What’s in a Name?

Audell Consulting is named after my two grandmothers - Audrey and Ellen - who have both been deeply influential women in my life. Both were strong women who made a huge impression on me as a young girl and throughout my adult life. They grew up and lived throughout their lives in the small industrial villages of Derbyshire - their lives were shaped by hardship but also by the deep-rooted sense of community of the area.

Ellen died in 2007 at the age of 88. She was born, the youngest of 13 children, in Holmgate, North Derbyshire. She contracted TB as a child and was isolated for a period in a sanatorium in Heswall, Wirral. During this period her family couldn’t visit her and I often wonder about how lonely and frightening that experience must have been. Ellen worked in domestic service for a period before her marriage, including as a domestic assistant in the hospital in Buxton. Living away from home was perhaps unusual for such a young woman at the time, but she seems to have taken this in her stride for what would have been the 2nd time in her life. Ellen married and had a first son - Michael - who tragically died of meningitis. Ellen went on to have two more children - the youngest of whom is my father, but there is no doubt that her life was utterly shaped by this early tragedy.

Audrey died in 2022 at the impressive age of 92. Born in Belper, Derbyshire, she worked in the mills before her marriage to my grandad and then became a housewife, bringing up 5 children. She was an active and loving grandmother to 10 grand-children and 8 great-grand-children - never tiring of offering a helping hand. Audrey was a tiny woman but a fierce protector of her family and not afraid to stand up to anyone who threatened them in any way.

Both women ran a home and brought up children at a time when there was no expectation of help with this from their husbands. Through their resilience and example, they instilled in me the value of hard work, tenacity and capacity for helping others.

My favourite photo of them both was taken at my graduation ceremony - a little tipsy on free wine, feeling a bit out of place in the world of academia, but nevertheless determined to take their rightful place there and proud of their grandaughter.

I wrote this poem about Audrey, which was read at her funeral:

Dandelion Clock

You thrust your roots deep in hard soil;

resilient, turning always towards the sun.

Bent by the breeze but never broken,

with calm strength in your slender stem.

The wind disperses your filaments,

gliding like gentle wishes on fairy wings.

Scattered wide, they come to rest,

at peace in freshly dug earth.

Bereft, we can only move forward,

with the memory of your tender warmth

like a faint sun on our backs,

as we negotiate the future.

Life turns like the hands of a clock,

and we are all blown into the air,

to get on with our lives as best we can,

without you, at our centre.