled to death’. Then a man’s voice rang out ‘DON’T PANIC’ – and to my amazement no-one did! To this day those words are burned into my brain and have helped me in many panicky situations. George then returned to me and we watched as ambulance people covered the 28 bodies with white sheets.”
Eileen will launch her book on Thursday 21 August, fittingly at the Seniors’ Expo at WIRAC in Warwick.
She said retirement was the perfect time to reflect on one’ personal history and hoped her journey will spur others to take up the “therapeutic” pursuit.
