Spotlight - "Bad Pans, Hot Pants, Fire Flies and mischief" the story of Gigi Preddle .
Photo - Gigi in the Philippines - 1960's.
In 1943, while the Japanese were occupying the Philippines, Gigi was born. She was the eldest of 5 children. Her mother was a public school teacher and her father an assistant treasurer to Southern Leyte. The family was financially comfortable and had helpers to look after the children whilst mum went to work. They lived in a large house with an extended family living close by. There was a cinema attached to the house which was owned by Gigi's father as a side line. A man of many interests, - he also had his own band, collected orchids, and kept a wide variety of pets, - including monkeys, tortoises and even giant sea turtles.
Gigi remembers a childhood full of love and laughter, growing up surrounded by a warm loving family”.
She says” We lived in a small fishing village where everyone knew everyone. The clear crystal sea was on our doorstep, full of corals and crabs and all sorts of colourful fish. When I was 7 or 8 for me and my playmates the whole town was our playground. At nightime when it was low tide we would hurry to play on the fine white sand on the shoreline. When the sun went down we would run and catch fireflies and put them in jam jars, and by their light hunt for ghost crabs, (which can run very fast), and which only emerge at night. We would make a large amphitheatre in the sand, with high walls of up to a foot high, and then put little candles on the shells of the crabs, pop them inside so they could not escape, and watch them run around in the darkness, with only the bright tropical stars shining overhead, the candles flickering in the darkness.”
“We were full of fun and mischief. I loved church processions. These would start at dusk and take about an hour to go right round the town. The children and adults walked with a candle in two lines behind the float bearing the statue of the relevant saint. However, the best part was that, if you held the candle steady, you could gather the hot wax at the end and then pow! – with a flick of the wrist you could send the hot wax onto the bare leg of the child in front! Did they jump! They jumped and yelled but when they turned to find the culprit – ahh - they only saw little me with my hands neatly folded and an angelic look on my face. Later I would drift away, rejoin the procession somewhere else, and, - yes - do it again!
Another trick was to tie the long grass in front of the church in little hoops, just before the end of a service, to trip up people coming out of the church. We would wait in the darkness for the church-goers to come out of the church, listen for the thud of falling, and then the shocking language of the churchgoer. That gave us a lot of fun, and worked well, as it was nearly pitch black, - street lighting being unheard of then.”
Gigi started school at 5, Going to Elementary, Primary and High school in her home town, and then moving to Cebu City on Cebu Island, to study zoology at the university. She was still very young when she finished her BSc, and decided to do a further degree in chemical engineering. But before she could complete the degree, she had to leave the university because of a family dispute which ended the funding.
So she decided to move to the Southern island of Mindanao where her aunt lived, and there managed to get a lecturing post at the university, lecturing in chemistry, zoology and botany.
Gigi remembers well, on her very first day as a lecturer. She was waiting for the caretaker to open the class room door, along with her potential students, to whom she was unknown. One of the girl students asked her who the lecturer was; Gigi just smiled not wanting to embarrass her. The caretaker eventually came and opened the door and Gigi let the pupils walk in first. The student now sat down and beckoned Gigi to sit beside her. Gigi again smiled and walked passed to the podium. The student was shocked. But as Gigi really was so young for a lecturer, she was quite often mistaken for a student. Fortunately the student recovered, and did pass her degree.
Gigi found to her amusement after a year or two that she had already acquired a nickname; - it was “Eagle Eye”. (Probably because of her success in detecting those trying to cheat in her exams.)
Gigi lectured at the college for 6 years and no one left one of her classes not knowing their Coelenterates from their Nematodes, or their Parameciums from their Euglenas. (You can google these if you like!)
Then 1970 Gigi decided she wanted to travel and see the world. She came to England as a friend had suggested that there was an opening here for nursing training. This was very much different from her career so far, and though England's food, fashion and life were something of a culture shock, she embraced the challenge and went into nursing. (Gigi was quite a fashionable young lady in the Philippines, and so wearing hot pants and mini skirts in London was not so daring!)
The training hospital was down in rural Hampshire. She arrived in a cold September. By November the first snow was falling. It soon got dark early, the wind was freezing, the food was awful, but worst of all was her new status: from an established and respected lecturer, whom everybody called “Madam or Mam” she was now a humble student nurse, at everybody’s beck and call. And some of the older sisters at the hospital were rigid authoritarians who thought nothing of shouting at a student nurse. (Or even the patients, come to that.)
What to do…should she give up and fly home? But she persevered.
Gigi remembers: “Once I was in a class, the subject was human anatomy, but I was gazing out of the window fascinated by the snow flakes that were softly falling. Suddenly the lecturer barked, “You! Miss Barcelon! Can you please repeat for the class the muscles of the small intestine?” Without stopping to think I rattled off all 5 layers complete with their Latin names. There was a stunned silence. “Ahh., yes, thank you..” and I was never asked another question for the whole course.”
She qualified at last, worked a year in the same hospital, moved to nearby Epsom and switched to psychiatric nursing, and ended up first as an assistant matron in an NHS nursing home, and finally as the Deputy Matron in an experimental rehabilitation unit for the elderly in Leatherhead in Surrey.
However in 1977 on doctor’s advice, due to a bad back she had to say goodbye to nursing for good.
She moved to London, changed careers, and for the next 18 years worked in retail as a manager and buyer for a small company called Blake and Co.
She had originally met Tom when she first arrived in the UK. By chance his parents who lived in the same town as the hospital were among those who welcomed the overseas nurse and they became especially fond of Gigi.
Photo - Gigi serving the hot drinks at the Homeless Project Christmas Party.
After Gigi moved to London Tom also moved to London and they married and settled first near Olympia and then in Claxton Grove near St Albans church. They joined the church and in time Tom on the PCC responsible for maintenance while Gigi became the treasurer for a time. When its congregation moved to St Andrews they moved as well.
Now Gigi can be seen either arranging flowers or sorting Swedes on a Tuesday or making delicious crumbles or other puddings for the homeless soup kitchen on a Saturday.