by Dr. Iain
Corness
The “other” proprietor of Yorkie’s Pork Platter
is a happy, bubbly Yorkshirewoman, who should perhaps be in the Guinness
Book of Records for going through four marriage ceremonies to the same
man. She is also the secretary of the Pattaya UK Club and is a woman who
is always on the go. “I’m like my Mum, I have to be up and doing
something.” She is also two inches too short!
Eileen was born in Keighley in West Yorkshire, “Just
across the valley from the Bronte’s. No relation, mind you,” she added
quickly. Her father was a wine merchant who had lost one leg as a child in
an accident, but never let it stop his enjoyment of life. He even played
cricket with Eileen, his only child. Her very active Mum worked in a
supermarket, and by all reports, her young life was a happy one.
Scholastic application was not Eileen’s prime
challenge as a young girl. Sports were her favourite pastime. “I used to
do cross country running. I couldn’t even run across the road now,”
she mused. The hockey field and netball courts were also more to her
liking and she left school after getting her UK “O” levels. “I was
terrible, really. I learned more after I left school.”
However, Eileen knew what she wanted to be. She wanted
to be a policewoman. She sat the entrance examination to join the
Yorkshire Constabulary and passed everything - other than the physical
exam. At five foot two inches, she was two inches too short. “I was
upset. I was at a loss for what I could do. All my life I had dreamed
about being in the police, but I just had to accept it.”
She became a window dresser - they let you use a ladder
for that, and went to Day College one day a week to study the craft. This
she did for six years until she met and married her first husband (a
butcher, but only one ceremony, the others come later in her story).
They opened a butcher’s shop and Eileen combined the
life of Mrs. Shop with being a mother to her two children. She would get
the kids off to school in the mornings and be back to pick them up after
school. These were not latchkey children, a subject that she feels
strongly about. “It’s alright being a career woman or having your own
business, but I don’t agree with children coming home to an empty
house.” At school holidays her parents or her husband’s parents would
help out during the day, but you could sense that those early years were,
for Eileen, very, very busy.
Their little butcher’s shop was a part of village
life and everything was going reasonably well, but the marriage was
obviously in a rut, but she persevered. However, Mad Cow Disease then
played a hand in Eileen’s life. “The disease did a lot of damage to
small butchers’ shops,” and Eileen’s was one to feel the strain.
This in turn reflected on the marriage, to enlarge the cracks that had
become apparent.
They sold the shop and her husband went to work for the
new owners, while Eileen went to work in a butcher’s shop in another
village. This working apart lasted for 12 months and then Eileen and her
husband took over the shop in the new village, but the partnership by now
was doomed and the marriage collapsed. Eileen is not bitter about this.
“We were married 21 years and we’re still good friends, but my life
had become boring. I could see my life slipping away.”
However, the next phase in her life was just beginning.
There was an attraction to another butcher - the one she had worked with
in the second village, and after much soul searching they moved in
together and then out together - to Thailand, where he had decided to
retire. “It was a difficult time,” said Eileen. “To actually move to
the other side of the world and leave the (grown up) children at home was
a great wrench. For the first 12 months I was very homesick, and I still
miss home.”
Retirement and Eileen are not concepts that fit well
together, and the go-getting Eileen was soon involved in her third
butcher’s shop, adding a guesthouse and restaurant to it, just to make
sure she was busy enough. That is the well known Yorkies Pork Platter. And
it was here that she and Norman Denning finally got married. A civil
registration ceremony, followed by a Thai one with the monks and a
Christian blessing of the rings. Just to make sure they really were
married, they also took a trip back to the UK, Yorkshire of course, where
they had their fourth marriage ceremony.
She still likes to be active, but that can take a
different form over here. “I used to like walking in the dales in
Yorkshire, while here I trek around Bangkok carrying our pies!” Life
seems to be very full for Mrs. Butcher Shop, guest house keeper and
restaurateur, coupled with the secretary’s job in the UK Club.
“Although we live across the road from the beach, I never sit on it!”
Eileen does not dwell on the past. “The only way you
learn is to make mistakes. I’ve no regrets, it’s all a learning
process.” I asked where does she go from here and she said that she just
takes life one day at a time. “I’m happy. I haven’t got a crystal
ball, so I don’t know what’s in the future.” She does, however, have
a couple of items that she wants to do. One is a parachute jump and the
other is to cross Canada by rail with husband Norman. For a go-getter like
Eileen, they had better get the plane warmed up and ready, and the
Canadian Embassy should get the visa stamps inked!
Eileen, you and Norman are breaths of fresh air in
Jomtien.
