John Shelton (Stoke-on-Trent; 1923-1993) – Witches, Gods and understanding mothers

“John Shelton lifted the lid off the dustbin and looked out. How’s that for an opening sentence for my autobiography? Should have left the lid on John. For self-identification.”

John Shelton (born Hancock) came from an artistic background, albeit one suppressed through circumstance. His mother Agnes Simcock won a scholarship to art school at the age of thirteen, learning to draw and paint through her teacher, Bill Henshaw. She left to teach at eighteen although this was cut short as she went into service to support the large family. Her paint box and brushes were thrown into the bin.

Agnes met John’s father, Robert, at White and Poppe munitions factory in Coventry. John noted their “Punch and Judy” relationship in a conversation which Agnes recounted years later -

“YOU HAVE NOT CLEANED THE BEDROOMS, AGNES” HE SHOUTED.
“I HAVE” SHE SAID.
“YOU HAVE NOT – I PUT A TAPER UNDER THE BED AND IT’S STILL THERE” SAID ROB.
“I KNOW” SAID AGNES, “I PUT IT BACK IN THE VERY SAME PLACE” (I HADN’T!).

For my mother the worst was always yet to come. A minglement of fear and hopeful faith was embrionic in the grown of her personality. She stored every incident of fate like a prize throughout the years, Her memory was the family log book of endless trivialities and great occasions alike. Referred to by my father as the ledger of the tyranny of tears.

My father had the gift of hindsight even before the event and the nervous sensitivity of a trapped greyhound before the race. He was always looking to win. A winner whose genius was a most astute realisation of his own condition in the multi relationships of people and ideas past, present and future. He had a most astounding sense of proportion in loving nature. Man, God and Nature were seen clearly in his perspective mind. Cultivating the creative spark and really fearing the unnatural.

Apart from school and university my finest education was earlier – through – and later, in the hellish rows, between these two wonderful real people on anything from economics, law, marriage, religion. Domestic slight ups and great downs were a special continuous event.

At the age of six, John was stricken with polio:

Mrs Stevens and her bosom companion, my mother, used to watch me go to infant school from the back bedroom attic nursery of the vicarage. They were always watching me I felt. Mrs Stevens said one day “if you walk with one leg on the pavement and one leg in the gutter you will be lame one day”. I was. Witch! At that time I felt they were witches. Both of them.

When I got so fed up of leg irons on my polio leg (I was different from other kids in the gang – I couldn’t run – I was a sitting target) – I cried and cried in the back yard – kicked my dud foot (with an ugly two inch raised boot) against the coal house door until it hurt and hurt more and more. I was breaking myself in – like taming a wild horse – I was breaking myself in to the fact, the truth. I was a cripple. I was lame. I knew it. I didn’t like it. Like hell I didn’t like it. I would never never get used to it. It would never take me over. I would not have it. Physically it was a fact. Mentally, no no no. But I had it and as I kicked and kicked at the pain of it I noticed the back bedroom curtain move and it was my mother watching me. She never said a word. She knew and she let me make some sort of agreement with it without interference or showing sympathy for the rest of my life. I hate lace curtains. Witches, Gods and understanding mothers hide and watch from behind them.