KNOWING ME KNOWING YOU “Knowing Me, Knowing You…” is a way of sharing with each other and finding out more about our church family. Mike Cosser is our interviewer/researcher and editor, and this time he has searched out and probed into Christiana Ramages’s life..... Christina and I shared a beautiful Thursday afternoon in June and she was sunning herself in her front garden when I arrived. She was born the oldest of three sisters in a small mining village called Easthouses by Dalkeith, some eight miles outside of Edinburgh. Her parents split when Christina was eleven and her mother took her away to her Grandmother’s home outside of Glasgow. Christina does not have good memories of the eighteen months she spent with her Grandmother who did not want to look after her youngest sister, then three, who was sent to Lanark to live with her mother’s brother and his wife. However, she and her younger sister stayed with her Grandmother whom she described as a “dreadful woman, but a Church woman”. Her Grandmother once got into trouble with the education authorities for sending Christina to school with the Chicken Pox. On Sunday’s, the two girls had to attend the 10:00am service, Sunday School in the afternoon, and the Evening Service at 6:00pm. Ultimately her Grandmother decided that she couldn’t have Christina and her sister any more and called her mother back from where she was in service. Her mother delivered them to Christina’s dad. That was the last time Christina ever saw her mother. Christina had to leave school at the age of thirteen to look after her two younger sisters. So she missed out on her secondary education and had also to forego any work, to take care of them and the house. She was back in Easthouses and there was no church there, just a small school which doubled up as Sunday school. Christina looked after her sisters for ten years before getting married at 23 years old. Twelve months after they got married, her husband left mining and joined the Police in Coventry. He had three months initial training and when Christina joined him they moved to live in a room in Earlsdon Avenue. She then got employment with GEC working in administration, looking after blueprints for large contracts. The couple lived for a while in a Police flat in Fred Lee Grove in Styvechale, but when Christina became pregnant, were moved to a house in Wood End where they were fortunate to have very good neighbours. Christina looked after the three children at home until the youngest one was nine years old, owing to childcare costs. She then got a job making up babies milk at Walsgrave Hospital, which was a job which fitted in with her need to be at home for the children after school. Her father came to live with them about a year after they moved to Coventry, as he was unwell and needed care. Christina cared for him until 1983, when he died at the age of 82. Around that time the children began to leave home too. Daughter Elaine, who is 55 years of age now, is in charge of Coventry Neighbourhood Watch working with the Police. She is married and has two daughters, both in their twenties. One is a staff nurse at Walsgrave Hospital and the other one lives with her partner and baby. Son John is 54 years of age and lives with his wife in Queenstown, is the Contracts Manager for all the water works in New Zealand. He has two children by his first wife, both in their twenties. His son lives in Cyprus and his daughter in Cornwall and is an Air Traffic Control Officer. Their youngest daughter Christina, who is 51, went to university and became a Consultant Anaesthetist, but now lives on a farm in Holt, Norfolk, as her husband works in London and is a Consultant Plastic surgeon and one of the Queen’s physicians. The couple have four children, all in private schooling and are doing well. Christina’s husband died seven years ago at the age of 75, of an aortic embolism and his death was sudden. At the time they were living in Courthouse Green, Christina sold that property and bought her present bungalow five years ago. Christina told me she had always gone to Church in the various places she has lived. She remembers attending a Gospel Church and a Salvation Army Church, both in her early teens. As an adult she briefly went to St Columba’s Presbyterian Church in Radford, but found the two buses to get there too time consuming. Most notably she attended St Michael’s Church for several years when she lived in Villiers Street, Ball Hill. There, although she had been christened at the age of 12, she had taken a 3 month pre baptism course and been baptised at the age of 45, by Mr Meredith who was the vicar at that time. She didn’t know a soul when she moved to Cheylesmore in 2005 and she sought out a club to enable her to meet people. That was how she happened upon Quinton Park one day, meeting up with Lawrence who directed her to Twirleys. Christina attended that and played Tombola until John Kirby was not able to lead it anymore. However, it enabled her to meet and make friends with Pam and Rene and to be able to sit in Church with them. Christina has not enjoyed good health recently with diabetes and high blood pressure, and Geoff Hill arranged for her to come into membership at QP, immediately prior to a recent big operation for bowel cancer. She is convinced that the Lord is looking after her and has brought her through this trial. It was absolutely lovely to spend some time with Christina and we thank her for all she brings to our fellowship, by her bravery and joy in the Lord. We love you Christina and thank the Lord for you and your life of sacrifice and service. God bless and keep you.