Margaret Lawson Willson (nee Freer), or Marg to all her friends, and I met in Brisbane where she was working in the same hotel that I ended up in, but she was a Glasgow lass, born in 1947, so was actually 9 years older than me, but did not look it at all! She grew up in the Greenock area of Glasgow, near where all the large ships used to come up and into the Clyde River. There were big ship building yards all around there in the 1900’s until the 60’s and the last two ships built by the yard while was in 1966. Her parents George and Margaret Freer were married in 1939 and live in Hillington after returning from the war until their deaths in 2001 and 2005. Part of the family I guess is her great grandfather William Freer married Bethea Douglas Burt in 1877 and their son James Freer was born in 1882. He married Jane Love Dandie 1905 with Marg’s father George James Freer being born in 1915 with four other brothers. George Freer married Margaret Hunter Stewart (born 1915) in 1939 with Margaret Lawson Freer being born in 1947. I hope I have this right so far, but it needs more delving into. See Georges War Time photos and Letters home here! George Freer 1943 war time photos here; George Freer War Photos

Marg worked at various stages at Rolls Royce in the payroll department and also for the Savoy in the early 70’s in the HR department. As she used to tell it, to see the Chef or the Restaurant Manager for HR business, she had to first ring and make an appointment, then it was tea and pleasantries and finally down to business! A different world to most hotels today! She had come to Australia a couple of years before me on a working visa, about 1974 or 1975 I think and then decided to renew for another year, but the Aussie Government thought she was crazy in asking for this and just gave her citizenship! She decided I know she worked Ansett as an Air Stewardess for a while, did various catering and office works and was in the Crest Hotel as a Restaurant Hostess when we first met. Mind you, she hated me at first, we worked different restaurants and different times, so I was the drunken bum who drank in her restaurant once my shift finished most days! One night though, we both went out with our respective group of friends and ended up at the same place, the groups joined and by the end of the night only Marg and I were left. We had been together ever since! Those were the days!

During the first year I disappeared up Rockhampton way for a few weeks doing a farm driving job, but when that fell through, I came back to Brisbane, back to my old job and also back to Marg. However, she then decided to go to Britain and her family in Scotland, so after a while I followed and we ended up working for a year in places like the Murrayfield Hotel in Edinburgh, the Beadlow Golf & Country Manor in Bedfordshire and the Atlantic Hotel in Newquay, Cornwall. After I received an offer for the Gleneagles hotel, a five-star property in Scotland, Marg did not want to go there and so we decided to head back to Brisbane. Here we brought a house on a small credit card advance and spent the next seven years renovating the place up, with very little money and a lot of physical labour involved. After a year or so when things were a little easier, we asked ourselves what next, we have a house, we have jobs, we have a car – okay, let’s get married, and so we did on the 1^st November 1981. A quiet wedding with her Mum being the only relative present and a group of our friends, we had a restaurant wedding at the Courtyard restaurant where I was working at the time.

While Marg was not exactly the sporty type, she was an excellent home maker and decorator with novel and interesting ideas in making our places comfortable and respectable! It was Marg’s father that taught me about the five o’clock dram with fine malt whisky and

Marg’s mum was a visitor to Australia with us for three months at one stage, which was great!  I have always admired both her parents, genuinely nice people who have worked hard and honestly all their lives. Sadly, George passed away a couple of years ago, but he was the salt of the earth, having been in the Far East for the full six years of the war and then being recuperated for months in Chennai before finally being shipped home. Marg’s Mum Margaret passed away on the 23 December 2005 after a brief illness and Marg was fortunate to be able to get back to Scotland both times get to see both her parents before they passed on. I have always got on very well with my in-laws, but I suppose that it helps in meeting them only every twenty years or so, although Marg was the good daughter and has regularly visited “home” and spent time as a family!

It is 1987 and how house is renovated up and an offer was made to send me to Germany for a training year with Marg, and so we took the painful decision to sell up and we left Australia. A year later what money we had made on the house was basically wiped out in the ’88 market crash!

We went to Germany where Marg spent some months with her parents in Glasgow as we were so close and then the offer of Beijing came up in 1988. We

had a good hotel suite there and Marg was able to work in the Australian Consulate and so kept busy and met a nice group of new friends. We liked Beijing and it was the days where we had regular trips to HK for our shopping, toothpaste, brushes, soap etc and with no motorways developed yet, we had nice times roaming the old hutongs of the city. All good so far until one Sunday in June we were having lunch together when she was told to get one suitcase together as she was evacuating out. Tiananmen Square was happening which had been building up over a couple of weeks. She left the next day and had a couple of weeks as a guest of Sheraton in Japan. 72 persons of the hotel were evacuated and myself and four other very senior persons stayed to run the place, although our belongings were packed in the room, we waiting to see if the situation became worse, in which case, we would have had to leave all behind and just take one case with us as well! We met back in Beijing a few weeks later and such a quiet next year. Marg did come down with appendicitis during this time and had to be medically evacuated out by air ambulance to HK, where I again met up with her a coupe of weeks later, where we then had a bit more of a holiday to Taiwan, Macao and around the area.

Onto Bali in 1991, then Singapore in 1993, both places we enjoyed as a couple with the diving and snorkeling in Bali, the safety,

shopping and dining of Singapore and the nice friends and good social life she found in each place. In 1996 we located to Calcutta and even though we had a friend and his hunchback off-sider to accompany Marg out and about, she really did not like the place, and decided to go back to Scotland for basically the full three years. I decided on Calcutta, which was the Oberoi Grand, and so I could stay and work there and she would do her own thing, plus see her family.  In 1997 I was in Goa at the Kenilworth Hotel and Marg came over and we decided to keep our marriage together after the tough few years. Daily walks and coffee on the beach meant that we talked, not easy when you are doing hospitality hours normally, and our chance to get it right, which we did.

Onto Chennai and we had five years here together, some of our nicest but also where Marg first started to get sick, even missing her mother’s funeral as she was in hospital in Glasgow with asthma. She seemed okay, but weaker, when she came back to Chennai afterwards and was having regular hospital checkups, and it was on one of these that she had another attack with them lungs. After a couple of weeks in hospital she was going to be placed into a general ward after ICU, when suddenly she had an attack and died of lung & heart failure and died in the evening just days after our 25^th wedding anniversary. Such a shock and one type of funeral which I do not wish on anybody where you yourself carry the bamboo litter with your wife on and consign the body to the flames, tough going.

So, my soulmate and my friend was gone, and still today I get sentimental in remembering my Scottish lady. We shared so many stories, drank so many cappuccinos together, traveled to many places, witnessed many things and built our lives together. Always missed, rest in peace.