If you look at the logo of Everything’s Rosie, you will see the profile of a woman with short hair and glasses standing in a spotlight and you would be correct in assuming that this is the Rosie for which my company is named. She was my aunt who passed away in April 2021 after contracting pneumonia after an operation. It is due to this tragic circumstance that I was able to set up the company a year later using the legacy that she left me in her will. It is ironic that she is in a spotlight as in life she preferred to stay out of it. Rosie, a person who helped everyone, asked for nothing in return and managed to remain someone who no-one really knew in her entirety.
There are some who know that she became a senior manager in Marks and Spencer, there are some who know that she ran her own consultancy, there are some who know that she latterly became a town councillor Olney, the small village near Milton Keynes in which she lived for fifteen years. But finding the complete Rosie is quite difficult. As my father found in simply trying, and failing, to find an address book containing her longest lasting friends.
Rosemary was born on 6th September 1946 and was almost immediately thrown into chaos when her mother contracted pneumonia, a virtual death sentence at that time (we won’t linger too long on the cyclical nature of life). There was no way that her father, newly demobilised and working in a factory in Birmingham, could work and look after an infant. So, for a time, whilst granny struggled between life and death, Rosie was looked after by granny’s Auntie Kitty for long enough that she didn’t know who her mother was when she was returned to her.
Rosie attended Sharman’s Cross High School for Girls, a secondary modern, where she excelled in a school designed for those who had failed the 11+ and were now supposed to be trained for secretarial work and motherhood. She became a prefect, captain of the hockey team (she would later go on to play club hockey in a local league), head girl and managed to walk away with A Levels – including in a subject in which she was extremely skilled but gave up, art. This is something that I have to take dad’s word for, as I was never lucky enough to see her pick up a pencil. It wasn’t all fun for her at school, however, and I know that she frequently clashed with the headmistress when she felt that the Head was being unfair or too harsh on the girls.
Her A Levels over Rosie, joined Marks and Spencer as an Assistant Cook in the staff canteen in the Solihull store. That would have been in roughly 1964, and she remained with M&S until 1991. They obviously saw her potential early on because they moved her around ever bigger West Midlands stores and then used her as a reliable cover, first as an assistant and then as a cook, and then as a canteen manageress. This was important because at that time there were really only two careers in M&S in which women could be promoted to management – catering and personnel. There would not be a woman store manager until the late 1990s. And she had to leave home. She couldn’t drive and had to live near whichever store she was working in. She was often accommodated in company flats.
I’ll break into the narrative here to mention Rosemary and driving. Rosie, her younger sister Pat, and dad, despite their age differences, started to complete our driving tests at roughly the same time. Pat was an excellent driver, but her exam nerves meant that it took her six attempts to pass the test, which she achieved just before she married in 1971. Dad passed his test the week before that wedding, on the first attempt, having been taught by granddad who had only learned to drive a couple of years before. Rosemary also took six attempts and rumour has it that driving examiners would draw lots as to who would test Rosemary. If you lost, you did the test. We can’t remember all the reasons she failed but she ran a red light in two tests and nearly hit someone on a zebra crossing on another. The few times I was in her car growing up, I remember a punctured tire from hitting something on a pavement and driving halfway to Milton Keynes with the handbrake still on.
She passed in the end, which was just as well, because having been canteen manageress at some of the biggest stores she was now going on the road as an advisor to managers around the country. In addition, as time rolled on, she developed a new role in kitchen design - designing kitchens in new stores and refurbishing kitchens in old stores. Eventually she became manager of the staff facility in Manchester Square – over one hundred staff running three restaurants, chiropody, health and welfare services and an extensive staff entertainments calendar.
By 1991 Rosemary was the second most senior woman in M&S, the most senior being her boss. That was the year she left M&S. The company had gone public and Thatcherite star, Sir Derek Rayner, had become the chairman of the board. The ethos of taking care of staff was seen as an unnecessary overhead. It was all about cuts in overheads, and staff were a low priority (nice to see that things never really change). Voluntary redundancies were called for and, inevitably, the best applied – those who were marketable and who hated the new “shareholders are the only people who matter” regime. Rosie amongst them.
The last of the original founder family members on the board, David Sieff, begged her to stay but she went. A £90,000 redundancy package plus her car and a generous re-training allowance. For the first time in her life, Rosie allowed herself complete time off. Ish. The re-training allowance wasn’t spent on re-training. Why did she need to re-train? She learnt to teach English as a Second Language to refugees from war-torn countries and, in contrast, took a series of fine wine and haut cuisine courses.
