When Helpston Deanery Synod representative and choir member, Linda Smith, retired from work as a Laboratory Technician, she decided to stop being a slave to time and give up wearing a watch. However, that does not mean that Linda now enjoys long ‘lie-ins’ or sits with her feet up.
Linda Smith
She may be found in her shed surrounded by woodcarving tools; spade in hand in a garden which boasts cordon fruit trees, a newly-planted yew hedge and grape vines, or busy researching her family history on the internet.
Linda was born at Ilford, Essex and was educated at eight different schools. She explained:” My father was an engineer with the BBC at the end of the 1950′s when all the transmitters were being put up, so after starting at Alexandra Palace, he needed to move around the country. Together with her father, Ron, mother, Kathleen and sister, Lesley, she came to Peterborough in 1964. Having an interest in science, her first job was as a Laboratory Technician at the Fengate Sewage Works. From there she moved to a similar post at Perkins engines where she met her husband Syd, a metallurgist, whom she married in 1969, moving from the family home in Werrington to Thorney. Following the birth of two sons, Richard and Nicholas, Syd and Linda bought a plot of land in West Street, Helpston in 1973, where they built their bungalow. Their third child, Christopher was born here. Linda worked for fourteen years in the science laboratory at the King’s School, much of this time as Senior Lab Technician, and finished her paid working life in the science department at AMVC.
“I always found the work of Lab Technician interesting” says Linda -”setting up and testing experiments, maintaining equipment, managing the budget and organising staff training.” She was on the Health and Safety Committee at King’s and AMVC schools.
As a little girl, Linda thought:” When I grow up I’m going to have a garden like Nana’s.” Linda recalled this inspirational garden as having a cherry tree in front of the house. “It had a froth of sugar-pink blossom in Spring and I just loved looking at it, especially from the bedroom window, which its branches almost touched.” As there were no trees in her parents’ garden, this had a great impact on Linda, whose love of trees stems from that time. Two favourites on the Helpston plot are a walnut tree and the Katsura tree, Cercidiphyllum japonicum – a tree which, as its leaves turn gold in autumn, gives off the scent of candyfloss!
This interest led to a three-year Advanced City and Guilds course in Garden Design which included one day each week at Riseholme, Lincoln, and one day each week working with well-known designer, TV presenter and author, Bunny Guinness at her garden in Thornaugh. In connection with a TV series on Small Town Gardens, Linda went to St Albans to assist with this project. “That was fantastic!” Linda recalls. “It was a ‘makeover’ type programme where everything had to be completed in one day. We worked very hard and I was pictured carrying plants. I also helped Bunny plant up the borders at Tolethorpe.”
Our Tribune representative met Linda in her spacious garden shed, carving a pattern of exotic birds and flowers onto a walnut panel, using a design she found on a trip to China three years ago, when her son Nicholas was working in Shanghai. This is part of some work Linda is doing at Level 2 for a City and Guilds Woodwork Certificate. She has been a woodwork enthusiast for many years and is a member of the Rockingham Forest Woodcarvers, under the tuition of Glyn Mould of Elton, who made the Helpston Village sign. She has carved a number of items including an owl and a tricky Celtic scroll.
“Oak is my favourite wood of all time,” she said, “but it’s a very hard wood and hurts my hands. I like to try different woods -I’ve done things in apple wood and pear, holly’s quite nice and mulberry’s lovely. Lime is the easiest.”
Disasters happen. One of Linda’s biggest challenges was to make a copy of a fourteenth century Gothic leaf in oak. First of all, the leaf had to be modelled in clay, technically known as a “maquette”. “I thought the edges looked a bit sharp,” she said, “so I sanded them a little. When I took the piece to the Chief Examiner, he said:’I'm not going to pass that. It looks like a lump of pastry!” Having been told that her gouges would be blunted because the piece had been waxed, Linda patiently took up her tools again, sharpened up the edges and got her work passed. “This year for Christmas, I decided to make a Nativity set. The last piece was the donkey. Three times I knocked the ear off and three times glued it back again!”
Linda admits to cutting herself regularly, usually when putting tools away. Nevertheless, she is keen to introduce her grandson, Harry to the craft when he is old enough and is currently at work on a special box, bearing a dragon design on the lid, an owl under it, Harry’s initials on the side and some Celtic scrollwork.
Linda enjoys travelling, visiting former Rector, Christopher Seal, in California in 1998, and has just returned from a Nile cruise. She is a competent photographer and produced all the photos on the church board with her digital Nikon.
Researching and writing the family history is another of Linda’s passions. She found recently through the Internet that during the 18th century a Spanish gentleman by the name of Lesanto or Santo visited his father, held in Torpoint jail for piracy. He subsequently married a Cornish girl and settled in England. Linda’s family grew from this liaison. “It’s very exciting to think I’ve probably got a pirate as an ancestor!” Linda enthused.
Looking ahead to challenges and celebrations, Linda hopes to have achieved the Level 2 City and Guilds Woodwork Certificate by Christmas and at Christmas she will have served twenty-five years in St Botolph’s choir.