And then – her own company. I am vague about her company although I know she did occasionally ask dad for advice when someone wanted her to go into a formal partnership. What are they offering you for your name value and experience value, he always asked. What do they get out of it and what do you get out of it? She stayed independent. If they wanted her they had to give added value and, generally, they wanted her name and reputation for their own benefit. For the next twenty years she worked on projects improving the kitchens and food in as diverse a range of institutions as state schools, top public schools, NHS and private hospitals and – she was very proud of this – some of the roughest prisons in the country. Always she insisted that the user of the service should be part of the project. She came into my primary school a few times where she would, much to my embarrassment, let everyone know that I missed having chocolate mousse as a pudding option with my school lunch. This was during the reign of Jamie Oliver who she, incidentally, hated.
It was in this period that she branched into working with a range of organisations that developed and promoted the catering industry. We discovered, as the letters of condolence came in, that Rosie was a key person in the Food Services Consultants International, not just in the English branch but across the globe, serving as secretary and chair. It was during this period that she received industry award after industry award, carefully tucked away upstairs in her home where nobody would see them, and eventually her MBE, of which she was inordinately proud, but again, modestly tucked away upstairs where no-one could see the Queen’s commendation and the medal. She was also active in other professional organisations and was frequently covered in the profession’s magazine, “The Caterer.”
In being active in the FCSI Rosie organised conferences around the world which leads us on, I suppose, to Rosemary’s Travels.
She began in the sixties going to the places the Brits had newly found like Majorca and Spain, certainly she missed Pat’s wedding because she had suspected typhoid from a Spanish holiday. There are also early photos of her going skiing and I know that she went skiing in the States with Pat and came with my family to Bulgaria and Austria (where I had hit the height of my terrible twos…at eighteen months). All I will say of her skiing skills is that they rather paralleled her driving. She never skied, as far as I know, outside of ski schools and, certainly on the occasions she skied on holiday with my family, she amassed some really impressive and extensive bruising, certainly as impressive as the time she turned her car over on a road near Coulsdon and had to be released by “a very nice man from the Fire Brigade, who looked quite funny when you were hanging upside down.”
But she branched out from the usual and there are photos of her in Egypt and on safari in East Africa, from which the photo on the back of the order of service is taken. As a conference organiser with FCSI she travelled on virtually every continent, and as far apart as China, various parts of Europe, Africa and North America. She might also have gone to Rio.
And for pleasure she discovered the cruise - and cruised the Med, up the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle, around the Baltic and down the Rhine and the Nile.
Whilst she was busy with her own business and organising international conferences, she took on other more personal tasks. As granny became more frail and lapsing towards dementia Rosie took on prime responsibility for her care. That became ever more difficult from a flat in Croydon (where we baked apple pies and went on ‘birthday shops’) when granny lived in Solihull so, with thoughts of retirement to come, she moved to Olney to be near Auntie Pat and Uncle Billy.
Sadly, the long and happy retirement was not to come. Not only was granny sinking, but Pat developed cancer, and then Billy. Rosemary took on the task of comforting Pat whilst Billy slipped quickly away, and then Pat not a year later. She then focussed on granny, even though by this time she had herself been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
Not deterred by these tragedies, and with retirement at last in sight, she decided that – just maybe – representing the good people of Olney on the Town Council was just what she needed – and, no doubt, what the people of Olney needed. She was, after all, already a member of the Liberal Democrats, delivering FOCUS leaflets door to door and taking part in election campaigns. And she threw herself into the Town Council with passion, occasionally consulting dad on planning issues when she thought Milton Keynes Council was being unreasonable.
She was a member of the personnel committee which exactly played to her managerial skills and very much enjoyed her work on the Cherry Fair. But the thing she was proudest of was her work as a trustee of the museum. I don’t think there is anything I can remember her talking about more and being proudest of – despite the full life that she had led – than the placing of the signs at the entrance of the town declaring Olney to be the home of “Amazing Grace.”
Rosie touched the lives of thousands, always supporting, guiding, and comforting. Always getting on with it, always organising, always with an eye on the detail to create success.
And without asking for thanks or reward.
To me she was the over-the-top and slightly embarrassing aunt who didn’t really know what to do with children or teenagers, although she was great with me when I was small. I have memories of baking apple pies (which I wouldn’t eat) and cupcakes in her flat in Croydon, boxes of chocolates shaped like Disney princesses and the Teletubbies, Wee Willy Winky sausages (chipolatas for kids) and chicken Bugs Bunnies. When she moved to Olney when I was about eight, there were trips to Gulliver’s World and pantos and, most importantly to small me, my own bed so that I no longer had to share with my sister when we went to stay (a story that Rosie always found funny and never tired of telling). She was my biggest fan – coming to see whatever I was in when my acting really started going when I was about eleven and then immediately asking what was next.
Since we were coming out of second lockdown when she died, there was no wake for Rosie, no catering for that most marvellous caterer. However, if someone was to go to the Bull Inn at about 3.30 there were three tables in the name of Osbourne in the marquee if people wished to reflect while we shared the stories of our Rosie.
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